Our fearless band of part-time pirates, the Buccaneers of Lake Charles, descended upon a local bowling alley this evening to compete for some fantastic prizes. That’s right- they all consisted of some sort of alcohol. Sure, go ahead and laugh, but you have to admit. It sure beats some stupid trophy that will sit on the shelf in the den until your wife one day finally tosses it out along with your back issues of Sports Illustrated.

We have two bowling alleys here in Lake Charles, and the fact that we picked the less well maintained of the two is an understatement. The lanes appear not to have been re-waxed since they cancelled M*A*S*H. My lane actually looked like a terrorist parked a car bomb on it at one time. It didn’t really matter, though, the way our group bowls.

The first thing I noticed when I sat down to put my bowling shoes on was that there was a sign posted warning how bowling is a physical sport and that could potentially be hazardous. I know that in this day and age businesses have to warn you about everything, but I never thought I’d see bowling lumped in with other physical pursuits such as bungee jumping and whitewater rafting.

The fact that we were competing for the Grand Prize of a bottle of Crystal Skull vodka brought out the best in us tonight. Some of us actually managed to strike some pins with the ball, particularly as the night wore on and the alcohol loosened us all up.

No, I did not win the Crystal Skull vodka, nor did I win the prize for being the first person to fall on his ass while attempting to deliver the ball. Next time I’ll drink more beer and thus improve my chances.

We had another eventful week here in the Pelican State. Here’s a summary of the top stories.

• A Justice of the Peace in Tangipahoa Parish has created a whirlwind of attention in the international media when he refused to marry an interracial couple. This story caused reporters from as far away as Russia to temporarily divert thier attention from President Obama and focus their crosshairs on Louisiana. And, although they couldn’t actually see the state from where they sat, it did not stop them from shooting wildly from the hip. The unfortunate result of this volley is that now the rest of the world views Louisiana as a bigoted, redneck state. We all know the truth, though, and that is that any self-respecting redneck would sit down and drink with anybody wh has cold beer, regardless of thier race or nationality.
• And speaking of our Grand Poobah, President Obama visited New Orleans last week to catch up on how things are progressing with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. He got the predictable response from New Orlenians- that the city would be a veritable Emerald City if only the feds would give them lots more money fast(unless Mayor Nagin had his druthers, in which case the city would be a diferent color).

  The Wiz replied saying that if he could write a check, he would. The arthritis in his writing hand apparently has come on quite suddenly, probably from the city’s humid air. It should pass as soon as he gets back to Washington.

• The Saints further proved themselves a force to be reckoned with in the NFL by totally embarassing the now formerly undefeated New York Giants. Their quarterback, Eli Manning, is the son of Archie Manning of the Saints of yore. This further goes to show that, no matter how talented, a Manning just can’t win in New Orleans.

  Meanwhile, it’s reported from hell that Satan has changed into a long-sleeved shirt.

• Up in Wisconsin, a black bear wandered into a convenience store and made himself at home in the beer cooler. Wildlife officials ended up tranquilizing it, but if they had just waited a few hours that action probably wouln’t have been necessary. Rumors are the bear wandered up from Baton Rouge. I think it was the LSU cap that gave him away.

More insanity around the state in the week just passed:

• A lot of people are up in arms about a closed door meeting that a grop of state legislators have scheduled in Alexandria on the subject of redistricting based on the results of the 2010 census. Organizers defend the move as legal, claiming that it is “educational” in nature.

  Okay, so they’re going to get some schooling. But what are they afraid of having us, their tuition payers, monitor the class? That we’ll see them as a bunch of dunces? Hell, we already know that.

• A minister in Plaquemines parish was arrested for stealing money from a fund he established for members of his flock to acquire FEMA trailers for them following Hurricane Katrina.

  Before you rush to judgment on this guy, consider. Maybe he’d gotten some divine enlightenment about the heatlh hazards that would eventually be discovered with those trailers, and so he was really tring to defend his parishoners from danger. OK, so what if he did spend the money he took on the drugs the cops found? Perhaps he was only killing two birds with one stone and buying it all up himself to deliver them from temptation, as well.

• A modular home contractor was extradited to Louisiana from Florida on charges that he defrauded Road Home Grant recipients of money. He promised them modular homes that never got delivered. My question is why these victims had to turn to a Florida man to get ripped off when there’s plenty of contractors in this state who are perfectly capable of doing the same thing?
• The LSU Data Center released a report that reveals, although Louisiana is gaining population, it is losing college graduates and replacing them with people of lower educational levels. At this rate, before you know it, anybody with one of those new dumbed-down Career High School Diplomas will be considered a bonafide genius.

  It’s just like solving your weight problem by hanging around with only fat people. What’s wrong with that?

• The Saints are now 3-0. Was that a hint of a cool Brees that was felt down there in Hades?
• LSU is 4-0 and 4th in the polls. A win is a win, they say. And a $2 scratch-off prize is a also a winning lottery ticket.

It’s been a wild week in Louisiana, but what else is new? Here’s a summary of just some of the stories that unfolded last week:

• Perhaps the most surprising development was that the New Orleans Saints jumped off to a 2-0 record to start the 2009 NFL season. There was little fanfare after the opening win against the Detroit Lions, who hadn’t won a game since the last Model T rolled off Ford Morors’ assembly lines. However, they really turned some heads by going into Philadelphia and upsetting the Eagles, who were heavily favored despite having to resort to starting Kevin Kolb at quarterback, him being the only Eagles’ passer who was not injured on on parole. Drew Brees emerged as the hero in the early going, already having accumulated enough passing yards to span Lake Ponchatrain. The season is still young, however, so hold off a bit before making those ski reservations in hell.

 

• Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise continues his attempt to RSVP a White House invitation to talk heath care with the President over a few beers on the lawn. Scalese continues to express confidence that they can come to a bipartisan agreement over whther the beer should be draft or bottled. 

 

• The state got yet another failing grade by a national nonprofit group, this time on the quality of education and healthcare. Rapides parish officials respond by urging citizens stop watching television, believing that excessive viewing is a major cause for poor school performance and unhealthy lifestyles. This is expected to do little good, as people have mostly shut of thier sets, tired of seeing President Obama on every channel including QVC.

 

• Following an initial euphoria over the end of the long summer drought, state residents became disillusioned as mosquitoes once again rose from the bayous in vast numbers. Farmers who before could not feed thier cattle on the dry grasslands now face a new problem as they see thier herds being carried off by the swarms. And speaking of pests…

 

• Intelligence agents from the LSU Ag Center report that a new species of what they call “crazy ants” are massing at the Texas border in apparent preparations for a full scale invasion of the state. These ants, they say, form massive colonies with multiple queens and suffer from severe inbreeding, thus making them so crazy. Still, Ag Center officials warn that they are a force to be reckoned with, as they form massive swarms that move haphazardly, much like revelers descending on the French Quarter on Fat Tuesday. Law enforcement agencies in western parishes vowed to set up highway checkpoints this weekend to nab the intruders.

The Lake Charles Ravens Gang at Reliant Stadium in 2008

Ah, finally, the weekend I’ve been waiting for since January- the start of a new NFL season! Yes, I’m an addict, with a monkey that apparently doesn’t succumb to cold turkey, as you’d think seven months of withdrawl would be enough to cure any addiction. Maybe if I’d avoided watching the April draft and the preseason, I might be cured, but I just don’t want to kick the habit.

Transplants like me tend to remain stubbornly loyal to our old home town teams. We’re like old hippies who never left the sixties. It’s a difficult existence, since our games are rarely on local television. To get out fix, we march lemming-like to the nearset sports bar every Sunday to watch our beloved Ravens. For us, that means Buffalo Wild Wings.

My wife and I, along with another family transplanted from Baltimore, are there every week from September to December.

Here in Southwest Louisiana, it’s evident from the clientele at the local Buffalo Wild Wings that the Dallas Cowboys are by far the most popular out-of-town team, as about nine out of temn tables are filled with their fans. I firmly believe that this particular location would go out of business if it were not for the Cowboys.

I particularly hate it when the Cowboys game is on at the same time as ours, especially when they win, as happened today. When they lose, you hardly know that they’re there, but when they win, the restaurant takes the tone of a town hall meeting that’s being held by a congressman who supports heath care reform.

I suppose, however, that I am being a bit hypocritical here. We, too, like to make noise when out team does well, but there’s only five of us.

On this particular day, I happened to jump out of my seat on one particular play where the Ravens scored a touchdown to break a tie. I was promptly met by stares from the 10% of the patrons who weren’t watching the Cowboys. It turned out that the Ravens had scored at exactly the same moment as did the Saints’ opponent in their game. I actually considered myself lucky; I could have been the Cowboys’ opponent who’d scored. If that were that case, I would have certainly been greeted with a hail of chicken wing bones and little plastic containers of bleu cheese.

It’s amazing to me that our wives are as entheusiastic as my friend and I about football. The game has really attracted a lot of women in recent years. On this particular day, there were as many women as men at Buffalo Wild Wings. It’s possible that they tag along just to make sure that their men don’t embarass themselves in a public place, and if it wasn’t for the example of my mother, I’d believe that.

Yes, at 81, even she now makes it a point never to miss a Ravens game. In the old days, she used to berate my father and I for wasting out Sundays (and Saturdays, if you count college football) watching a “stupid game”. After all, we could be be engaged in more productive pursuits, like cleaning out the gutters. What she didn’t understand was that the very reason we parked ourselves in front of the tube all weekend was to avoid such tasks.

Nowadys, whenever I call my mother on a Sunday evening in the fall, the first words out of her mouth are, “Did you watch the game?” Then she launches into ten minutes of post-game analysis that I find to be amazingly on the money. She should take a seat next to Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long on the post-game show.

I think that she will outlive me if she ever starts talking about how her fantasy picks did. I’d suffer a heart attack right there on the spot.