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    by Randy Ooney      past articles

 

Holy Balls Batman!!

In my early bowling days we had a few choices of bowling balls.  There was a Brunswick Black Beauty, Columbia 300, AMF Amflite, Ebonite, and a few lesser brands such as Jubilere  A few new companies have entered the market since then, but what is really amazing is the names that the marketing geniuses have given to all of these powerful new weapons.

Morich must have a totally awesome company, because after the barnstorming Shock and Awe, they are now producing Awesome Hook, Awesome Revs, and Awesome Flip.  The problem is that you need three different balls to get all this awesome stuff.  I’ll wait until they get around to Awesome Carry.

Storm could be an insurance company, as they are putting a number of Agents on the market.  There’s an Agent, Double Agent and a Special Agent.  But they mix it up a little with the Passion, Jolt, Pyro  and Paradigm.  Paradigm is an interesting choice of names, because the best definition I can find is an unclear fact explained by facts that are even more unclear.  I guess that sort of defines the bowling ability of many of us keglers.

Brunswick still has a Zone or two on the shelves.  They now seem to be calling their centers Zones instead.  I suppose they ran out of adjectives for the Zone balls.  Seems they now have a number of different Infernos.  I certainly hope that the bowling centers don’t turn into infernos any time soon.

Lane #1 seems to like elements.  They have a Carbide Plus Buzz, a Cobalt solid, and an Enriched Uranium.  I can’t recommend the last one.  If George Bush found out you had enriched uranium in the bag, you could spend a few years at Guantanamo, and I don’t think they have a bowling center there.  I don’t even buy yellow cake mix anymore.

Roto Grip has a Saturn (for men?) and a Venus (for women?).  Maybe they misread John Gray’s Book.  Or - maybe the men on Mars got in a Mercury and drove to Saturn to get the woman a ring.

Hammer used to sell Hammers.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a Blue Hammer in their basement or garage.  But they ran out of adjectives also and now have an assortment of names.  No Mercy, Raw Pain, Vibe, Road Hawg, Raw Toxic, and my personal choice for bowling ball name of the year - “Hawgzilla”.  Sorta makes you think of drock, doesn’t it?