Saturday, April 12, 2003

Perhaps I went a little over the top yesterday. Today though, I will provide a little underwhelming entertainment for anyone who isn't a fan of CURLING . This venerable sport, first captured on canvas in 1565 by Bruegel (Him again!), was formalized by the Scottish peoples in the 1600s. And why not? Pushing really big stones(44 lbs to be exact) across the ice towards a target is both fun and non-lethal, unlike other ice sports.

Instead of watching the Iraqi's looting the achaelogical Museums in Baghdad today (Curse you Bush, sending troops in, and then ONLY PROTECTING THE FLIPPING OIL MINISTRY?!!!), I watched the women's world championship curling finals. It was a showdown between the US and Canada, an already difficult fight, even without the political tension between the two countries. The Americans are a crack team of four young women in training pants. The father of the best player (Debbie McCormick) is the team manager. The Canadians are a tough, middle-aged bunch in field hockey skirts that look like they could seize their opponents by the teeth and tear them to shreds. Their lead player is the curly haired demon from the north, Colleen Jones.

I was watching the Canadian TV station, so you can get the array of commentary I listened to. Canadians usually win. Their team is rock solid. They have a history of coming from behind and creaming the competition. The Americans may be ahead, but that won't last. But they did last. In fact, they played flawlessly in a stadium filled to capacity with Canadians.

For those who haven't watched curling, there's a lot of screaming. "HARD!!" "Whoa!" "Clean, just clean." These are the instructions to the teammates with brooms. Yes, the sport doesn't stop with just throwing the stone, you have to use your brooms to control the stone's curl. Once you let go, the rock takes on a life of its own. And Colleen's rock kept on doing exactly what she didn't want: Missing the other team's rocks. McCormick's rock, on the other hand, curled beatifully around other rocks to take positions closest to the red bull's eye. That's how points are earned. I won't bore you with the details. We won. It rocked.

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