respublica

Not Every Sport is Made for TV

I kind of chuckled at this article the other day. We've all probably heard of how popular the game of Pickle Ball is, at least in the bigger cities. I have no idea if it is played in Collinsville in any big way, it has gotten a lot of attention in the news. It's the fastest growing sport in the past three years. It's played with what looks like an enormous ping pong paddle and one of those plastic balls with the holes in it. Wiffle Ball

I'm not sure exactly how it's played except is is played on tennis courts and we say a whole bunch of people playing it on the Webster Groves courts when we drove by on Sunday. It is popular but maybe only for actual playing, not watching.

Here is the headline: The Pickle Ball Craze is Real, But it's TV Potential is a Different Story. Only about 1 in 4 adults (24%) said they are at least “somewhat” interested in watching the sport on TV. Maybe the problem is with the name. Pickle...

So there we are, in quite a pickle. Do we play or do we watch?

One mind settling game

For some months I've been playing a game on my ipad or iphone everyday. I'm not normally a game player, but I've found that this one has the effect of settling my brain down and gives me better concentration the rest of the day. It's easy, but you do need a bit of focus.

It's Word Scapes Search in which the screen fills with a square of disconnected letters. At the top are words you must find in those disconnected letters. When you find one, you take you finger and run across the found word which then fills with a color. You keep going til you find all of them.

It's mindless in a good way because it does settle you down and gives you some focus which can help you the rest of the day.

Find it on your app store or the web.

There are ads of course, usually after every other game. But, I've found tapping the x at the top corner as soon as I see it, ends the ad.

The adult coloring fad

For the past few years many adults have taken to coloring to relieve stress or just enjoy some free time. These coloring pages are everywhere and the images to color are so small and intricate that is makes my eyes grow dim. Rather than relieve stress, I'm afraid I'd loses my mind trying to complete one. So here is how I would go about coloring these things.

New Monopoly tokens

After a world wide poll of monopoly fans, the company has retired several of their longtime board pieces and added 3 new ones for all of us modern types.

Gone will be the thimble, the boot and the wheelbarrow. Added will be a Tyrannosaurus rex, a rubber ducky and a penguin. All I can say is wow. Certainly a thimble is probably an old fashioned item not very recognizable to younger people in this day and age. But seriously, a rubber ducky? The Scottie dog, top hat, roadster car, cat, and battleship tokens will return. 

Congressman Ben Sasse, a very funny guy, wrote on Twitter, "Have you ever known anyone who willingly took the thimble?"

If you play monopoly here is the complete set of tokens you'll see in the new game packages.

Things I wish we still had

Back in the day when our kids were in grade school we got the first Nintendo one Christmas. That was the time of the first Mario Brothers and I can remember the amazing fun that console was. Not so many games that you went broke, but just hours of fun trying to get Mario to jump over things while the sound effects went toodle loop.

Now Nintendo has brought back the original console and it's selling like crazy. I wish I'd known about this 2 weeks ago because I'd have been tempted to get one or two. Now they're sold out in most places. Who'd have thought the past would be back in our present day of really high tech games.

The ABC story claims the console is 60 dollars, but look at Amazon and it's 229 but out of stock. So much for that idea.

Test your reaction time

This is kind of fun. You wait till the hand comes up, you click it as fast as you can to see what age you are in reaction time. I've been 33 years old 95 percent of the time which makes me really happy. Something to wile away the dreariness outside.

Revenue from Illinois video games

A story from the Belleville News Democrat relates that the budget impasse going on between Governor Rauner and the legislature has put a stop to local cities getting the July money due them from video game revenue.

What surprised me is how much money each city gets as their portion of the gaming going on in select bars and restaurants. Collinsville is due 10,000 dollars just for july. And that is only 5 percent of the total monies spent on these games which sit near the bar or on a side wall in the businesses which were awarded the right to have them.

Here's the percentage going to each entity:

5-municipality

25-state

35-bar owner

35-game vendor

Lots of money going into those machines. I'm going to pay more attention when we go out to eat in Collinsville to see how many machines are in use. I'm not especially opposed to them, but, wow, that is a lot of money being spent. I wonder what the payout percentage is.

Chess Workouts

This may come as a surprise but competing in a game which requires sitting for hours on end, but also intense physical workouts for some teams.

Webster University has a championship chess team and "coach Susan Polgar has her team combine chess and Crossfit, the popular high-intensity workout that mixes Olympic-style weightlifting, gymnastics, calisthenics and other exercises, to build strength in both mind and body."

It must be working because the chess team has never given up its No. 1 ranking in Division I college chess since its inception in 2012, and it has won the last two Final Four Championships and three PanAm InterCollegiate Championships.

A morning at the Scottish Games

Ferdie took part in the Scottish breed dog show at the Games in Forest Park today. One of our neighbors came with Ferdie's pal Lola who is a Bearded Collie.  Each breed paraded around the ring while the announcer gave a description of that particular dog. Kind of like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show only in groups and there were no winners or losers.

There's Sharalyn and me with our doggies.

While there Sharalyn ran into the woman who bred Lola, the other Beardies are Lola's nieces and nephews.

There's Kirt in the blue shirt. He works at the seminary and is also one of the chairmen of the Scottish Games. He brought his Cairn Terrier and his Scottie.

Kirt's grandson gave his pups water. It was quite warm for dogs out there in the sun today.

Ferd got greeted.

Some of the food being sold was out of the ordinary.

No idea what neeps and tatties are. Tatties may be tators but it's a guess. Annnndd...the line was long to get one of these pasties.

A large crowd comes out to see the dogs, the people completely circle the area.

As Ferdie and I did our Golden Retriever walk around the inner circle, we had to keep stopping because so many adults and kids wanted to pet him. He was very happy to let them.

This is Kirt's wife, Doreen. She's the chairman of the Scottish dog breed show and also does all the announcing and dog biographies. Since she is originally from Scotland, her accent is charming and made for a day like today.

And lastly, the Scotch tasting booth. Very popular.

 

7975 calories 1 pound of fat in ten minutes for the win

The Nathan's Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island has become so popular with so many people wanting to enter that there are now qualifying contests in various cities. St. Louis held one of these yesterday and the winner, Sean Cunninham, choked down 27 and 1/2 hot dogs in ten minutes. This was good enough to get him to the Coney Island competition.

It's far less than the almost unbeatable reigning champion, Joey Chestnut, who last year swallowed 69 dogs in ten minutes.

There are people like Chestnut and others who practically do this for a living, or at the very least, enter lots of these food eating contests and my question always is, "What is this doing to their digestive tracts long term?

It just can't be good.