Man, am I a sucker for the Olympics. Whatever season, whatever sport, whatever underdeveloped country is getting plunger-raped behind the American woodshed. I’m in.
I’m down with VISA commercials. Any Morgan Freeman voiceover makes me cry. I truly believe that McDonald’s can serve as “athlete fuel.”
I don’t care that the Olympics have turned into a corporate, made-for-TV event where the wealthiest athletes from the wealthiest countries generally win the most medals. I don’t care that there’s somehow a Korean coaching our Speed Skating team. I don’t care that Canada kills seals.
No, slap an American flag patch on an athlete and it doesn’t matter how we got here, I’ve found a Skywalker and I’ve found a Dark side. It doesn’t matter if you were once a part of the Allied Forces, your Freestyle Mogul team is going down, Frenchy.
And that’s just it. The sport I’m watching doesn’t need to be mainstream. Hell, the sport doesn’t need to be a sport. Rochambeau? Extreme Ironing? Teabagging? Just tell me who’s a member of NATO and who already hates us because we steal their exports. I’ll cheer so hard you’d think my brother was on that silver medal-winning Swiss Teabag squad (playing the position of “powerball,” of course). You could show me Olympic Scattergories and I’d still scream bullshit at the Belgians trying to pass off “ruby red radish” as an acceptable entry for “vegetable”…and “R.”
Granted, if given the choice, I’d opt for USA Basketball taking on foreign teams like Lithuania or Germany or the San Antonio Spurs. But, as I’ve found in these latest Vancouver Winter Olympics, sometimes the more obscure the competition, the better.
Enter Curling.
Oh, you sweet, slick, subtle, strategic, and sweaty sport. You “rock” my world. You have “swept” me off my feet. I wanna slide my “hammer” across your “sheets,” past your “free guard zone” and into your “button.” “In-turn, Out-turn, In-turn, Out-turn…”
Ahem. Those are all legitimate curling terms! Get your mind out of the “bumper.”
Anyway, I guess I can credit CNBC with my newfound glossary of curling lingo. It’s an unlikely source as I typically don’t set my DVR to the closing bell. Plus, I’m still trying to figure out how Jim Cramer isn’t hosting Mad Money from behind bars. Nevertheless, CNBC came through with wall-to-wall curling coverage. Actually, it was less “coverage” and more around the clock surveillance video of the curling ice. It felt like I was constantly peeping in on them. Like it was Jenny’s Super Secret Adult Webcam or something. And much like with Jenny, I couldn’t take my eyes off curling.
Because there was always something to watch. A curling match is like… playing a game of cricket…with a diamond…to the soundtrack of a Boston album…during the war in Afghanistan. It can last forever.
Do the math. There are eight players tossing stones. And there are 16 stones to toss in each end. And there are 10 ends to each match. And there are four quarts in a gallon! In between all of that rolling stone action is a staggering amount of strategy. Curlers must take into account stone weight, the line, ice conditions, turn, counter-moves, execution, and plenty of other factors CNBC told me about. This all amounts to a great deal of time, which is why, thankfully, the Olympics put their curlers on a clock.
Without a time limit, it turns into chess on ice, except no stone is shaped like a horse. Funny, because before these Olympics I would’ve characterized curling as a cross between bowling and a Swiffer commercial. A propelled rock ever failing to catch the two brooms sweeping away ice in front of it. But I’ve come a long way.
Remarks on Day 1 of 2010 Winter Olympic Curling: “Why doesn’t the blue team just throw a mess-‘em-up shot to clear all those other pucks out of the bullseye? Damn, that MILFy Canadian chick is hot!”
Remarks on Day 12 of 2010 Winter Olympic Curling: “The Brits need to toss a corner guard just past the hog line to protect their biter that’s barely in the house, otherwise the opposing rink will deliver a spinner takeout rock that could leave us with a blank end. Damn, that MILFy Canadian skip is hot!”
By the way, I made that latter remark while smoking a pipe and speaking like Stewie from Family Guy. I’m a goddamned curling color analyst now, which is warranted considering I have at least curled before. Yeah, it was several years ago, just once, with a local Kansas City curling club. I’m guessing curling in the Plains states is about as advanced as baseball in Nepal, but these guys seemed legit.
They were as laid-back as their sport, quick with a joke, always able to take it as much as they gave it. That is, until I stumbled across their only hot-button: comparing curling to shuffleboard. It’s like comparing tennis to ping pong. They don’t like that. Yeah, while curlers don’t fancy themselves as great athletes, turns out they do rank themselves a cut above nursing home jocks (re: shuffleboard players). Other than throwing out a curling slur, I don’t remember much about my curling experience other than it was the first time I tried Amstel Light.
Enter the beauty of curling.
It’s a beer-drinking sport. After all, it’s only one letter off from “hurling.” Even the Kansas City curlers, while rattling off curling phrases, routinely emphasized the need to imbibe. Yes, curling may be regal, may have been founded in medieval Scotland, but it’s got white trash cousins named bowling and slow-pitch softball.
This everyday quality of curling, along with its growing popularity following the Vancouver Games, makes you wonder why the sport can’t parlay this momentum into more conventional status. I’m not suggesting high schools adopt it to replace wrestling. But why can’t curling be the new beer league softball? Why can’t curling be the activity you play with your spouse on Thursday nights instead of sand volleyball? It’s cheaper than golf or poker. More fun than book club or Bunko. Think of the stories.
“Honey, you should have seen it. Paul tossed a kizzle kazzle that somehow split the house. Annick dropped her broom and beer in excitement. Jenny ceded the match. We all celebrated like Norway in ’02. Until Matt slipped on the Amstel Light, cracking his head open on the ice. Oh, blood all over the hog line. Randi had to take him to the hospital.” Sigh…
In my charge to discover all that is curling, however, I’ve learned that there is a Catch-22 with the prospect of the sport becoming more prevalent. A rise in popularity could ultimately kill the sport. Curling manufacturers fear they one day will run out of the blue hone granite used to properly make curling stones. Gasp! Never mind Major League Baseball goes through five or six dozen baseballs in one game, equating to 114,000 or so balls each year, we apparently can’t equip the 114th most popular sport in the world. Story goes—while any 9-year-old in Costa Rica can make a baseball—only one, small, uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland produces the right kind of granite for curling rocks. As luck may have it, that island, Ailsa Craig, is now a protected bird sanctuary where curling manufacturers haven’t quarried for nearly a decade. Birds or Curling. Birds or Curling. They have enough granite for about eight more years of production, but eventually they’ll have to be allowed back on that island. And who knows how much blue hone granite is left?
My personal curling PSA now over with, it would be a shame to witness the first ever sport extinction. So, perhaps it’s best for curling not to take off in popularity. Perhaps it is destined to be a sport that misses the mainstream, left only for Northern Europeans with too much ice not to curl or Canadians who were too slow for hockey. Curling just may have to remain a cute but obscure sideshow that only comes around every four years. Like Ralph Nader.
After all, curling is part of the Olympics. And we all know how I get around the Olympics. You know me, I’m petitioning for a Spring Olympics in 2011 as well as a Fall Olympics in 2013, highlighted by Adult Kickball and Hackey-Sack, respectively. Maybe I’m simply elevating curling to too high of a status. You know, looking at it through Olympic glasses…which would, of course, consist of five interlocking lenses.
Makes sense. Normally I’d rather have my intestines sucked out by a pool drain than watch the NHL, but during the Olympics I’ll drive the damn Zamboni myself. So until ACL is not only known as anterior cruciate ligament or Austin City Limits but also as American Curling League, I’ll likely never know if this is a true romance with curling or a fleeting love affair. Until CNBC becomes less Bloomberg and more Broomberg, changing that first “C” to I think you know what, I’ll always wonder if curling can stand on its own. It’s a wait and see approach.
In the meantime, there’s always shuffleboard.
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Very nice. I love curling. I need to do it more often.
I totally want to take up curling. I wrote about it too. I have my outfit pick out and everything. I’m going to be awesome.
Let’s be honest. Teabagging takes more physical ability than curling.
In college, on the Canadian border, CBC had curling on winter weekend afternoons. Much better to watch with chemical enhancement.
Tom, there are a surprisingly large number of leagues out there.
Brooke, saw your pics. There are some serious flaws in your sweeping form.
Allison, you sound like a veteran of both.
(and, yes, that’s two smiley faces in a row)
Tim, I would argue that there are only, like, four things on this planet that beer doesn’t make better.
And they wear sweet, sweet pants: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Remarkable-Swag-Norway-s-argyle-curling-pants?urn=oly,219748
Great. Now I’m the teabagging girl.
M Shaffer: What are those four things? I can only think of two.
1) When attempting to escape death from a large animal chasing you.
2) Trying to get out of a ticket
And…hmm. You’re right. Only two.