Monday, February 22, 2010

Olympic Curling

I fell asleep with the television on the other night. I had been watching Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. The faux-indignation he displays in his "special commentaries" no longer entertains me, but that's another story. I awoke in the wee hours of the morning to find that Winter Olympics coverage was polluting my television screen. Worse, it was curling. My gut reaction was to switch the television off and go back to sleep. For a few moments,  however, my desire for knowledge pushed through my somnolence. What was this sport about? Why was it so popular all of a sudden?

Curling resembles shuffleboard except that it's played on ice with a circular target rather than a pyramid and a gigantic rock instead of a plastic disk. The team pushes rocks on ice to a target and whichever team has the closest rock to the target gets points. The amount of points is determined by the number of closest rocks the team has. Two sweepers with brooms or brushes accompany each stone to help direct the stones to their resting place without touching the stones.

You might say that curling is basically bocce ball on ice, except the players are using the bastard offspring of irons and bowling balls. Okay, I got it, but I was still bored. I ceased wondering why a gang of  bored Scottish men first decided to do this on some frozen pond in the 16th century. I was about to turn off the TV and go back to dreaming about the zombie apocalypse when the women's curling competition began and I realized the real reason why this sport is so popular this year

Have you seen the women's teams?

Ladies, I'm afraid we can't let you onto the field anymore. You could melt all of that ice.


  1. since when do the russians have better looking olympians than us? huh? wth!!! lol

  2. I like the Canadian women hockey team better. Nothing is hotter than a woman smoking a cigar and chugging a beer. *drool*