It's come to my attention that this page is utterly devoid of "zazz". Changes are underway to fix that - that is, if I can pry my brother-in-law away from my laptop long enough to get a good night of futzing in!

My wife and I missed an additional chance to visit the Jersey Shore this past weekend, thanks to a line of rolling thunderstorms, large hail, and localized flooding. Pity. Maria is losing 0-1 in the World Series of Skee-Ball, and it would be a shame if she couldn't at least tie things up before the summer slips away entirely. For those of you who have never experienced what has been called (by me, admittedly) the "apotheosis of sport", Skee-Ball is a coin-operated arcade game invented in 1909, the object of which is to roll a series of nine wooden - never plastic - balls up a long ramp and, with a combination of skill and luck, into one of the concentric circles of the scoring bullseye. You get ten points for the outermost, fifty for the innermost, and later variants of the game also include a pair of 100-point holes for the desperate or extremely charmed. I know, sounds boring, especially in the era of Playstation 2. But it isn't. Skee-Ball is a game of grace. If you have it at that very moment, you can do no wrong. The ball rolls in slow-motion, and you can just feel, as it leaves your hand, that it will go exactly where you want it. Fifty points, fifty points, fifty points, a hundred points, whatever! One time the missus and I were in a duel with the arcade operator, who kept setting the threshold for a free additional game higher and higher as we both inexplicably went into this Zen-archer like state (I know the link is to a record company, but tell me that Flash intro doesn't just kick ass!) and started hitting everything. On other days, however, it just fails to click. Somehow you're locked out of the Zone, and there isn't a damned thing you can do about it - trying harder, a different machine, even telling the Ritalin-starved kids playing air hockey to your right to pipe down or else try to swallow the oaken sphere you're about to cram down their throats. The magic simply isn't there. Of course that's the whole Zen-thing coming at you. The more you want it, the less you get it.

Skee-Ball. A game of grace. Chew on that with a fistful of caramel corn, next time you're down the shore!