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America Bowls

Bowling at the Brunswick 4
America Bowls
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Went to a kiddie’s birthday bowling party this weekend. Out in the suburbs. H.o.p. had a great time. I took photos. Of people bowling. Yes, you who were there who will never find your way here, I was the older lady squatting on her haunches with a camera or right down on the floor of bowling’s beach, between bowling’s counterpart to ocean waves and the sunbathers soaking up the UV rays on their towels. Thankfully, people ignore me.

Not as ignorable was H.o.p. I don’t know if he took his queue from me pretty much lying down on the bowling beach (how else was I to get this shot) or if it was just the natural rebellious performer in him (“I’ll show you and your paltry rules”), or whether he was overcome by the blue Cosmic Bowling lights, but at one point he went parading down the beach, blithely interrupting bowlers and their goals, taking in the sights, not very worried that one of them might irritably make a pin of him. Marty went running after because I was too incapacitated with laughter to do anything parental and useful at the moment.

I noticed the American flag (as seen in the above photo in larger versions, click thru for those). There were no people, of course, bowing to the flag or saluting or even acknowledging its presence. People were just bowling, intent on the ball and the pins and their form, except for those part of the numerous birthday parties and they were going to be focused on keeping the kids under control and not tearing up the place on Coca-cola and birthday cake sugar highs.

Though I take for granted that many probably don’t even register consciously the presence of the flag marking territory, it certainly is part of the scene and carries a message.

Americans still need their flags everywhere, only I wonder how many now need their American flag lording it over even hobbies and purchases for less gung-ho crowing than wistful reassurance. Though I may be wrong on that. I have some of the bowling photos up at Flickr and another one shows an enticement for bowlers was winning a World Wide Entertainment (wrestling) style summer bowling party. The near human-sized ad featured a WWE “Superstar” by the name of Mr. Kennedy, a “heel” who has risen to evil greatness. I’ve a photo here.

I was going to write about how I don’t think WWE and bowling worshipers would like to think of themselves as using the American flag as a wistful, sad comfort blanket reassuring them of greatness, but my mind went POP when I saw the avidly worshiped WWE superstar was a Mr. Kennedy, and an evil heel. Not knowing what to make of the minds that dream up worlds such as these, but certain they have reasons for what they piece together toward the creation of manic fandom, I thought I’d just give a nod to this cultural mash-up rather than attempt a dissection.

All I know about anything is that money rules all.

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15 responses to “America Bowls”

  1. Arvin Hill Avatar
    Arvin Hill

    I don’t know if wrestlers are still their own ad men, but nobody ever goes broke marketing to the lowest common denominator. People can see it plain as day when Jerry Springer and Maury Povich do it (as intended), but the masses are blind to it when David Spade is doing the same thing on a Capitol One commercial (as intended).

    It’s all so obvious to those who choose to see. But, that said, an awful lot of marketing people believe their own hype, which makes them slightly less Machiavellian than they’re generally thought of by those who see not only what they do, but the net effect of what they do.

    The interview with the wrestler “Mr. Kennedy” is the perfect dyspeptic side order to Bageant’s “Deer Hunting With Jesus.” Here we have a guy who was bullied his whole sick life by his pscyhodaddy. He’s grateful for the abuse *when he joins the military* and, no doubt, even more so now since he’s getting rich the only way he ever could have: by becoming a bully.

    This is the story of America, which caters to the base of the human psyche. We’re locked in a flat spin that can only become worse, really, since the behavior is replicated and reinforced at every level of society and will be until The End, whatever form that takes. I’m about to read Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” for a cheery approximation of that.

    Marketing people are paid to be in on the joke, not get the punchline. It’s just like any other business in that willful denial of its harmful aspects are a prerequisite for the job. That I still choose to do it all does not speak well of my character, and I try to do as little of it as possible (a recurring theme in my life). Mostly, I get paid to do the same thing to The Suits as The Suits are doing to the public, which is how I justify it enough to cash the occasional check. It’s also why I’m chronically underemployed doing marketing work, as I only do what my conscience can stand – and that ain’t much. The last job I turned down was writing an introduction to Mary Matalin at a convention. “I have limitations,” I told the incredulous client. Just not enough for my personal salvation, were such a thing to exist.

    But this is all just a bunch of words.

    You had it nailed at Money Rules All.

    Cool pics.

    Reply
  2. Susan Och Avatar
    Susan Och

    Mr. Kennedy does not play a hero on WWE. His character is more of the self-promoting huckster who gets mesmerized by his own hype. I don’t watch ECW, but since he’s been appearing on Monday Night Raw he is booed by the crowds in every city, the sort of bored booing that you might expect if a dinner-hour phone solicitor tried launching his pitch in a packed arena.

    I don’t know why the bowling alley picked Mr. Kennedy as their party persona. Probably John Cena was too expensive.

    Reply
  3. nina Avatar
    nina

    I like the way you’ve photographed the shininess and reflectiveness of the bowling alley so that everything looks highly polished, wood seeming to have the quality of highly polished metal, lights and then the feeling of movement, of rushing people so that the bowling lanes have this sense of permanence and the people seem brief, ephemeral.

    About the US flag as security…this may seem a loose association…in May I drove up to Mass. and back, fetching my daughter from college. We drove through New York City rather than stopping and spending time, because of time constraints. I’d always thought of that city as this icon of America, of sea to shining sea, of “give me your tired, your poor, etc.” but it took less time to drive through than it takes to drive across metro Atlanta. We stopped at the Vince Lombardi service area in NJ, along the NJ turnpike, and we sat on a curb (next to a phone booth, which seems oddly artifact-like at this point) looking at NYC across the wetlands, from NJ. NYC from that vantage point looked like a pretty toy town that some children had built and left on a small island. I can’t say why, and may even be wrong, but it seemed from that vantage point that it was like it no longer had power. And I thought about that I think there is still power in this country, but I think maybe it isn’t where we thought it was anymore, and that if we could make conscious where our real power is, we’d be better off, not necessarily materially better off, but healthier, that it isn’t power as in Military Might, Economic Might, etc., but it’s something else.

    Reply
  4. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    Nina, well those floors are highly polished, though when you’re lying down on them if you use flash then you get all the dust and dirt and scratches and grit in things. With most of the pics I wasn’t using a flash and was in a very dark environment so had to do post processing that brought out what was there in that dark blue light of Cosmic Bowling.

    I’m not certain I know what you’re saying where our real power is. Because I’ve always thought of Americans as being sold an idea of what America is about, tantamount to a promised land, mighty in spirit and ethics and justice over just military and economics, when in reality it is/was about making land and resource grabbing secure. Throughout America’s history, if one goes back and reads the protests of different American Indian nations and populations used for making the riches for the plantations, the mining industry, just industry in general, their idea of America as a power isn’t the iconic one of the land of the free. And I’ve always thought we don’t have a chance of being better off until the history of what happened here is really laid bare and admitted, without all the excuses of how it was really for the best or people just thought differently at the time and so can’t be judged by today’s standards. Two hundred years from now, the same will probably be said of us and Iraq etc., “Well, they just thought differently then and we can’t judge them”, despite the fact there was enough dissent to show this was not how everyone thought.

    Looking at NYC from the NJ wetlands is just plain weird. At least it was to me when I saw it from the NJ wetlands.

    Reply
  5. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    Arvin, thanks for the thoughts on it.

    I was wondering in this case in specific as Kennedy isn’t his real name and carries with it some powerful associations.

    Reply
  6. Arvin Hill Avatar
    Arvin Hill

    It was clear to me Mr Kennedy’s role is the Anti-Hero before I even read the interview. No person with marketing chops would attempt to sell a hero with the name “Mr Kennedy” to the rasslin’ crowd. “Kennedy” is instantly associated with the word “liberal” even to the most uneducated knuckle-dragger capable of actually paying for a ticket or otherwise investing his or her eyeballs on the tee-vee version. It’s one of the many things people know without necessarily knowing why or how they know it.

    The American flag has become such an omnipresence in our culture that I barely notice it, but I do think there’s more at work than its function as security blanket.

    Any place where competition reigns supreme – be it a school, a bowling alley, the Super Bowl or the local Widget Factory – Old Glory is always there, encouraging us to be all we can be. Which can only be accomplished by administering an ass-kicking to our inferiors in the classroom, Lane #22, the football field and the conference room in the Human Resources office. We’re very keen on the law of the jungle.

    Reply
  7. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    Arvin, I was making a note on something else but decided instead to relate this story.

    When I was 15 or 16, I assumed that everyone knew the good and bad guys of the wrestling world were for show. But one day several friends came to school talking about how they had been at the 7-11 when a car pulled up and in it were riding both the touring bad and good wrestling guys, post match, in street clothes, stopping for some soft drinks and chips, just chatting away.

    They were quite blown away by this.

    Competition reigns supreme, winners and losers–but I imagine there are a number of people who would be blown away by counterparts of the above scene if observed in loftier venues…

    Reply
  8. nina Avatar
    nina

    I don’t know how to articulate what I mean, as it was only a feeling, some sense of something. It isn’t a complete thought. I was only trying to convey that it was as if I’d seen something that was, and that it was becoming something else but we don’t have the long view into the future to know what that will be. If I figure out a better way to say it, I will.

    Reply
  9. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    I understand.

    That’s why there’s paint.

    Reply
  10. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    That’s why there’s paint.

    She said with a grin.

    You’re exceptional at communicating past, present and future in landscape in your art.

    Reply
  11. nina Avatar
    nina

    well, yeah, it’s about landscape. It’s about land. That’s it, exactly. Hey, are you trying to tell me to take up painting again?

    Reply
  12. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    Not at all. I don’t tell anyone to do anything. I just nudge things in their direction.

    Reply
  13. Susan Och Avatar
    Susan Och

    I watched Monday Night Raw this week with an eye on Mr. Kennedy, a character that usually bores me enough that I go fetch another basket of laundry to fold when he comes on.

    He is still dismally boring. Now he has an old fashioned chrome microphone that hangs from the ceiling while he endlessly advertises himself. At the end od every line he shouts his own name –MISter KENNEdy! sounding like the radio ad for the stockcar racetrack in my hometown –SUNday! NiAGara! The crowd boos him but he presses on. Monday night he was pitching himself to be the next challenger for the Heavyweight title. He spoke of himself in the third person: “You know him, you love him, you can’t live without him…….MISter KENNEdy!”

    I’ve never heard Mister Kennedy’s name assciated with the late president, but I might have missed it. There is plenty of subtle political commentary in the shows. Right now, as the NY Times editorializes about our “imperial presidency”, Raw’s writers are exploring the word “king”, as the self-annointed “King Booker” challenges the aging wrestler-turned announcer Jerry “The King” Lawler. Lawler, with the crowd cheering him on, told Booker that a king is only as big as his kingdom, and then proceeded to thrash him and throw him out of the ring, tangling Booker in his own ostentatious cape. There is also a subplot revolving around the return of TripleH and his use of music including the words “bow down to the King.”

    I don’t know where they’ll go with this, and I don’t know if I’ll like where they go with this, but it is interesting to see how the story evolves and how the crowd reacts. Some of Shakespeare’s lesser –and gorier–plays were political commentary in a similar vein. The wrestling shows travel the country like Shakespeare’s troupe did, playing live in the round, to an audience that includes both the local gentry and the common folk. The themes: power, jealousy, trust, betrayal, romance, youth vs wisdom, good vs evil, are all ageless themes.

    If the actual dialogue is sometimes lacking, I think that is the result of the way everything is simultaneously broadcast everywhere these days. Political speechwriters say the same thing; a generation ago they could give the same speech over and over again in each city, but now you have to find something new to say every time you speak.

    The choreography is what tells the story, and it is awesome to watch. I’ve never seen a live wrestling show, but I wonder if the stage effects would impress me as much as the National Ballet did.

    Reply
  14. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    Susan, I was thinking it probably has to do with the Kennedy clan en masse, and not to do with President Kennedy.

    Thanks for the involved description and thoughts on it all. I don’t watch wrestling but I enjoyed reading your take on it.

    Marty reminds me that he used to play for a singer who was a professional wrestler but had to get out of it because his back was screwed up. He was a nice guy. A really good Country singer. I mean really really good, just an incredible voice. I’ve no idea what happened to him. One can just hope he stopped drinking. Marty reminds me that he would bring a quart of Jim Beam, finish it off by the third set and then would start hitting the bar. And he still sang and played beautifully. And I remind Marty that I remember him being pretty wasted by the end of the evening on the weekends. He was a Vietnam Vet and lived through some horrifying things. A haunted individual.

    Reply
  15. Susan Och Avatar
    Susan Och

    I had a coworker that wrestled in a small circuit venture, touring the small tyowns of southern Michigan and northern Ohio. He said the matches were loosely scripted, but the wrestlers worked together to create the actual moves. Occasionally someone would go off script, either by mistake or because they got tired of being the designated loser, and then they would be in the realm of improvisation.

    I’m wondering if Mr Kennedy is perhaps the man of the hour, assuming that we’re living at a time when self-promotion counts more than actual deeds. “No Impact Man”, “Mission Accomplished”, and “a fuel-efficient 28 miles per gallon” come to mind.

    Reply

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