Homeless bowling

David and I left our warm homes at 8:45 this morning to pick up this barbecue trailer. Of course, when we reached our destination, no one was there to greet us.

We were participating in the Douglas County Homeless Count 2008. The event was pretty much what the name suggests; we counted homeless people, gave them hot dogs (at one point the health inspector came through and tried to shut us down, one of the homeless people yelled at the inspector; "whats your problem? Their just trying to feed us!"). We also passed out things like socks, toothbrushes and "Disaster Blankets". Disaster Blankets are made through a process similar to the process of making particle board. Because of the way in which they are made, you can't wash, dry clean or get the blankets wet (I guess that makes them not dissimilar to a Gremlin) it just seems that such a blanket may be a less than optimal choice for the homeless community.

I'm totally going to get one of these steering wheels for my futuristic station wagon. Maybe I can also get fuzzy upholstery and some of those little balls that hang down.

This summer they tore down the old bowling alley.

In it's place; they built a new bowling alley. The amazing thing, to me, is that nothing from the original bowling alley was retained, I think that everything that couldn't be sold to other bowling alleys was burned.

The new bowling alley was filled with teenagers. Here are said teenagers playing Dance Dance Revolution.

Megan was so excited about the new bowling alley that she dressed up as The Dude.

Matt (who took bowling in college) and I lamented the fact that; while they had done a complete remodel of the entire bowling alley, destroying any referent to the old bowling alley and sparing no expense, they still did NOT have Budweiser in bowling pin shaped bottles.

They gave us one of those pager things like you would get at a chain restaurant e.g. Red Robin. While we waited we drank beer that did NOT come in festively shaped bottles.

At the ends of the lanes, which have little blinking tracer lights running their lengths, they have giant TV screens playing an eclectic mix of music videos. while we were there they played AC/DC, Boy2Men and Counting Crows, just to name a few.

We didn't see John (or the creepy bowling guy, as he's sometimes known), wondering if he had been scared off by pastiche and postmodern-warfare, I inquired as to his whereabouts; apparently he was fired for hitting on teenage girls.

Here is a pack of angry teenagers. The one to the far right is Janis's daughter, her fashion involved muddy pants, falling off shoes and an ironic/vintage/I don't know anymore, Bob Marley t-shirt.

Our game ended with a few frames to go. We weren't too sad. I guess we'd all had our fill of postmodernism and angry teenagers.