Walter Ray Williams Jr., won his 35th PBA Tour title at the Greater Detroit Open in Taylor, Mich., beating his old rival Brian Voss 215-193 to win $40,000. The victory puts him one ahead of Mark Roth and only six behind the late Earl Anthony, who won 41 on the regular tour and seven more on the PBA Senior Tour. Williams said it will be much harder than it seems to overtake Anthony.
"I am a goal-oriented person, but I'm realistic about catching or going ahead of Earl Anthony," Williams said. "The long break between tours from March to October didn't help because you can't win if you don't bowl in tour competition plus our new format is much tougher than it was before so winning a stop is much more difficult than it was previously."
The 43-year-old Williams doesn't expect to pass Anthony's record anytime soon, even though he's been known to win several tournaments in short periods when he's in the rhythm of a streak during a season's swing.
"My knee feels much better and I'm healthy again, so if I stay that way, Anthony's record is still distant for me and not in my immediate focus because at the rate things are going, it would take me another five or six years to win 42 on the tour if I got that far, but it is something I can shoot for. When I get on a roll and win consecutive tournaments, it seems to have its own inertia because the opposition is subconsciously thinking about it, which gives me a competitive edge."
Anthony once told me the same thing about his game after winning consecutive tournaments.
Patrick Healey Jr. is the antithesis of Williams after winning his first victory in the Memphis Open, as he defeated Michael Gaither 243-227 and won $40,000.
The 34-year old Buffalo, N.Y., native is married to Mexican-born Teresa, who has competed with the Mexican National Bowling team eight times, and he often travels cross-country to visit both families.
"I'm originally from Buffalo, and I've always been a Bills fan," Healey beamed. "I was happy when they got Drew Bledsoe from the Patriots, and maybe he can lead Buffalo to a Super Bowl victory the way he helped New England. We have to make up for those four Super Bowl losses somehow."
Healey, who has been a tour regular since 1998, feels that once you break the ice of your first victory on the PBA Tour, more wins will occur because you won't be as nervous or tense in the final match in an effort to win for the first time. He hopes the Bills will do the same and winning tournaments helps him pay the bills and for all of the transportation he needs on the road.
Kelly Ripa's role as Jennifer on NBC's "Ed" has gained the Wednesday night "dramady" another two million viewers according to the latest Nielsen ratings listed in USA Today. This national daily newspaper was apparently thrown a curve when they claimed Carol, played by actress Julie Bowen, was unable to find her groom as he somehow disappeared. Actually, Stuckeyville school principal Dennis Martino, played by actor John Slattery, was present throughout the entire wedding ceremony and actually dumped her at the altar when he perceived that Carol was too busy looking for the absent Ed who he thinks she is still in love with, and was supposed to be the best man according to the previous week's storyline.
In the biggest gaffe yet by "Ed's" writers, no mention was ever made of the fact that Ed was to be Martino's best man in the wedding scene of the huge episode the following week. Instead the evening's episode shows Jennifer, played by Kelly Ripa of All My Children and Live With Regis and Kelly fame asking Ed after their night in bed if he really wants to go to the wedding of Dennis and Carol to which Ed wholeheartedly replies, "No."
Ed should have said, "But I'm their best man, so I really need to go," but this fact from the week before was completely ignored by "Ed's" script writers leaving the viewers scratching their heads concerning the plot once again on their biggest episode of the season!
Besides this huge and unfortunate deception in the storyline, the writers appeared to be brawling over exactly how the wedding should be stopped.
Ed suggested earlier in the episode that he take her advice and figure out a way to dramatically stop the wedding and came up with the idea of riding a white horse (which was actually an old gray mare) to the ceremony in a white tuxedo as a knight in shining suit and march down the aisle in the church and yell his objection. Then his better judgment or conscience came into play to overwhelm his assertiveness and he decided against it, only to have the wacky Jennifer-influenced ideas come back again. Ed with prodding at the last minute goes to the stable in an effort to rent the horse, but it's too late because the old gray mare he is going to ride was moved with the rest of the herd to another pasture to graze. The only horse left for Ed to ride is Crazy Jimmy, who won't stop for anything. By the time Ed controls the horse enough to dismount him miles away, he races to the church only to see Carol crying with her father and he walks sadly away with neither of the two spotting him.
All that was left for Martino to do was to sing the old rock hit made popular by the national and local TV commercials for General Motors vehicles—"Nothin from Nothin leaves Nothin"—as he cruises down the road in his zeromobile with no more interest.
Ripa is scheduled for three episodes this season, and she previously wanted to do more, but Regis and her husband, Mark Consuelos, must be working on her because lately on "Live with Regis and Kelly" she said Mark gets jealous when he watches "Ed" and Regis responded, "Well, no wonder since you're getting intimate with that dufus Ed." Ripa responded that Mark didn't mind spending the huge paycheck she received from Worldwide Pants, the production company of "Ed" headed by David Letterman.
Philbin feels NBC and the producers of "Ed" are taking advantage of Ripa to boost the show's ratings, and he complains about this every time Kelly mentions her work on "Ed" during the opener of "Live." Strangely, Philbin is a friend of Letterman.
Consuelos, who co-stars on "All My Children" with Ripa, went to Australia for several months to film a movie while a stand-in actor played his role. He is constantly upset with Kelly's appearances on Ed in spite of his checkered past. Consuelos began his entertainment career as a dancer at a night club in Tampa where he was known as "Meaty Mark" before joining the cast of "All My Children" where he met Kelly.
In spite of their objections, Ripa still makes her own career decisions, although when she told Regis that she did it for the big paycheck, she sounded hauntingly like former PWBA legend Lisa Wagner.
All concerned know that whatever program Ripa does on TV turns to ratings gold because a huge number of viewers love to watch her perform. Ripa will leave "All My Children" this season to focus more on "Live" and her occasional appearances on "Ed."
Ripa commented that while watching the marriage episode with her agent, she thought she needed a botox injection to compete with Carol for Ed. Perhaps that would make an entertaining episode of "Ed"—Jennifer gets botoxed at a party along with the rest of the cast.
"Ed" would be greatly helped in the Nielsen ratings if Ripa made more appearances and conversely, the ratings will deteriorate if Carol and Ed get together forever. "Providence," a regular dramady of NBC on Friday nights, has been cancelled and the star of the show, Malina Kanekaredes, indeed got married on the final episode.
Tom Cavanaugh, who plays Ed, told Carson Daly the night before the wedding episode was telecast, while Ripa was promoting the same episode that same night to Letterman, that if he and Carol ever settled down and got married and lived happily ever after, the ratings would go into the dumpster, and the show would be cancelled. Philbin sarcastically remarked on his show that Ripa will save "Ed" just like Regis did for ABC with the "Millionaire" show before his ratings took a nose dive.
Banquet Frozen Foods is a new sponsor for the PBA Tour, and it currently offers free bowling games along with the current PBA schedule of dates and times on the back of their frozen food entrees. Their pot pies make a tasty treat as an appetizer for those holiday meals. Maybe someday they will even be microwavable like their other competitors.
Walter Ray Williams failed to get his 36th tournament win, as he fell short to Eugene McCune 224-186 in the PBA Banquet Classic held in Grand Rapids, Mich. The 34-year-old McCune, whose father Don won eight times and was inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame in 1991, won for the first time after 15 years on tour and picked up the $40,000 top prize.
"I knew that it was my tournament to win because I was hitting the same board everytime and the ball was coming off of my hand like butter," McCune said. "The model of the ball I was using was the Soaker, and that was an amazing coincidence because my father invented the Soaker originally 30 years ago, which softened the surface of the ball when he did his chemical dip in the bucket and won tournaments with the softer surface ball. I knew that Walter Ray was going for title 36, so that was the best competition to bowl against, but it is my goal to win every tournament in the future and stop Williams from catching Anthony."