Monday, March 27, 2017

“Travelogue – 001: Evergreen Lanes, Everett, WA”

Lanes, Everett, WA”

Since our younger daughter was in middle school, she’s enjoyed competing in bowling tournaments. (She’s 19 now.) As such, we’ve traveled to about a thousand bowling centers all around the West Coast. This weekend was the 2017 Washington State USBC Queens Tournament in Everett, WA. However, we learned long ago that bowling is only a part of the excitement and that we need to make these trips into mini-vacations.

With that in mind, on Friday morning (24 Mar. 2017), we loaded a bunch of luggage, snacks, and NINE bowling balls into the Escape, stopped by Starbucks, and then hit the freeway. Our first stop was the Centralia Outlet stores where Elise purchased (for the first time in history) some bowling skorts from the Nike store. (The primary reason for this outfit choice was so she could show off her cool Crash Bandicoot tattoo.)



Next, we traveled further north, past Olympia, until we decided we were hungry and then stopped for a bite at a Mayan restaurant. (The food was pretty good.)



Back on the road, we started hitting traffic just south of Tacoma, right around Lakewood. (Happens every time.) And thus we began THE I-5 CREEP. From this point on we crawled north, inch by tedious inch, water splashing the windshield, giant trucks pushing their way in front of us, and the bathroom calling in a high-pitched, unpleasant voice.

After an eternity, we reached Lynnwood, WA, and the thrill packed Alderwood Mall! (It wouldn’t have taken quite so long to get there, but the stupid cell phone gave me some very bad directions...That robo-lady is a bossy jerk.) We hit Build-a-Bear, Vans, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, Hot Topic, Cinnabon, etc…. The women-folk bought some clothes, Ellie got a pair of shoes, and we all chomped some sugary goodness. After the main mall, we ventured to Barnes & Noble (down the street a ways), and I get a couple of books.



By now it was dark, still rainy, cold as SMURF, and we zipped back onto the freeway for the last few seconds of the journey to Mukilteo, WA, and the Hilton Garden Inn, which was surrounded on three sides by Boeing! (Those planes are big up close, and I’m phobic… So creepy…) The room was perfectly adequate, and we were tired from driving, so we crashed and burned pretty quickly.



The next morning, 9:00 A.M., was check-in for the WSUSBC Queens Tournament at Evergreen Lanes (which was about 10 minutes away from the hotel.) The house has 20 lanes, which are synthetic, and wood approaches, and there were 36 women there all attempting to take home the crown! There were also a number of fun people there who we were very pleased to see and talk to, bowlers and spectators both, and these people, the regulars, the BOWLING FAMILY, are the main reason that we love going to these tournaments. (This is at least true for Mariah and I---Ellie might be more addicted to the challenge). The competition is great, but getting to visit old friends is really what it’s all about.



Qualifying was six rounds on a 40 ft. “flat” pattern. (“Flat” means that the oil goes from edge to edge of the lane. On a normal “house” shot the oil coats the first 35 to 36 feet down the lane, and the thickest oil is in the middle of the lane, getting drier as you get closer to the edges. This helps people who hook the ball make it to the “pocket.”) Long story short, the shot was TOUGH, slick as an ice-skating rink, and scores overall were pretty low. (Only one bowler averaged over 200 for six games, and the cut was minus 159!)

Ellie had a rough time on games two and three. Lots of splits, couldn’t get lined up, and she might have even started to lose heart (just a bit), but thanks to some great advice and encouragement from a couple of friends (Thanks Cindy Mattingly and Tanner Spacey!), Elvis found the right ball and a great line and made a SERIOUS comeback! (She even cracked 200, twice, on this very challenging shot.) Unfortunately, the last frame of the final game of qualifying, she needed a double (two strikes in a row) to make cut, threw a GREAT ball, and the 7 pin started to fall, but got bumped by another pin and stood back up! (She missed cut by 8 pins!) The Bowling Gods just didn’t want it to happen this time. Elvis was upset when she realized she didn’t make it to the second round, but quickly got over it, and we stayed to watch our friends who made the semi-final rounds! (Congrats to Crista, Lori, and Cindy for making it to bonus bowling!)



We watched the next four games while we ate some lunch, then said our goodbyes, and dashed back to the hotel! (Stopped at DQ for some frozen desserts, and mine had a bit of wire in it, like from a Brillo pad or something, so they made me a new one---even though I’d already eaten like a quarter of it! Awesome…) Although we considered taking a nap once we got back to the Hilton, we noticed that the swimming pool was unoccupied, so we quickly changed and hit the water! The pool was tiny and not very deep, so we did what any group of people like us would do in that situation, and tried to create a whirlpool by quickly walking around the edge of the pool in a circle. (Oddly, we chose to walk counter-clockwise. I’m not sure why…) We splashed around, had a fun time, sat in the hot tub for a bit, then went back to the room for that nap. When we woke, we found a local pizza joint (Brooklyn Brothers) and grabbed some pie.

Sleeping in hotels is never easy for Elvis or myself, but we were tired again, so we did eventually crash. The next morning (it was Sunday by then---funny how that works), we got up, gathered our gear as quickly as we could, and drove straight home, somehow sliding through Seattle, Fife, and Tacoma without incident. All in all, it was a great weekend. We got to visit with some very entertaining people, Ellie felt pretty okay about how she bowled at the event, we had fun shopping and swimming, and we got home nice and early. Couldn’t really ask for more than that, and I can’t wait for the next tournament!



---Richard F. Yates

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Read a Damn Book (with Richard F. Yates!)

Don't forget to check out my BOOK REVIEW blog where I discuss my influences and type about the pros and cons of written entertainment! Follow the link below to discover exciting new worlds!

Read a Damn Book!

Then send me your suggestions for books to review!

---Richard F. Yates

“The Raspberry Brute” by Richard F. Yates



The Raspberry Brute was eight feet tall and four feet across at the shoulders, with fists the size of vintage, metal lunchboxes. In the fall of 1981, something happened in one or the other of the two brains in his gargantuan skull, or perhaps in BOTH brains, and the Brute went BAD.

On October 6th, at the flower shop where he’d worked for seventeen years, the Raspberry Brute snapped and strangled all of the roses and petunias to death. Next, he flooded the bathrooms on the first and second floors of the building by stuffing the sinks with old socks and turning the water faucets on full blast. Police investigators believe his rampage began at approximately 2:00 P.M., although there was no one else in the shop to see its inception. By 6:30 P.M., however, the lives of everyone in Stencil, Washington, had been forever changed.

After ruining Borko’s Flowers, the Raspberry Brute took to the streets. He threw motorcycles through store windows; he peed in a mail box and stole the legs from a young nun. He ate an entire display full of donuts from Chippy Chad’s, then forced Chad to cook his own eyebrows. He folded a swimming pool in half (it HAD been an in-ground pool), made fun of a schoolgirl’s haircut, and committed countless other atrocities. By the time he’d headed out of town on a stolen moped, the Brute had injured, maimed, or murdered more than 70 humans, caused 12 chickens to cry, and shaved a goat completely bald.



Driving west on highway 4.666, the Brute stopped in Chuckanoogie and drank the entire State Patrol Office. He then threw boiled eggs at an Orthodox Church of Dim Temple, painted a mustache on a stop-sign, and hid a five mile stretch of highway in a middle school gymnasium. Luckily, when he stopped at a local Petrol Pit to refuel his moped and steal a pound of jerky, his picture was taken by a hidden camera. This image was quickly shared with hundreds of law enforcement agencies, bounty hunters, and Squirrel Scout troops throughout Washington and Oregon.



When the Brute reached Splorch, Washington, where the toll-bridge over the Columbia River connects with Broken Ankle Point, Oregon, a roadblock had been establish, and hundreds of humans were prepared to stop the rampaging ne’er-do-well in his tracks. With the majority of southern Washington on fire, thanks to the Brute’s shenanigans, he was fairly easy to spot against the orange blaze as he cruised toward the angry militia. It was almost midnight by then.

The Brute, smiling a smile that caused half of the citizens manning the roadblock to piss themselves (and the other half to go blind,) picked his nose with his pinky, then launched himself into the crowd. He snapped necks, tossed bodies off the bridge into the river, and occasionally tore an arm or a leg off a victim and popped it into his mouth. (He didn’t actually like the taste of human, too fatty, but he enjoyed the looks on the faces of those around him when they saw those fingers disappear between his lips.) Helicopters flew overhead. Squirrel Scouts shot slingshots and threw water balloons, and the few state troopers and sheriff’s deputies that hadn’t expired of fright fired rifles, bazookas, and pellet guns at the Brute, but he just kept coming.

The Brute fought through hundreds of people and was about half way across the bridge when a helicopter pilot, in a panic, accidentally pressed a button on his dashboard that switched the music he’d been listening to in the cockpit to the external speakers on the chopper. When the Brute heard the music, the pilot had been listening to the collection, “Greatest Elevator Disco Classics of ’79,” he fell to his knees, obviously in excruciating pain. The crowds saw what was happening and began singing along to “I Want to Have Sex with You on the Dance Floor,” in ridiculous falsetto voices. The Brute screamed and covered his ear, but the crowd sang louder. As a last resort, the Brute dashed for the side of the bridge and threw himself over the edge, falling hundreds of feet into the river.

Although most of the people present assumed that this was the end of the Raspberry Brute, he managed to survive the fall and swam on to Oregon. Once on shore, he was able to sneak into the back of a laundry truck where he fell asleep. The next morning, the driver of the truck left Broken Ankle Point with a stowaway on board.



The Brute’s wave of mayhem was finally brought to an end when he was pummeled to death outside of a waffle shop in New Drainage, Oregon, by an elderly woman who believed he was her long deceased first husband.* The woman, Eleanor “Crane Fist” Westingberger, was arrested in the act of beating the Brute to a pulp with her purse full of costume jewelry, but she was later released when her victim was identified as the perpetrator of the crime spree from the night before. (She was also given a stern talking to about hitting people with her purse by the sheriff of New Drainage before being released. She’d managed to break the noses of three of the arresting officers before being restrained and handcuffed.) With the reward money she received for stopping the Raspberry Brute, Mrs. Westingberger bought all new needles for her friends in her knitting circle and had enough money left over to pay a monster $10,000 to bite Vice President Gorge Shrubbery’s face off.

The End.

[*Mrs. Westingberger’s first husband, Bernard “Sparky” Sparkowitz, died under mysterious circumstances in 1961 while on a tour of the Bindlepoke Marshmallow Factory. Although never officially charged with causing his death, Mrs. Westingberger was heard on several occasions to murmur, “That son of a bitch got what he deserved.” Although Westingberger was married fourteen different times, and “outlived” each husband, she never had children.]

—Richard F. Yates

[Originally published 22 Apr. 2015 at The Primitive Entertainment Workshop!]

Monday, March 20, 2017

“Thoughts on the ‘Pain Induced Marathon’: The Morning After (30)” by Richard F. Yates

When one peddles in the absurd, when one deals in banalities and micro-concepts, when one pushes that boulder up the hill only to watch is tumble back down, there will always be a certain element of resistance to the idea that what one is doing has any value. I’m certain that this is true because I live the consequences of working in MUNDANE MAGIC on a daily basis.

I’m economically embarrassed, but psychologically fulfilled.

Even the most die-hard of adherents can only be expected to suffer inanity for so long before becoming bored and moving on to greener pastures. I’m cool with that, and happy with yesterday’s “outcome” (for lack of a better term.) Not counting Scotty Sparks’s two ACTUAL poems, and a single silly drawing of mine posted BEFORE the marathon, I ended the day with TWENTY-NINE pieces of nonsense, in total, in my performance. I consider these marathons (when they occur) to be performances as much as I consider them fiction, poetry, and visual art, because part of the barrage is the simple ACTION of making and posting each BIT. The MASS POSTING is as much a part of the activity as the making of each drawing or written piece.

But consider this: most of the individual pieces in this marathon, taken on their own merits, would be a throw-away---a tiny bit of NOTHING. “2 + 1 = love triangle” or a stick figure surfer with a halo or a nonsense poem about growing up poor and having to take lunch to school in a paper bag (which most people probably didn’t get)---none of these things, presented on their own and considered in isolation, would have made any impact on the world. However!!! When a multitude of tiny pieces (of nothing) begin to swarm, when they appear suddenly all grouped together and descend upon the world in mass, people notice. Each individual element of the swarm may be nothing but wings, some pollen, and a useless stinger, but the mass taken together can inspire fear and panic in the population (not to mention great B-films, like Attack of the Killer Bees!) Or confusion. I’m cool with confusion, too.

It’s not a question of whether or not I’ll keep making my silly drawings or micro-stories or nonsense poems, I’ve created these things since my childhood, and I’ll continue to make them until I keel over and drop. Shit, I’ll probably try to make a drawing with my fingertip in the pool of blood I’m lying in when I’m finally beaten to death by that angry crowd, and I’ll smile just a little bit through crimson teeth as they kick harder than even, confused and infuriated by the snake with the halo that I scrawl as my eyes roll back in my head and the lights go out! And I’ll probably keep having marathons as well, once or twice per year, if for no other reason than sheer perversity.

Push that boulder to the top of the hill, then grin as it rolls back down! Thanks for playing!

---Richard F. Yates

[To check out the "Pain Induced Mega Nonsense Marathon" and other weirdness, look no further than The Primitive Entertainment Workshop! It's ginchy cool, daddy-o...]