By Jason Thomas

As the Joker says to the wealthy attendees of Bruce Wayne’s benefit for Harvey Dent in the latest Batman film The Dark Knight, “Good evening ladies and gentlemen…we are tonight’s entertainment.” So I say to you…except I’m not here to rob you or to find out your true identities or to create mass hysteria. Instead, I’m here to help you and share with you mine.

Some of you may remember me as the host of Let’s Go Bowling, which was an attempted comedy show I did on this site for six episodes back in 2007. Others may have seen The Bowling Show starring P.B. Atkinson, which I launched on my own web site earlier this year and will now be a monthly show here on BowlersParadise.com starting September 1. Still others of you may be wondering, “Hey Marge, who the “bleep” is this guy?”

Well, to keep it as simple as possible, I’m a bowler just like you. I spent my childhood and teen years getting my butt kicked by Robert Smith in the junior bowling program of Southern California. I qualified to bowl in the U.S. Open at age 18, where I got my butt kicked by Walter Ray and Del Ballard and about 200 other-odd pros (but did manage to beat about 200 others). I gave up on pro bowling when I graduated college and realized that it would take me about 10 years of grinding on Tour before I could even expect to have a chance to earn as much as I could as an entry-level marketing professional (but hey, at least I didn’t get my butt kicked by anyone!). I got back into bowling when Chris Peters offered me a job at the PBA…where Steve Miller soon started kicking my butt. I left the PBA in 2004 and got my butt kicked by the real world. And then I realized that getting my butt kicked in bowling was what I loved more than anything so now here I am back involved with bowling again.

As you can tell, my relationship with bowling, like any relationship that you are truly passionate about, has always been love/hate. If you’re a bowler like me, you know that there are so many things to love about bowling – the satisfaction of rolling a perfect game, the thrill of beating a tough opponent, the smell of lane oil (OK, maybe I’m alone in that one). There are also so many things to hate – the lack of respect from society, the lack of money at the professional level, the declines in competitive participation, Barack Obama’s bowling form. But the reason I’m still here fighting to change those things is because I was able to find a way to focus on those things I love about bowling and to use them to accept for now, but eventually change, the things I don’t like about it.

Starting this week, and with the continued support of BowlersParadise.com, I invite you to join me each week to share my thoughts on bowling. I’ll share my opinions on the professional game, tips and instruction, inside info on the names and faces of the sport, political views, pop-culture references and just about anything else you can think of that has to do with bowling. I highly encourage and value your feedback and your comments and would always like to know if there is anything I can do to help you with your involvement in the sport of bowling.

To check out the latest episode of The Bowling Show >>> Click Here

To check out my new book Livin’ The Dream: How to Get What You Want, Find True Meaning and Save the World by Bowling! >>> Click Here

See you next week!

Jason Thomas,
jason@jasonthomasbowling.com