Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Partial score: Illuminati 0

BULLETIN: The Illuminati Bowling team did not perform well Monday night.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Strikeaholics 5, Illuminati 2

The Illuminati Bowling Team put in two and a half humorless hours at Historic Stone's Lanes Monday night and took home a 5-2 loss to Tavern League rival The Raging Strikeaholics.

Two games were close: the IBT took the second by eight pins and dropped the third by the same count.

Illuminati anchor Don Corathers paced the home team with a 193, 189, 151: 533, a team season high series. The team's record reached equilibrium at 21-21, six weeks into the thirteen-week season.

The lines
Kennedy--134, 105, 90: 329; avg 108 (+1)
Hunt--114, 176, 112: 402; avg 141 (-1)
Peitz--155, 138, 137: 430; avg 139 (+2)
Corathers--193, 189, 151: 533; avg 152 (+6)

Next week
Illuminati vs. Arthur's Angels

Monday, October 09, 2006

Lanes infested with tiny mimes

Stone’s Lanes Tavern League play was suspended for about forty-five minutes Monday evening when a colony of two dozen tiny whiteface mimes was discovered living inside the bowlng alley’s pinsetting equipment.

Before and after the mime delay, the Illuminati Bowling Team carved out a hard-fought 3-4 decision against a wildly unpredictable Stoned team. The Illuminati narrowly lost the first two games but won big in the third on the strength of a Jim Huneke 192, which was enough to give the I-Team a one-point margin in total pins.


A screen capture from the Lane 25 scoring camera
reveals one of the Stone's Lanes mini-mimes posing
as the headpin. Posted by Picasa

The mimes, each about eighteen inches tall and able to do a very convincing impression of a bowling pin, were discovered when one of them got his foot stuck in the thumbhole of a bowling ball and was carried up the ball return. Clearly injured, the mime nevertheless extricated himself from the ball, performed a brief glass box illusion for the startled bowlers, and escaped into the women's restroom, where he was later found hiding in a tampon dispenser.

Once the infestation was discovered, at least twenty other mimes were flushed from the pinsetting racks by Gutterballs, the disgraced bowling alley dog (see “League commissioner: Dog ate it,” October 6), now a hero.

Where the mimes came from, why they settled in the noisy and dangerous machinery, and how they have survived there for, apparently, several months are all mysteries that Stone’s vice president of operations Neil Bush says an internal investigation will attempt to solve. A retired Norwood police officer has been retained to lead the probe but so far has been stonewalled. “The mimes aren’t talking,” Bush said.

Investigators are pursuing a theory that the mimes might have been working for one or more of the Tavern League teams, attempting to affect the outcome of games by deflecting opponents’ balls away from the pocket, knocking down extra pins for friendly bowlers, and miming pins to confuse the scoring cameras.

Amitai Etzioni, a retired Xavier University anthropologist who hopes to study the Stone’s mime colony, was dubious. “Elementary physics argues against that scenario,” he said. “Those mimes weigh about a pound and a half apiece. For one of them to try to change the trajectory of a sixteen-pound bowling ball… well, if you think of it on a normal scale like you and me, it would be like standing in front of a ball the size and mass of a Volkswagen that’s coming at you at 220 miles per hour. If they are trying to control the ball these are very brave little mimes. Not very bright, but brave."

The Illuminati, who are leading the league's Split Division, improved their record to 19-16.

The lines
Kennedy--116, 105, 115: 336; avg 107 (+1)
Hunt--159, 113, 150: 422; avg 143 (unch)
Huneke--156, 135, 192: 483; avg 161 (new)
Corathers--131, 157, 173: 461; avg 146 (+1)

Friday, October 06, 2006

League commissioner: Dog ate it

A "normally very reliable" dog who was employed to maintain scores and statistics for the Stone's Lanes Tavern League has apparently eaten four weeks of bowling records, according to Tavern League commissioner Fay Vincent Jr.

Vincent said the league is working to reconstruct team records and individual averages and handicaps by interviewing bowlers "and through other means." Concerns about the reliability of the interview results were raised after it was revealed that more than forty of the league's 112 regular bowlers had claimed 300 games.

Efforts by a Homeland Security forensic team to recover the score sheets from the dog's waste output were unavailing, Vincent said.

The dog, a Yorkie-Labradoodle mix named Gutterballs, has been reassigned to work as a pinsetter technician and is receiving counseling, according to a Stone's Lanes spokeswoman.

The best available estimate of the Illuminati Bowling Team's record over the first four weeks of the fall season is 16-12. The unofficial league reconstruction of the record shows the following results:

September 11--Team with No Name 5, Illuminati 2
September 18--Mammy's Boys 5, Illuminati 2
September 25--Illuminati 7, Senor Exhaust 0
October 2--Illuminati 5, Having a Bawl 2

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

IBT 5, Freel and buddies 2

Working behind breakthrough games by Debbie Kennedy (146, forty-three pins over average) and Jim Palmarini (190, forty-nine over), the Illuminati Bowling Team defeated a rambunctious Ryan Freel and Friends foursome 5-2 in Tavern League action Monday night.

The lines
Hunt--124, 155, 117: 396 (140, -1)
Kennedy--117, 81, 146: 344 (106, +3)
Palmarini--151, 120, 190: 461 (148, +7)
Corathers--145, 177, 188: 510 (153, +3)

Monday, February 20, 2006

Palmarini's handicap dive saves win

Illuminati veteran Jim Palmarini came out of retirement to help his team Monday night and was immediately asked to lose one for the Gipper.

Palmarini took a handicap dive to help the IBT salvage a win in the first game of a divisional series with the Lost Corner Bar team. The Illuminati lost the night 5-2, but it could have been worse without Palmarini's heroics.

The handicap dive--known in some quarters as the pas de gutter--is a complex mathematical and athletic maneuver that involves bowling just badly enough to change the outcome of a game that has already been played. League bowling is unique among sports--and possibly unique in the entire universe of Newtonian physics--in providing a way for competitors to influence events ex post facto.

To work a handicap dive, a bowler has to begin the evening's series without an established handicap. Palmarini, who had not competed in the Tavern League this season, was the only eligible member of the IBT foursome. He attacked the problem with gusto, turning in a precision-rolled 166, 130, 129: 425 to lower his average (and inflate his handicap) just enough in the course of the second and third games to give his team a four-pin win the first. If he had converted one more spare, the Illuminati probably would have lost all seven points.

The IBT's record stands at 23-19 (7-7 in the Gutter Division).

The lines
Hunt--168, 164, 133: 465 (145, +3)
Palmarini--166, 130, 129: 425 (142, new)
Peitz--118, 159, 113: 390 (143, -2)
Corathers--158, 143, 192: 493 (150, +3)

Monday, February 13, 2006

Shaken by Veep's gunplay, Illuminati drop 7 to Dungeons

Illuminati Bowling Team leadoff man Christopher Hunt was in stable condition and resting at home Monday night after taking a shotgun blast to the backside from Vice President Dick Cheney.

The shooting, believed to be accidental, happened in the third frame of IBT's first game of the night against the Dungeon Family. Cheney, subbing for the factory-sponsored Jagermeister team on the adjacent lane, fired a round of double-ought birdshot into Hunt's posterior just as the Illuminati bowler released the ball.


Vice President Cheney. Posted by Picasa


Members of Senor Exhaust, the team that was bowling against Jagermeister, said Cheney had invoked an unfamiliar rule--which he said was common in the Wyoming alleys where he usually bowls--that allows the use of a small-gauge shotgun to convert particularly difficult spares. Cheney was trying to clean up a 7-10 split when the incident occurred.


Treated at the scene by Secret Service paramedics, Hunt was able to continue the game after a thirty-five minute delay. He rolled a 129, 168, 121: 418 and, remarkably, had the high series for the Illuminati despite an obvious hitch in his approach to the foul line. His teammates, apparently shaken by the shooting incident, bowled poorly and the team dropped seven points to the Dungeons.


Administration officials declined to comment on the shooting, saying they were observing the mandatory 18-hour delay in reporting vice-presidential gunplay.

"We don't even have to tell the Norwood Police about this until tomorrow afternoon," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "So why would we tell you anything?"

A source close to Cheney who insisted on anonymity assured The Illuminator that the shooting was accidental, pointing out that Hunt is a Republican. "We know this bowling team," the source said of the IBT. "We've read their e-mail. Believe me, if the vice president wanted to shoot somebody on the Illuminati Bowling Team, it wouldn't be Mr. Hunt."

Cheney finished his series for Jagermeister and turned in a (firearm-assisted) 212, 231, 197: 640.

The lines
Hunt--129, 168, 121: 418 (143, unch)
Kennedy--90, 94, 114: 298 (104, -1)
Peitz--125, 125, 132: 382 (145, -4)
Corathers--146, 118, 109: 373 (148, -5)

Monday, February 06, 2006

I-Team stomps Roy's Boys, 5-2

The Illuminati Bowling team crushed traditional Tavern League power Roy’s Boys 5-2 in the first divisional matchup for both teams Monday night. The Illuminati, who are on a 19-2 run over the past three weeks, polished their record to 21-7 overall. They’re 5-2 in the fiercely competitive Gutter Division.


Longtime Illuminati fan Isabelle J. "Peanut" Anthony expresses shocked amusement at her team's easy dominance over Tavern League rival Roy's Boys Monday night. (Illuminator Staff Photo) Posted by Picasa

Remarkably, both of the Illuminati wins came by the same score—802-756 in the first and third games. “Probably coincidence,” said team numerologist Benmont Tench, “but we’re looking into it. You’ve got to play every angle in this game.”

Monday’s competition also marked the first start of the season for IBT sub Susan Doremus, who rolled a 119, 129, 110: 358. Top performers for the I-Team were Mike Peitz, with a 166, 141, 164: 471 and Don Corathers, 144, 171, 162: 477. Chris Hunt, breaking in a new pair of shoes, slipped to a 124 in the middle stanza but managed a 158 and 151 on either side of it to finish with a 433 series.

The lines
Hunt--158, 124, 151: 433 (144, +1)
Doremus--119, 129, 110: 358 (119, new)
Peitz--166, 141, 164: 471 (149, +3)
Corathers--144, 171, 162: 477 (153, +2)

Monday, January 30, 2006

Illuminati 7, Bengals impersonators 0

The Illuminati Bowling Team ran its winning streak to six games and fourteen points with a convincing 7-0 pasting of an underprepared Who Dey Crew in Stone's Tavern League action Monday. The IBT, at 16-5 after three weeks of work, is in the catbird seat in the league's hotly contested Gutter Division.

There was speculation during pregame warmups that Who Dey, whose bowlers use the names of Cincinnati football players, might have some real Bengals subbing this week, but that was quickly deflated when they began lacing up their Day-Glo rental shoes: "Odell"--white guy. "Rudi"--white guy. "Chad"--white guy. "Carson"--ambulatory guy.

The Illuminati started with a 14-pin handicap advantage and held it through each game, never trailing and winning by 55, 27, and 22. Chris Hunt turned in a standout 180 game in the second stanza, 45 pins over average. Rookie phenom Deborah "Little Debbie" Kennedy struggled through the series, hitting a low point when she was flagged with an Improper Use of Furniture penalty during the third game.

The lines
Hunt--140, 180, 133: 453 (143, +8)
Kennedy--89, 88, 101: 278 (105, -6)
Peitz--142, 151, 116: 409 (147, -5)
Corathers--144, 167, 162: 473 (151, +5)

Season highs
Scratch game: Peitz, 190; Hunt, 180
Scratch series: Corathers, 473; Peitz, 472
Handicap game: Hunt, 238; Kennedy, 236
Handicap series: Kennedy, 666*; Hunt, 627

*The Illuminati Bowling Team acknowledges that 666 is a registered trademark of The Beelzebub Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton, Inc. The team is not in any way associated with His Satanic Majesty, and intends no infringement of Beelzebub's registered mark by publishing this score.

Monday, January 23, 2006

'Heathen' Kennedy leads Illuminati over Full Monty, 7-0

Fortified by a 94 handicap and notes of encouragement from one of her teammates, Illuminati Bowling Team rookie Deborah "Little Heathen" Kennedy led a 7-0 rout of a dazed Full Monty team in Stone's Lanes Tavern League action Monday night.

Kennedy's 111, 131, 142: 384, following her handicap-building January 16 debut, was enough to bury the Monties and improve the IBT's record to 9-5. Two weeks into the season, the team is contending with Roy's Boys for first place in the league's tough Gutter Division.

Another notable performance was turned in by Mike Peitz, who opened with a team season high 190 first game but faded in the second and third when he couldn't get his patented gutter ricochet shot to work consistently.

Kennedy declined to reveal the contents of the note passed to her by teammate Chris Hunt midway through the second game. Hunt, a student of business motivator Zig Ziglar, frequently shares thoughtful words of encouragement with his colleagues, and clearly his comment to Kennedy elevated her game.

"I'd rather not say what he told me," the Illuminati rookie said. "We'll let the lawyers sort it out."

The lines

Hunt--119, 137, 150: 406; (135, new)
Kennedy--111, 131, 142: 384; (111, +17)
Peitz--190, 148, 134: 472; (152, +5)
Corathers--153, 142, 134: 429; (149, -5)

Publisher: Missing fall season an 'oversight'

In a statement issued simultaneously in Rome, Chicago, and Norwood, Ohio Monday evening, Illuminator publisher John de Conqueroo said the paper's eight-month lapse in publication was "an oversight."

De Conqueroo apologized to subscribers, advertisers, and the Illuminator editorial staff, some of whom have been camped outside his Amalfi Coast hideaway since last May, awaiting instructions. The paper was last published in early May, and missed covering the Illuminati Bowling Team's entire fall season.

"We forgot," de Conqueroo said. "I've had this nagging feeling there was something I should be doing, but I just couldn't figure out what it was." The publisher said he was reminded of his responsibility to the paper by a pointed message in a fortune cookie he picked up at a Chinese restaurant in Scranton, Pennsylvania over the weekend.

"Funny thing was, it wasn't even my fortune cookie," he said.