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Friday, March 28, 2008
WHAT I'VE BEEN WORKING ONSo, finally, after two months, I can finally show you guys just what I've been so busy working on that
I could no longer write about bowling each and every day, no doubt to the great disappointment of literally dozens of bowling
fanatics out there. Well, here it is. I've been working on a new website called
monaferrett.com, which, as of now, has two new shows that I hope will bring a lot of attention not only to that site, but to what I've
been working on here in the bowling industry.
This week we launched our first
two shows. One is a celebrity gossip show starring a crusty old ex-Hollywood gossip columnist from the 1960's named
Mona Ferrett. She's hosting a new show called "Headline Hollywood" in which she slices and dices all of
the latest celebrities and snooty members of the glitteratti. Click here to check out her premier episode. The second show is something all of you P.B. Atkinson fans should enjoy. I thought,
why stick to making fun of bowling when there're sooooooo many a**hole athletes out there in other sports? Voila!
"Jock Talk" was born. All of the cynicism and sarcasm you've come to enjoy on "The Bowling Show"
(which is now over on youbowl.com - if you haven't checked out the latest episode, click here) is all there...except now its being thrown at the so-called "untouchable," "respectable" athletes that
have it better than us bowlers for some arbitrary and unfair reason. Watch that debut by clicking here. Lastly, I also just got word that my friend Tom Clark has just announced that he
will be moving over from his gig at the USBC to the PBA. I guess he wasn't interested in moving to Arlington, eh?
Either that or he loves nine consecutive months of rain and clouds, which is what he's gonna get in Seattle. Anyways,
I just wanted to say "CONGRATS" to him personally, and also let all of you bowling fans out there know that this
is a VERY good thing for bowling. I have no doubt that Tom will do a great job at the PBA and I look forward to helping
him in all of our shared quest of growing the sport of bowling and bringing it to new people everywhere! Till next time! Jason
9:48 pm edt
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
NEW EPISODE OF THE BOWLING SHOW - ONLY ON YOUBOWL.COM!A new episode of The Bowling Show is now up over on the youbowl.com website, on thebowlchannel.com page. As you know if you've been a regular visitor to my site, the show has moved over there and also has a new sponsor,
Storm. For those of you who might be wondering why I did that, I ask you to recall a blog I posted back around New Year's,
where I said that I had hopes to begin adding lots of new features to this site to make it better and more interactive for
fans. Little did I know that youbowl.com had already been working on building precisely such a site for more than a
year. After meeting with them and seeing that what they had to offer to fans was precisely what I had eventually hoped
to do myself, I couldn't help but to make the decision to begin working with them on a whole host of new and exciting
projects. The Bowling Show is, hopefully, just the beginning! And I also would
like to express my thanks to Storm for their help and support of The Bowling Show. During my time in the bowling industry,
Storm has always represented the cutting edge in technology, brand marketing and athlete relationships and have always shown
a willingness to be the first to try new things when everyone else is satisfied with the status quo. My hope for them
is that all of you fans who watched The Bowling Show here on my site will now catch it on youbowl.com and recognize that they
truly are The Bowler's Company. And I hope you also begin to explore the
awesome features that the folks at youbowl have already built for your pleasure, entertainment and communication with fellow
bowling lovers. It is a relationship that, with your help, I hope can continue for quite some time. Till next time! Jason
2:42 am edt
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LIVIN' THE DREAM:
How
to get what you want, find true meaning and save the world by bowling!
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
Q:
What is the book about?
A: The book is about how the valuable
lessons I learned through my lifelong involvement in bowling saved my life and transformed me from an unhappy cynic into a
blissfully happy optimist.
Q: What made you decide to write it?
A: I had been out of the bowling industry for about two years and I had hit a very low point in my attitude about
life. Through the help of a family member, I was able to rediscover the important lessons about success, spirituality and
connecting with others. I was so excited about this transformation that I decided to write a book that attempts to detail
the metamorphosis while outlining the important lessons I remembered.
Q: How is this
book different from other self-help books?
A: The book is different in a number
of ways. First, I am a very unlikely person to have written a self-help book. If you had known me before I'd written the book,
you'd know precisely what I mean. But that fact alone reveals how strongly I felt about writing it, because I knew that if
I could change for the better, then I felt anyone could do it and that there was a good chance that I could help a lot of
people by describing the process and arranging the pieces in a way that could be easily understood.
The
other key point of difference is the way the book is arranged. The story is structured into three parts, The Method, Some
Cool Tricks and For the Hard-Core Cynics, each of which contain the important lessons I wanted to share. Every chapter is
also broken up with a narrative of my personal story, told for the purpose of detailing my amazing attitude transformation.
It begins with the extremely low point when others felt the need to reach out to help me to remember the important things
in life and goes on to detail the many people that helped me to learn the most important life lessons, including: my childhood
friend Robert Smith, my father (a former President of Disneyland International), PBA Chairman Chris Peters and former PBA
CEO Steve Miller.
Q: Is the book as funny as your blogs?
A: Yes! But there is also a serious side too.
Q: How is your book different from
something like The Secret?
A: My book is similar to The Secret
in that it proposes a method for success, but it is different in a number of ways. First, it is a bit more practical when
it comes to outlining the method for achieving success. The Secret comes very close to describing a similar method
for success in its "Ask, Believe, Receive" mantra. In my book, the first two of these elements ("Ask"
and "Believe") are integral (although I call them "Dream" and "Self-Belief"), but I believe
there has to be some proactive work done to achieve the goal. I call it hard work (which turns a lot of people off, of course)
but to use the model of The Secret, you would simply replace the word "Receive" with "Retrieve."
The best part of all this (and the good news for the folks who don't want to have to work hard) is that once you decide on
what you want and then you begin to believe you can get it, the work is no longer hard, but becomes a fun activity that fills
your days with joy and purpose.
Second, my book spends a significant amount of time discussing
how to deal with your success once you've attained it (and that conducting yourself in this manner before
you reach your goals will actually help you get there even faster). Probably the best way to describe my
book is that it's a cross between The Secret and the late Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture.
But I also quote a number of more research-driven books like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, Sam Harris' The
End of Faith and Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate to help me make my point.
Q: Do you have to be a bowler to like this book?
A: Absolutely
not! Bowling obviously plays a major role (although it really serves more as the setting rather than as the primary focal
point) because of my involvement with the sport my whole life. But the lessons bowling taught me are lessons I could have
learned if I had chosen to be a golfer or a doctor or a writer (oops, I guess that one's a bad example now). My hope is that
the book will find its way into the hands of people who don't bowl and that these people will come away with a new appreciation
for bowlers and the sport of bowling.
Q: What is your goal with the book?
A: That is a simple one. To help as many people as possible to experience the gift of embracing an optimistic way
of life and to help them reap its many rewards.