Welcome to the Meld!

Hello again, dear friends. I want to personally welcome you back to the Melding of Heads. If you don't know anything about MOH, I am pretty stoked that you are reading as well. So, Welcome. About a week ago none other than Justin Price himself called me up solely to ask that I start melding again. I don't know about you, but when you get a phone call all the way from Sylvania, Ohio (where I do believe there was just some women's golf tournament of sorts) asking you to do something, it is hard to say no. So later that evening, I opened up a blogspot account--because as for myspace and me, suffice it to say, "it's over." Plus I figured this would be easier to plug. Anyway, I'm just now getting up the courage to tap in my first meld. Justin (and all of The Journey)--This is for you. Shall we meld?


The purpose of the blog in my book is multi-faceted. It exists to make one cry, make one laugh, impress others with one's master of the English language, convey ideas, and spread fart jokes. Because who doesn't like a good fart joke? Like the one about the snobby woman in the restaurant who had just finished a bowl of clam chowder at a very ritzy restaurant. She reached down to her purse and as she was doubled over in her seat, she had no control over her own bowels. She let out one of the sharpest, crudest, wettest, longest, and loudest farts anyone had ever heard. She turned the brightest shade of red and, hoping to blame it on him to save face, she said, "Stop it!" At once the waiter, as helpful as ever replied, "Of course, madam, which way did it go?" Anyway, my idea for this blog is for it not to follow the trend of any other blog, except that I will draw from personal experience. So there you have it, a mission statement. Writ large:

I will draw from personal experience.

That's really all I can promise you in the way of our Melds, dear reader. I can promise you that this won't be a forum for me to force my views on you, because if you're willingly reading, I'm not forcing anything. In other words, expect extreme levels of pontification. So tonight, what I was hoping to share, rather succinctly I think, is a love story about my newfound passion.

As often happens in the summertime, we tend to spend time with different people than we do during the schoolyear. This is more or less forced on me, since neither my girlfriend, nor anyone else I associate with at school spends any significant amount of time in the Bay Area, let alone the west coast. Since a pretty good sized group of my friends are in the same predicament, we've been spending what some investigative journalists (like that guy on To Catch a Predator) may call an "inordinate amount" of time together. Put it this way. If one of us were a 40 or 50something, and the rest of us were like 8 and 9, it would definitely raise some eyebrows. Anyway, after playing Monopoly until we were all ready to commit some sick group suicide with Monopoly tokens placed over our eyes or something, then doing other things until we reached a similar level of frustration, we were at the end of our rope. After a hard day's work, what was a low cost, fun, and fresh way to spend the evening? John Neiser had the answer. Bingo. I'll admit, I too was skeptical at first, recalling family bingo night with the hard cards that we traded after each round, the yellow markers that we never quite had enough of, and Dad calling out numbers: "O-75, the grand-daddy of them all!" Then it occurred to me that we live in Florida, God's waiting room. It was very possible that I would witness someone dying of natural causes in between the Box-Kite and the Super Speedy. Needless to say, as a fast-paced, jai-alai and greyhound loving man, I was a little slow to accept this radical new idea. Finally, however it worked out to go. We walked in the front door and I knew I had either just made the greatest mistake of my life or had just begun the clock on my finest hour. I quickly realized that I was much more likely to see someone enter eternal dreamland on account of lung cancer than old age (not that there was anyone there under 65, mind you), as the smoking room was about twice the size of the non-smoking room. Both were full. It was $15 all you can play night, so Steve and I each were dealt in for three sheets. For those of you who don't frequent the bingo halls, you may start getting confused here. I sure was. See, at bingo halls, you will be laughed out of school if you play one card (I didn't know if there was any other way to play, to tell you the truth). Most patrons favor 3 or 4 sheets of 9 cards each, yielding a grand total of 27 or 36 cards. Indeed, this was a whole new ballgame. We purchased bingo markers (they're these blotty things like you might see as a gate-return stamp at a low budget ballgame) and made our way to our seats, me with 27 cards, Steve with 27, and John with 18. One of the floor-workers, Maria, was kind enough to show us the ropes. And boy was she patient. We had no earthly clue what was going on (which surprised us, since we had all been family room bingo champs at one point or another). For one thing they only give you 20 something seconds in between numbers to mark all your cards and look for bingos. That's hard to do when there's eight real ways to get a bingo. You've got your ups, your downs, your diagonals, your postage stamp, your four corners, your diamond, your small box, and your small diamond. Believe it or not, fishing is harder when you have more rods to reel in more fish. We were totally embarrassed. Stately elderly citizens were laughing, pointing, taking pictures, making snide remarks, calling us out, they were doing it all. If you didn't think there was trash talk in a bingo hall, think again. As soon as someone raised their hand to call a bingo, there was a low grumbling of profanity that was fashionable back in the 20's or whenever, followed by the angry ripping of bingo sheets from the packets. I can sympathize. It is probably one of the most stressful and suspenseful ways to have fun, but man does it sting when you're only one number away from hitting the big jackpot and someone else gets there. My hands shook after every round. I felt alive. When I finally won, I had to split the purse with three other lucky sons of guns. Our table-mates, Kay and Betty, hit for a combined $75 dollars or so all night, but it was up to me to be happy with my paltry $16. Which, after tipping the floor volunteer, was just about equal to my entry fee. When I hit, a bingo-blotter-bag-toting woman behind us who looked like she'd been ridden hard and put away wet more than a few times said in a salty voice, "it's beginners luck." When Steve hit a couple rounds later for $25, she repeated louder, "I'm telling you, its just beginners luck." It's a good thing John didn't hit, or she probably would have thrown down.

To say that it was fun and addicting would be an understatement. I would highly recommend this foray into an unfamiliar culture to anyone I know (who is of legal age of course). One word of warning is that you may become addicted, blotting numbers in your sleep, hearing things like I-27 or G-50. I can't be held responsible for that. So there you've had my warning. Go out, be fruitful, and win some money off the elderly.

Thanks for reading. Spread the meld and tell a friend!