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STRANDED IN DALLAS & My HBO SHOW Is OFFICIAL!!! RAWtalk 187
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Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com and welcome to Raw Talk, episode number 187. And no, Stephen is not back with us. Even though he is technically back with us and no longer on paternity leave. There's reasons that he's not on today and it's not for nefarious reasons. It just so happens that on Thursday I was busy because I am actually still here in Texas. But before I do that, the time 8:45 Central Time on the 23rd of November, and by November I actually mean it is February 23rd, 2026. There's 87% battery life on my watch and it's currently 50 degrees here in Yolis, Texas. Yeah, it's outside of Dallas, not too far, about 10 minutes from Dallas Fort Worth Airport. And I am stranded here for a day because of the snowstorms on the East Coast In Philly, I wasn't able to fly today on Monday because the airport was officially closed as they got like 18 inches of snow in Philly or something along those lines. So my flight was canceled and I had to redo my flight for Tuesday. So everything should be fine. Knock on wood for flying home from Euless, Texas. But I wanted to sit down now that I had the ability to sit down because I've been busy as hell since I got here on Wednesday to film some of the bowling show. That's why on Thursday, when we normally record with Steven, I wasn't able to do so because I was super busy. Now I just mentioned the bowling show. Let me just let the cat out of the bag. The show is officially coming on March 16th, which is a Monday on HBO. It will be on linear TV. I believe it's 9pm the first episode will air on March 16th, which is A Monday on HBO. But it will also be available streaming on HBO Max. Now, this is the United States. If you are from another country, you probably need to use a VPN in order to watch it or I'm not sure about the rights in other countries just yet. I'm sure at some point it will happen. But you know, I've been working on this for close to four years. It's been about two years since we started filming or, you know, less than that. But I'll talk more about how this whole process came about. I do have a longer podcast I actually recorded last week talking about the process from Start to hbo. How did I end up there? How did the idea formulate? How did I get the rights to the show? How did Ben Stiller get involved. There's a lot to talk about and I'll talk more about that in this episode. But there is a full on episode that will be coming that goes into detail just about how I made most of it happen. But I'm here outside of Dallas, Texas, outside of DFW in Euless, because I flew in. Because the hope is, even though season one isn't out yet, is that we get to do a season two. Because one season's great. Two, three, four seasons is even better. That means that you're doing something right and it resonates with the people because it's all about you guys watching it. So HBO was able to do some sort of. What did they call it? Development funding. Development funding to allow us to film two of the events. Now I won't be able to be at the second event because I have the World Baseball Classic happening in Miami, which kind of sucks because I'm able to get the good, good. I get the good footage that is like the glue. The slow motion, the creative shots, the stuff that the other shooters can't focus on because they have to focus on verite or story. I like to get in there and film and get some really creative slow motion shots or different angles or unique looks that other people just can't get because they don't have the time. Not that they don't have the ability, but they generally don't have the time. I also want to talk about the gear that I brought on this shoot. What else do I want to talk about? I want to talk about. I have all of these notes. Talk about that. Talk about why the delay. Yep, we talked about that. Because of the snow. I'm actually sitting on the cuck sofa here in room 222. And I'm sitting on the sofa but facing the cushions because it's kind of like a sound dampener. Kind of like a sound booth. Honestly, I'm using the RODE microphone that I connect to my phone to record this on the phone just to make it easier. Because why not? It certainly helps and makes it easier to just talk into the corner. So I'm not getting reflections off of everything. I just hope that the neighbors or the people above or people below don't complain that I'm talking. But it's only 849, so it's not that big of a deal. So where should we go? Yeah, the shoot started on Wednesday. I got in here before everybody else and I just went over and banged out some 120 frames per second slow motion footage that's what I was going for. You're looking for reactions. You're looking for interesting angles and shots that could be used. Like people cleaning the ball or rubbing their shoe and doing all this different stuff. That can be glue in the grand scheme of a show. Just random things like they're taking out the trash out back. And I have a wide angle shot. You never know, that could be used for something. So here's the gear that I took. I mean, I did show this. We actually filmed a video. Yeah, you hear some? That's because I'm just creaking on the sofa here. So what did I bring? I brought two R1s. So I ended up with four cameras with me and four lenses. Just because there were certain reasons for that. But we've got two R1s, an R6 Mark III. The R6 Mark III is for open gate recording with the fisheye at 7 millimeters. That was for a very specific task. And because it did open gate, I wanted to record the entire sensor with a circular fisheye just to give a unique different look, just in case glue was needed. The R1s were used for shooting 120. There's a reason I use them for 120 and I didn't use the C80 for 120. And that reason is simple. The C80, for whatever reason, when you use an external monitor through HDMI and you can shoot at 24p, you can shoot at 60 frames per second. But as soon as you switch into 120, that camera, for whatever reason, loses the signal and does not allow you to use the external monitor. Which makes it very difficult to shoot when you have to use just the flip out screen on the side. I hate the flip out screen on the side because one, it's small. Two, I mean, it's a bigger screen than normal, like three and a half inches or whatever. But the problem is it's so hard for me to see the small numbers on that little screen that it's just impossible to shoot with for me with that screen. But when I use an external display, an Atomos up in the hot shoe, that works out. But the problem with it, there's a few things I didn't like about the C80. The majority of the things I absolutely loved and enjoyed shooting with a cinema camera for the first time out here was fan freakin tastic. I really enjoyed shooting it for 24p and 60p. It just was fantastic. But there are a few things that, that I don't like. One of them is the 120 that you can't use the top screen, that's a problem. And the other is that it's SD cards. And there's another thing after that. But the problem is the SD cards. When you shoot a 512 SD card and it has to be a V90 has to be a fast card to take advantage of it. The problem is it takes over 30 minutes roughly to transfer. Now I'm using a pro grade mini card reader that goes in there for. With the SD card. It's on the side. Maybe they have a Thunderbolt 4 card reader that would go faster. I need to check with them. But I don't take around the Thunderbolt 4 card reader just because for SD cards because I use CFexpress B or CFexpress A, those are much faster for transferring. So that's a problem. Something that should take 4 minutes to transfer 512 gigs or so with a CFExpress B card should. That's fast. It takes you like 30 minutes to clear the SD card and transfer that. That's one of the problems. Another issue, another one is, well, Canon forgot to send me this adapter for a shotgun mic on the side of the camera, which is a problem. I need to get that so that I could screw a microphone in and plug it into the jack. And the reason I need to do that is that the hot shoe, the digital hot shoe is blocked whenever you put on a. Whenever you put on the top handle, it blocks the digital hot shoe. So it kind of takes away the ability to put a digital microphone back there. So that's a problem. But these are minor things. Shooting the camera was fantastic. Steven set it up for me because he's very good at learning the cinema stuff. And he set it up the way that he thought I would use it well and it worked. All I needed to really focus on changing was the. If I want to go from 24 to 60, I could just change the frame rate. And I didn't use the camera for 120 for the reasons that I already mentioned. But the R1s. Oh, what's great about the C80, you have the built in fan, it's never going to overheat. Not that overheating is an issue with the R1 when you shoot at 24 or 60. But when you shoot 120, that thing is going to start to overheat. Especially if you shoot and it's almost like 20 or 30 minutes of shooting. Not all in a row, but within a certain amount of time. 30 minutes start and stop. You're gonna start to see that that overheating level goes up because you're shooting 120 and 120 is a lot of stuff. But this 120 footage that I captured is really good and I hope that they use it for the show. And I gotta talk about the show in a minute. What else do we have here? Oh yeah, in terms of the show, you'll see that Ben Stiller's name is involved. He's a part of it. I did get to meet Ben. And the press photo, when it does come out, at least the one that they're supposed to use is a shot that I did with the wide Lux that is kind of a selfie that has me in it. Ben Stiller, Lesher, his guy Lesher and a bunch of other people from the show are all in this photo. And I hope they do it. They're supposed to use that press photo, then that would be great. And when all the press material comes out and the trailer comes out, I will do a all out blitz for promoting this series again. March 16th is a Monday at 9, I believe 9pm is when the show will air, at least on the East Coast. I don't know how they do it if it releases different times for where, if you're in central, excuse me, I'm yawning. Or the West Coast. But it was a long, it was definitely a long journey. I made a note here that says invest in yourself. Don't wait for permission. If I waited for permission to do this show, it would have never happened. Because when I started, and I talk about this in the longer episode about the show is that the rights were not available for the PBA at the time. They were with, I believe, another development company or another production company. And the thing is that production company never showed up. They never went out and actually talked to any of the bowlers. They didn't show up to any events. They didn't create anything, any new material at the events. They basically, from what I heard is took stuff offline that the bowlers were doing. They took their videos and cut it together. Now those are just shot by bowlers making vlogs. That wasn't done cinematically, it wasn't done high end or professionally. And I came in, had an idea, put a team together, we did a sizzle reel and it was great. And then it was a long journey to go from Mike Tolan Productions, who was integral in doing the Michael Jordan documentary and many other TV shows, especially some HBO shows in the past, a lot of stuff to a 24. You guys have all heard or have heard of a 24 for their movies. Now this is something a little different from a 24, but it worked. And then HBO, we all know HBO. I mean that's, I mean insane to be having a show come out on hbo. And this is part of last week I think I talked about am I satisfied? And the answer, I'm never satisfied. It's cool that you can officially read that the show is happening. I felt a moment, a very slight moment of joy when I read it today and it was like official that I could talk about it going to hbo. And yeah, I felt good there. The next step is get the trailers out, get the promotion going, do press and do all, all that stuff. And then hopefully you guys enjoy it. And I think you will. Because the premise of the show, it's like if you've seen F1, you've seen full Swing, you've seen golf. It's similar except for the fact that those guys are making millions upon millions of dollars. And no bowler is making a million dollars in a year anymore. They're struggling to make tens of thousands of dollars, 30,000, 40,000. And the very few, select few can pull in 100, 200 or $300,000 in a season. If you they win a bunch of majors. Majors are worth $100,000 to the first prize. First place, second place goes down to 50. But some of the ancillary tournaments are worth $30,000 to first place and 15 to second. And then by the time you get to third and fourth, you're at 7,500, 5,000 and then like 3,000. And then that's a problem because you are spending a whole week somewhere. You've got to eat, you've got to travel, you've got to feed yourself, which is the same as eating. You got to house yourself, you. And if you don't make the cut or win big, you win nothing. And it's a struggle. So whereas the worst golfer in the world on tour is a millionaire and makes like 100,000 for finishing last, the best bowler can make 100,000 in a tournament. And the difference is back in the day there were like 37 weeks of bowling in a 52 week year. They were out on the road for 37 weeks on the PBA, which is the Professional Bowlers Tour. Now you got 12 or 13 weeks. You have five majors. Why are majors important? Because they're worth $100,000 to the winner. But there's only five of them, which means eight, right? 9, 10, 11 12, 13. Yeah. Like seven or eight other tournaments that are only worth 30,000 that aren't major, like next week's. They're in Missouri, and it's the Pete Webber Classic. So Pete Webber will be there. We won't be there this year, but we do have an episode. I believe it's episode three. So the third week of the. Will feature heavily Pete Weber. The show is good, and I say this all the time. I said this to the directors that were brought in by hbo. I said it to him today. I'm like, look, the show that was made, I might not have made the same show. And that doesn't mean that my show would have been better if I was to make it and direct it a certain way. There's things that I would like to do different. But that doesn't mean that what the directors did with the show was bad, because it's good. It's not what I would have done. But that doesn't mean that what they've done isn't the better story. Right. And you have to have an open mind when you're doing this stuff and working with a team, especially when they came on board when we were, like, 80% done filming and had to go through our footage, and we all worked together as a team to put together the plan of attack for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 episodes. And then, you know, they have to put it together, and then HBO has to approve it. Everybody has to approve it, and it's good. Everything can always improve, right? Nothing is ever perfect. So hopefully, with season one coming out, you guys like it, and you don't have to like bowling to like this show. That is the point. The point is that it's about people who so happen to bowl, but it's the story of the people that are interesting. The bowling is secondary, but the bowling is also important. And I think even if you know nothing about bowling, you'll learn something from this show. We don't dive super deep into the technical stuff, which I would like to dive deeper into and more into the science, like the reel I put out the other day or yesterday taking you around the bowl. We call it the bowl. Whenever you're at the bowling center, where I show you behind the scenes, I showed you the gear I was using. I show you on the lanes where the bowlers are going to bowl. I show you. I don't think I showed the trophy, but I showed you all of the cameras. I talked about the positionings I'm gonna shoot from, and I just gave people a Tour the behind the scenes is what I care. I care about showing people and letting them in on the behind the scenes, as I call it, inside baseball. If you can take people inside the game, then it helps grow the game and just grow the interest. Because we know, and I know this for a fact, especially because I came out here on the road is you fall in love with the characters you fall in love with, with these participants, these athletes, these players, because they are athletes. They may not be the best shape athletes, but they are athletes. But you will fall in love with the players. You'll like players, you'll hate some of them sometimes, but deep down, they're all fighting for the same thing. To feed their family, to grow a legacy, to leave a legacy in a sport that they love. In a sport that was the most dynamic and most impressive, most participated sport on of. Most participated sport of in the United states in the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s. And then it started to fray. But I was at the International Bowling Museum the other day. Cause that's here in Dallas. And I was looking at some of the walls and it's like 1891, I believe it said the United States Bowling Congress. Oh, is that the usbc, United States Bowling whatever. At the time, it was like the United Bowling Congress was formed in 1891. They didn't have pin setters until 1951 or 52. I'm seeing if my photographic memory can pull it up. I believe it was 51 or 52 when the first bowling center in New Jersey, I believe, put in an automatic pin setter, putting an end to the pinboy era. A pin boy was someone who sat behind the lanes and clear. So basically what happens is you would throw a ball, knock down the pins, the pin boy jumps down into what's called the pit. The pit is where all of the pins land. So they then first pick up the ball and put it in the ball return and send it back manually. Then they clear the dead wood, which is what's in the pit, and they get it ready in the, you know, they clear it and they reset and then they, the person goes for the spare. If they didn't clear, get a strike and they knock that pin down, they put the ball back in and then they start putting the pins back into the pin setter, which is mechanical. So they put 1 through 10 in and then they lower it and then it lifts up and they're ready to bowl again. Now there's a certain speed to that and the faster a pin setter can work the faster the game is over, which means the bowling establishment can have more games. The faster the pin setter is, the more games equals more money. And what is the word? The proprietor? The bowling proprietor? The bowling center? I don't know, whatever it is. But yeah. So obviously, if you could manually do a pin setter. Sorry, automatically do a pin setter, it could go faster, be more accurate, and you don't have to pay the kids a dime a game or whatever they were paying the kids to be a pin setter. Maybe it was even a penny. It had to be a dime. A dime a game to be a pinsetter, which could be dangerous if pins are flying and you take a ball in the shin or you're not paying attention, or someone isn't paying attention when they throw a ball. Because I don't think there was a sweep back then. A sweep is the thing that sweeps the pins away into the pit. The way that it works today is that it's all mechanical. There's thousands upon thousands of moving parts in a mechanical pin setter. But there's also what's called string pin setters these days. And a string pin setter, it doesn't have nearly as many moving parts. And automatically it uses strings that get knocked down. And then the strings wind up and stand the pins back up and put them into place. Is it perfect? No. But it doesn't need as much in the way of mechanics to make it work. But a mechanical pinsetter with thousands of moving parts absolutely needs someone to do something. So what happens is the pins fall into the pit after they're swept away into the pit. And then there's a conveyor belt that brings them to the back. The ball can fit out the side. There's a hole in the side that is triggered when the ball gets over there and the ball goes out there, gets thrown up a chute, and then drops down from the back and uses centrifugal force to draw it all the way to the ball return back to you. A bowling lane is 60ft long from the foul pin to the head pin. The approach, which is where you walk up on the approach to throw your ball, is 15ft, roughly. It could be 10ft in some areas where they don't have as much room. And then behind is 10 to 15ft for the mechanics. But mechanics are the pin setters. But a. I know I'm talking. I was just realizing. I'm not talking much about the photography aspect or the videoing aspect, but a string setter takes up much less Space. But then the pins, they get moved back. They're on a conveyor belt. They go up and they get dropped into different buckets that go into pin. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And then it puts it back down. It's a whole thing. It's really great to go look at the mechanics. You just have to be super careful. But we don't dive that deep into all of the mechanics just yet. But today we saw a bowling robot named Earl, which is named after Earl Anthony. And it is a bowling robot where you can put all the parameters into the machine. How many revolutions a minute do you want to have it go? Ball revolution is when a bowler releases the ball and it spins down the lane. We call it hooking. As it hooks down the lane, when you roll it properly, it's going to hook. Especially with the centrifugal force caused by the. The block inside of the ball. There's bowling blocks. Oh, that gets technical. But revolutions, like, they can set it at places that humans can't. And it's insane what it does. It's a bowling robot, but it's not perfect every time because the robot can't beat the oil. There's oil on the lane. That gets talked about in episode one as well of the show, but the oil is ever changing. And if the bowling robot. The bowling robot is so good at hitting the same spot over and over again. The problem is the ball picks up oil, the ball moves oil. And so if your ball gets thrown in the same spot too often and the oil dissipates, then it gets down to what they call the dry. The dry is the lane. It's wood or synthetic wood at this point. But what happens is the ball doesn't get to glide over the oil anymore, which means it grabs and gets slowed down and starts to hook way early and ends up missing the pocket. Yes, that is called the pocket, where it strikes when you hit it. Not every time. Hopefully, you hit it and it's a strike. But that's why it's called the pocket. That's not why it's called. I don't even explain why the pocket. But the pocket is where you want to hit. But if you get the oil, if it gets too dry early, it's going to overhook. That's why the pros are so good, because they can read all the. But anyway, let's get back to shooting. The C80 was great to shoot with. I used the 24, 105.2.8. I used the 10-20 F4 a lot for the wide shots that really brought you into the like it just creative and unique and different. I also had the 70 to 200 for shooting down lane. When I wanted to go down the lane and get tight shots of the bowler's eyes or lay on the bowl, the approach and then focus on the pins while the bowler walks in slow motion in front of me and you can watch the ball rotating down the lane. Freaking awesome. I got some clips that are absolutely fantastic. And Then also the 7 to 14 fisheye I use sparingly on the R6 mark 3 to do the open gate. So just a different angle for fisheye and a different angle for circular fisheye for shooting video because you can't. You don't normally shoot full frame video when it's 16, 9 and you can't record the whole thing. That's where that open gate comes into play. But it's still not necessary. It's not like make it or break it or that I needed it. But the primary lens that I used was 24 to 105, which is awesome for when you need to do interviews and you're up close. But great when you need to reach out a little bit because a 2470 just doesn't cut it because the other guys are using the Sonys. And 24 to 70 is fine, but it doesn't allow you to reach out and grab them because 70 is short 105. Great. If it could go further like 70 to 200, that's great too. But you miss out on the wider end when you need to run and gun and get closer to people. So these are. It's like. It's the dance that you have to do when you are creating something like this is choose the right lenses for the right situations. Let's see. Stranger in why I'm stranded in Dallas. I already talked about that. Because of the snow. Yeah. The bowling show is called Born to Bowl. I don't know if I mentioned that it's called Born to Bowl. And the poster is. I've seen a test of the poster which has my photo on it currently and it looks incredible. I don't like many things when I see them. And I will tell you things that I don't like and I won't react to certain things. But when I saw the poster that they did, they did two posters. There's one I like more than the other. When I saw the poster, I instantly said that I like that. Yes. You know, I don't like something if it takes Me a while. And I'm just like, yeah, I don't like that. This was a time where I sat there and I was like, yes, 100%. I really love that. It's just so good. It's just. It's good. And so I'm a big fan of how they use my image for that poster. And that's a whole thing is like, image rights. There's a lot that goes into this stuff. Oh. One of the things you realize with a show that gets picked up by a network like HBO is there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Especially we've got a 24 working to make this a success. We've got the people at Mike Tolan Productions working on making it a success. You got me working on making it a success. And you, of course, have hbo. But every frame needs to be cleared by legal. They need to make sure there's usage rights. They need to make sure that the music is paid for. They need to make sure that anybody that shows up, they have approval to use their images. There is so much that goes into it versus making a YouTube video, which is a totally different animal. This is so different. I hope we get to do it more a season two, a season three, a season four. But obviously we gotta get season one out. And that is finally happening on March 16th. I didn't expect to be stuck here in Dallas for a day, but I made the best of it. I've been doing good with making the best of situations that you have no control over. Cause what's the point of getting angry? I couldn't get home on a flight today. So is it the end of the world? No. Did I want to be home? Sure. But if I was able to get home and it was a blizzard, then what was the point of being home anyway? Right? And I'm sure there's situations where, like, I have to get home. I've got this to do. I've got this to do. Then that would be a problem. But I knew come Sunday that there was no way I was gonna get home. They canceled the flights on Monday. I rescheduled for Tuesday. I even bought a ticket for Wednesday, which I need to cancel. And I'll only get credit back in the flight credit. But that's better than it was a emergency thing. Like if Tuesday, if the storm was really bad and really icy and I couldn't get home on Tuesday, then I at least had a flight on Wednesday as a backup backup. So I will cancel that and I'll take the credit and use that Another time. That's just what you gotta do. What you gotta do. And sometimes the peace of mind knowing that you have a flight home is better than waiting and worrying that you won't get a good flight because everybody else is trying to switch to another flight because yeah, you're stranded, but not in a bad way. It's not like I'm in a third world country. And it turned out to be good because I got to hang out with someone I met the other night that was fun. And I also got to shoot some more. We went and filmed Earl the Bowling Robot, who's named after Earl Anthony. And it is really amazing to watch this bowling robot in action. So I'm pretty sure that there are some rumblings that there will be some new gear shortly from multiple companies. The rumor sites are clamoring, but it's all happening because it's right before CP and as that stuff happens, we will get you in photo News fix to do those updates. And hopefully this Thursday will be a time where we can sit down with Steven for the first time, first time since having his baby and bring him back to the show. I really would have liked to have him on for something like this, but I couldn't have him on for this because the time I do with this at 9 o' clock at night and he's got his newborn and he's got his daughter and it just wouldn't work out. So I've got, I get home and then I leave again on Sunday. Jesus God. I leave March 1st to head to Miami to be Team Israel's photographer for the World Baseball Classic. And I've got a lot to take. I plan on taking Austin, the new employee here to do behind the scenes footage of me using my 4x5 with these players to basically document what's happening. Help us make some short form, not short form, help us make a bunch of different content, but also help out with Team Israel content on the fly. So I volunteered that. I mean, I'm paying him and we don't get paid to do this, but I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it because it's just putting yourself into situations to be successful. I mean, I say this all the time. One thing is just do the thing and don't ask for permission, right? Like take the risk. Take the risk on yourself and do it. But there are so many people that I've met along the way by just putting myself into situations to be successful, like going out to photograph the bowlers. And one of the photos that I took in 2022 ends up being the poster art or the key art as of now for the HBO docu series Born to Bowl, which started with me. It started with me, and then Ben Stiller's involved and HBO's involved. It's pretty impressive, if I might say so myself. People are like, you sold your first show, which is incredible. That doesn't happen all the time. Some people never sell any shows. And it wasn't gonna be. It wasn't easy. It wasn't like it was easy. But I never gave up. The team never gave up. And we just kept. We kept hammering. Do you get breaks? Sure. But also think about what I'm able to do in the future. Right. I now have an HBO show that I was a major part in. I mean, I shot the fucking thing. The interesting thing is you get so many people involved from other places. Producers, executive producers, the Ben Stillers of the world, the Red Hour Entertainment, which is Ben Stiller, his company. And it still comes back to Tommy, who is the dp, and me were the primary shooters the whole time. And you know that I'm not a video shooter, but I am now. I have a TV show under my belt as a shooter. And I think I bring a unique perspective to the world of docu series is, you know, I have a different way of seeing the world or a specific way of seeing the world. It's not exactly different. It's just. I see lines, I see angles, I see things that just make sense. And it's not just shooting with the 24 to 70 or the 24 to 105. It's taking chances, getting on different angles. Not just standing and doing the, you know, holding the camera down low or holding it on your shoulder and being at that height and just giving the normal look, but changing it up and finding stuff different and playing with different. Not just angles, but frame rates to give you a unique look and just something different. I mean, Tommy and I did this show. We shoot the raw stuff. Then the team has to come together and edit because obviously editing is a big deal. It takes a lot to go through tons and tons and terabytes and terabytes of footage. This week I have 3.6 or almost 4 terabytes of footage that I shot because I started on Wednesday and ended today. But yesterday was tough. Not tough, but if you get a chance. I don't know if you watched the bowling show. Not my bowling show, but the pba. It's on the CW right now. On regular tv. A rookie ran the ladder and what that means to run the ladder is. It's called a step ladder. Five plays four. The winner of five four plays the third place bowler. So the winner there plays the third. The winner there plays the second. The winner then goes into the championship to face at this point was E.J. tackett and a rookie, Bonta. He ran the ladder. He won his first match, his second match, his third match, and then he was up against E.J. tackett, the best in the world. And what did he do? He rolled a perfect game. Perfect game means you threw all strikes and the max score you can get in bowling is 300. So you know how there's 10 frames in bowling? There's actually a bonus and a fill at the very end. So if you throw a strike in the 10th frame, the X a strike, you knock down all the pins on the first ball. You then get a bonus ball. And if you throw a strike on that bonus ball, you then get one more ball. And whatever you get, you get. So if it's so, you could have a 290, you have a 290 going into that last frame. If you have bowled all strikes up to that point. And if you throw another strike, you get 10 more pins. If you throw nine, you finish with a 299. The highest I ever have had is a 278. I had all strikes in the middle. I threw a first ball where I left two pins, which is an eight, and I cleaned that up, meaning I knocked them both down on the second ball and got a spare and then continued to throw strikes the rest of the game. For my score of 278, where a max is 300, it's pretty impressive what this kid did. This kid came out and threw a perfect game against the best bowler in the world. That's impressive. Hopefully it can be a storyline in season two because that is a storyline that is unique. So the moral of the story is, try things. Believe in yourself. Don't take no for an answer. With respect, of course. Keep trying and believe in yourself. Really believe in your ability to do the thing that other people either don't think you can do or would never do themselves, or just don't have the ability to do. The fact that. And I go into detail more about this in the longer. Well, I can't say longer now because this is 36 minutes in, but in the episode that I did about Born to Bowl and I'll do a couple more, maybe I'll interview some of the bowlers when I'm out on the Road next, just to get their feedback and to put them into an episode and we'll do it in person or something. But I had an idea. The phrase I used when I went out on the road and saw what these guys were doing and struggling on the road to make money and everything was, there's a there, there, right? There's something here. There's a here, here, There's a there, there. There's something here. And we should pursue it. And don't ask for permission. We didn't ask for permission. We made it happen. We now have a show coming out on HBO on March 16, 2026. It's a Monday, and that's pretty cool. That will live on. If they sell to Netflix, I guess it will be on Netflix at some point. Maybe they'll license it to Netflix and we'll get to see it get more eyeballs. The more eyeballs, the more people do. I think it can be like, F1. I mean, F1 is a massive success, and we would take a fraction of that success. It's different. That's sexy because those guys are making $20 million a season or $20 million a year to drive their cars, plus all of the extra money. But the whole reason that I wanted to do this bowling thing is, one, I love creating. But two, I want these bowlers to be successful. Because if this show is successful, it brings up the entire industry. Because with F1, you can't go down to a local car dealership and say, I want to take an F1 vehicle out for a spin. You can't. But if you watch this bowling show and you don't even like bowling, you might be like, hey, I want to go bowling at a Bolero or a Lucky Strike or. Or an independent bowling center, which they exist. And I do hope that you support them. But you may be like, I want to go try that. And then you go and try it. And then what's going to happen is, let's say there's 100 people that go bowl. You maybe bowl once a year. Then, you know, some of those people are going to bowl twice a year, three times a year. Then there's going to be people, like, of that hundred that are like, you know what? I really like bowling. And I'm going to go every week. And then they're going to be like, I want to get into a league. I really enjoy this. I want to do this all the time. But when you enter a league, you realize, I should buy a bowling ball and I should get it drilled and I need to buy shoes because bowling shoes are comfortable. You can spend 60 bucks and get a pair of bowling shoes that will last you 10 years or more because they're just so goddamn comfortable and you don't wear them outside. There are special shoes. You do need to wear them when you bowl. It allows you to slide. That's the whole point when you're on the approach. Fun side note, back in the day, when bowlers, if they were sticking too much to the lane, meaning you could stick and that causes you to stumble and the ball come out awkwardly, if they were sticking to the lane, they would take cigarette ash and wipe it on the bottom of their shoe. That is something that's cool because cigarette smoking was the biggest thing. Oh, man, I forgot about that story I was telling earlier where the bowling crowd said the pinsetters happened in 1951. But bowling in the 30s and 40s was a family thing. People would finish work and go to the bowling center. They were open, some of them, 24 hours a day, especially in areas where they had night shifts. Probably in Detroit and probably in Pittsburgh, where there were steel workers. They would probably have a five in the morning thing, a two in the morning bowling session for the night shift workers who. Who wanted to be in a bowling league. So there were 100 million people. I think there's 100 million people bowl every year or something like that. But the biggest thing since sliced bread was bowling leagues. Families all hung out at the bowling center. I mean, you know how much cigarette smoke I snorted down being at the bowling center back in the day in the kids playpen play area in like the 1980s as people just smoked a shit ton of cigarettes and it just wafted through. Yeah, it was really bad. There was a lot of smoke back then. I forgot where I was going because I interrupted myself. Bowling centers taking a risk on yourself. I don't know where I was going. I'm getting tired. I do have to get to bed at some point and get ready. I have to pack up and get ready to make sure I go through. I think TSA should be fine. Yeah, I talk a lot about bowling. I really enjoy bowling, if you didn't realize it. Oh, yeah, I know. I just remembered. So we talked about people getting their shoes and then you buy a ball. So look, bowling balls don't have to be expensive. The most expensive ball. I saw this at the pro shop the other day was like 260 bucks for the best balls on the market from the best bowlers. And that included the drilling. So $260 included drilling. Usually it's like 30, 40, or 50 bucks or maybe 60 bucks for drilling a ball. Could be 189 to $210. And so what I was saying is that some people are then going to get into bowling and be like, look, I got to get shoes and I got to get a ball. So then they're like, well, I like Kyle Troup, or I like E.J. tackett. Kyle Troup uses a Storm bowling ball. He's sponsored by Storm. Jason Belmonte sponsored by Storm. E.J. tackett is sponsored by Motive. So there's different ball manufacturers, and each ball does something different. And of course, if you suck the ball doesn't matter. It's not the ball's fault, it's you. But pro bowlers know what to do with all these different cover stocks, because there's different cover. You've got plastic balls. Those are generally for spares. You've got reactive resin. You've got. Oh, boy, reactive resin, polyurethane balls. So poly balls. Now, there's a different blend that Storm just came out with a ball called the concept that is like a mix between urethane and poly. Like, it's totally different concept that they came up with, thus the name. But the point is that someone's going to get interested more than one person, and they're going to join a league, buy the stuff. And when they buy the bowling stuff, that helps the brands. If they buy the balls that E.J. tackett uses or Belmo uses, that brings up those companies which then have more money to then pay the bowlers so they can make more with sponsorship. And maybe if this thing takes off, it can help them get a better TV deal. But honestly, personally speaking, I don't think the PBA should be on regular TV anymore. I think it should be streaming live, either on a Netflix, on an HBO, or on their own YouTube channel where they do their own production. High end. But I think it would be so much better to be on the YouTube channel because you're in control of the entire broadcast. Like, I think the most people watched when it was on Fox, they said it was like a million viewers tuned in to watch. Oh, okay. Could you imagine if you had like 100,000 concurrent viewers on YouTube? How amazing and impressive to have 100,000 on YouTube. And then after the game is over, it lives on. But when it's on regular tv, you don't really go back and watch it. But if it's on a YouTube channel for the PBA and it got 100,000 people watching live. And it builds more. You know, it's going to build more after. You're going to end up with millions of views on each broadcast, quote, end quote, which is great for sponsors, which is great for the bowlers. And it just shows that there's value. I believe wholeheartedly that that's possible. I believe in doing things yourself, like getting an HBO show and not just, you know, I believe that that's important, that you believe in yourself and you take control. Like having a YouTube channel has afforded me the ability to get to these positions. So anyway, I've had enough, I've talked enough. I enjoyed using the C80. I could see using one more often. I'm gonna see if Canon can get me a long term loaner, but get me out the right piece so I can then add a shotgun mic to have in the frame. Ooh, now I'm thinking that the shotgun mic might show up if I use the 10 to 20. I have to be careful with that. All right, I'm gonna wrap it up guys. I really appreciate you listening. The time right now is 929 in the PM in central standard Time. Yeah, this is episode number. What'd I say? 187. Thank you very much for listening. I'm in Dallas. I'm flying home tomorrow. I appreciate it. Jared Polin oh, watch the show born to bull. HBO, March 16, 2026 Monday, Monday Monday Jared polinferronowsphoto.com See ya.