Wes Mallott made yet another show this week, this time as the only right-hander in the field.  When I read that he was going for just his third PBA Tour title, I was more than a little surprised. 

Sunday marks Mallott's 15th career show, which means he's only three behind Tommy Jones for his career, yet TJ has nine more titles than "The Kracken."  When I think back to all of the times Mallott's been on the show, I can't remember thinking of more than a couple times when he wasn't impressive or at least solid.  He's definitely a guy I would not want to run into in the "dark alleys" of the PBA Tour telecast.  Yet there's only those two wins.

He's averaging around 230 on TV, but he has a losing record.  So what do you attribute the discrepancy in titles between TJ and The Kracken?  My theory is that its mostly luck, a little bit TJ being more clutch on TV and the rest you can chalk up to Jones's aura of invincibility on TV - which makes his opponents squeeze just that little bit extra.

I'll be surprised if Mallott doesn't get to 15 wins before he's through.  Maybe more.  He's so darn good at getting through qualifying and match play...and so calm and compfortable on TV that you can't assume that his luck isn't going to turn around soon.  Plus his ball hitting the pins on TV is like watching the thrill of victory (the ball) and the agony of defeat (the pins) all at the same time.

Till tomorrow!

Jason
 

One of the questions people ask me a lot these days is "Where did you come up with the idea for that?"  This is kind of a hard question to answer of course, considering that A) I don't know and B) I'm not very smart.

As far as the blog goes, sometimes I'll have a topic ready to go in my head and just go ahead and write it.  Other times I'll just sit down at the computer, spend a minute or two thinking and then the first thought that pops in my head I'll just go with and try to spin it in the general direction of bowling...(like today's).

I never want the content to be stale and its always important to write  something that is a little different than what you might be able to get in other places, while still retaining some relevance to what is happening in the here and now...(unlike today's).

Interestingly enough, one of the concerns I initially had when I started doing Let's Go Bowling was that we would run out of material.  I quickly found out that would never happen after sitting down with my writing partner for about an hour and brainstorming enough ideas for about 10 episodes (we only ended up making six).  In fact, we discovered a very easy formula for coming up with the ideas.  You either started off with a bowling-related topic and then figured out a real-world spin for it (like The Celebrity Tips of the Week mostly were), or took a real-world topic and put a bowling spin on it (To Catch a Bowler).  The nice thing about the formula was that it not only made the sketches funny for bowlers, but also allowed non-bowlers to get it as well.

The most important thing though is to embrace your inner jackass.  You have to let yourself "go there" in order for the ideas to come out as funny as they can possibly be.  Sometimes, the ideas we came up with didn't work or only worked halfway.  In those cases we would put them on the shelf and come back to them later when we figured out a new way to execute them. 

I'd love to hear you guys out there try this and then share some of your ideas with me to possibly use on the site.  I know from being involved in the bowling industry that there are so many great ideas from fans that are never used, which I believe is a mistake.  I think the main reason this process is shunned is because to get a good idea you have to weed through a lot of stinkers, but using the approach that even a seemingly unusable idea contains some of the ingredients of a hit results in the premise that almost any idea that is shared has value.

Send your ideas to: jason@jasonthomasbowling.com.  I can't wait to hear them!

Till tomorrow!

Jackass (I mean Jason!)
 

Yesterday I attended a production meeting for a new TV project I'm working on (non-bowling related) and a few of the guys I had the pleasure to meet were experienced camera operators who have worked on numerous films and popular television shows.

On this particular project, my company is providing the majority of the production equipment and post-production services (editing, sound mixing, etc.), while the other group is providing the production expertise on set.  They began their talk by asking me all these questions about my equipment, except I could barely understand a word they said.  They started asking me if I had all these things that I'd never heard of, and after about five instances of me asking, "what's a baby plate?" or "stinger?  Isn't that something on the back end of a bee that you want to avoid?" they gave up and started using laymen's terms.  (Turns out a stinger's an extension cord. A baby plate is a small platform with a post that allows you to mount a light on a flat surface...just in case you gave a crap).

Any rate, the discussion made me think of all the cool terms that we bowlers use to describe our sport.  Especially at the professional level, where the names get really crazy.  In fact, I bet a lot of you decent league bowlers out there with no experience bowling at the pro level may even have a hard time understanding some of the colorful lingo the pros use to describe how a particular tournament outing went. 

Now I'm probably several years behind on my lingo, but I'll bet that even I might be able to stump some of you with the following description of a three-game league set.  See if you can figure out what I shot from the following description and e-mail me at jason@jasonthomasbowling.com if you have the answer.

I start off going swish 7-10 and then follow that with a four-bagger.  Then it started checking early and I went big four flag it, 4-9 shoot it.  Then I jumped four left and punched.  Kept going till the fifth and went ring ten whiff, then a double wash (bad pitch) make it, bucket, chop it, 2-8-10.  Went to more surface and punched again.  Last game I started turkey, stone nine, turkey, picket fence (bad pitch again) wally, wally, wally, nine on the fill.  Still caught four brackets for the night!

Till tomorrow!

Jason