Time to Quit – Watching the Second Hand

My wife was watching public television the other day… it’s not something I encourage, but I have to live with the fact that our tastes in TV occasionally diverge. If I get up from the sofa to take a leak, you can bet that by the time I get back she will have grabbed the clicker and not only will she have switched to something to her liking but she will have become so engrossed in it that it will break my heart to make her switch back to what we were watching before my bladder call. Anyway, she was watching public TV and she heard someone say that four hours of second hand smoke is equivalent to smoking 17 cigarettes. Right away, this gets me to thinking about bar tournaments.

I haven’t been playing in as many as I used to. In fact, lately, I’ve only been playing in one, the Friday get-together at the Hay Loft. A few Fridays back a rumor was circulating that the owner was going to invest in smoke eaters. This was very good news for me who quit smoking back in 1990 so that I wouldn’t have to spend my last moments choking on phlegm. True to their word, the management did purchase four or five contraptions that run like your average ceiling fan and look like spinning black donuts. Unfortunately, they have no effect whatsoever on smoke. I still have a hard time believing that anyone with half a brain would waste their money on such crap. But, alas, somebody did. And that was it for me – I made up my mind not to go back.

So, without bar tourneys, I’m going to be limited to playing pool where it was meant to be played, in pool rooms. The main consequence of this is that I now have to resign myself to not winning, not coming in the money, and to not having a chance. Such is life.

Of course, this can be expensive. With this in mind, I’ve been working on my websites with renewed vigor, hoping to increase revenues enough to compensate for my losing ways. In my latest undertaking, I believe it took me two or three days to complete, I gathered together all the bios I have written – music bios, sports bios, literary bios, art bios – and christened the little corner of the internet they occupy Ace’s Bio-Farm. Will it have an effect on overall visits to my site? Who the hell knows?

As far as my game goes, considering I haven’t been playing as much as I should, I’m not playing too bad. I’ve been doing eye exercises using two ping pong balls on a string while I’m watching TV and I actually think I’m seeing the balls a lot better. I doubt that I’ll ever be able to see them like I could when I was a kid, but I am seeing a lot of shots that I wasn’t seeing before. My stroke – now, that’s another problem.

Picking & Choosing

The tournament waters here on the west coast of Florida have always been muddy. Now, they’re getting muddier.

With summer comes the increasing need of fat people to be served with air conditioning. I don’t know the dynamics, but fat people can’t tolerate the heat. This means that in a couple of the smoky dens of inequity that host bar tournaments opening doors to let out the smoke has ceased to be an option. Of course, if these establishments had invested in a couple smoke-eaters there would be no need to open the doors, but because of the cost of those appliances that is not an option. Consequently, I’ve stopped attending my usual Friday night tour stop. I quit smoking in 1990 and though I still have a better than average chance of succumbing to lung cancer, I'm trying not to tease the tiger. The fact that I will no longer have to play one very annoying woman who cheats like a grammar school bully only slightly mollifies the great sense of loss I am feeling.

Our regular Tuesday night stop at the bowling alley has been suffering lately from a dwindling number of participants. On top of that, a good friend of mine who I had introduced to the tournament recently got into a scuffle with one of the regular obnoxious drunks who hang out there and has been banned from returning though the drunk still drops in from time to time. I’ve stopped going there, at least temporarily.

But, hark, a new tournament with a guaranteed $250 added has sprung up down the line. First prize has been $200, second $100, third $60 and 4th $60 for the first two weeks it has been played. Unfortunately, there are rules problems. The first week with $200 at stake, incidences of “dirty pool” were rampant. So, second week, the owner decided to use BCA eight ball rules. Problem was he didn’t know them and when they were explained to him he didn’t like them. How can somebody who doesn’t know what constitutes a legal hit run a pool tournament? I may return there in a few weeks after they work things out, but, since it is officially the highest paying tournament in the area, including the three closest weekly nine-ball tournaments for A-players, there’s no telling what kind of players it’s going to attract.

Speaking of the “A” tournaments, there are guys who play every week who don’t have a prayer of getting into the money, yet they play because they think there’s some kind of honor in rubbing elbows with the better players. For me, there’s no honor in getting your ass kicked, so I’ve avoided playing in them. But, it’s getting to the point where they are starting to look good to me. If I could only elevate my game a couple notches… Crap!

Anyway, that’s how things are looking. I’ll let you know if things change.

H-B-S