No, I'm being serious here, what am I going to do? I caught a few games (or are they matches?) on CNBC and now I can't get enough of this stupid sport.
For all those people who have not heard the jokes, curling is a Canadian drinking game invented in Scotland some 400 years ago in order to see if Scottish men were stupid enough to walk across a frozen lake carrying 40 pound stones. They were and they probably blame the English for all those men who disappeared every winter. Presumably this game was also invented after the invention of life insurance, so their wives didn't mind very much.
The object of this sport is to be more boring to watch than baseball. This is accomplished by making two teams push large stones with handles on them (the stones, not the teams) and put their stones closest to the center of a large target that is painted on the ice. But, rather than just making it a shuffleboard contest, there are sweepers that can help the rock slide along the ice, captains that put together strategy for putting rocks on the target while knocking the other team's rocks off, and a scoring system that makes not a bit of sense the first couple of times you watch the game. A team scores points for every rock on the target that is closer to the center than the other team's closest rock. Teams alternate each rock thrown in a given end (equivalent to an inning), so that one team throws a rock, the other team throws a rock, the first team throws a rock and so on. This creates a game of precision and position that has been described as "chess on ice". And you know how dull chess is.
However, after having caught a couple of curling contests in the last two weeks, I am absolutely fascinated by a sport that screams to the camera, "Internet, please make fun of me." And I am going to miss it.
It's not that I play the game. I don't. I don't even want to play curling. In fact, I don't even know if you play curling. I think you actually curl, rather than play curling. But I don't care because I don't even want to try to find that out. I have absolutely no interest in picking up a rock -- or, rather, pushing it -- on a meticulously roughed ice sheet for my country, much less my local pub.
It's not that I feel sorry for the people who do curling and all the guff they've gotten for playing a thoroughly ridiculous game. After all, I will freely make fun of ice dancers, doubles lugers, and the American hockey team for going on television in front of the world and looking like idiots. Curling doers do look pretty silly and they sound even sillier when they are yelling at each other while furiously Swiffering in front of a rock that is sliding across a sheet of ice. It is truly a sport that transcends the world of merely silly and moves into the realm of the outright ludicrous. You almost get the idea that they are making up the rules as they go along.
Nor is it the fact that there are, apparently, some scorching hot babes in women's curling. There was this tall drink of water from Denmark that was pretty cute, the US team isn't all that bad looking from what I hear and I've heard that there is a Swede who is smøking høt, but I know that is not the reason. After all, I have only seen one women's curling match so far (Canada vs. Denmark) and most of the women looked like they came to the Olympics to pick up their sons from soccer practice. Well, hockey practice -- they were Canadians.
What I have discovered is that curling is uniquely fascinating simply because it is so utterly foreign. I came across curling knowing absolutely nothing about the game, how it is played or how it is scored. Thus, watching a curling test was so utterly confusing that the commentary actually made it more confusing. And anything that weird deserves serious investigation and attention.
And it is not only foreign in the terms of "unfamiliar", it is foreign in the terms of foreigners. Thanks to the magic of microphones, I can actually listen to the people on the ice talking to each other and it is really cool. I don't speak a lick of Danish, Finnish or Italian, but when the announcers mercifully shut up and let the viewers listen, you can actually hear them plan their strategy in their own, native language. It is, in its own way, thoroughly fascinating simply because it is a little slice of the international flavor of the Olympics. Two teams are playing the same sport by the same rules against each other despite the fact that they cannot understand a word each other team is saying. It's not like you need to disguise your strategy, nobody from the United States speaks Swedish. Plus you get to listen to Canadians say things like, "Pushed that rock too far, eh?" "Yeah, should have curled it more too, eh?" "And that blocker, still gotta move that oot, eh?" and so on. Compare that with post-game hockey interviews where the entire Italian team is made up of Italian-Americans, so I don't even get to make fun of them with, "Mama mia, dat's a spicy meat-a-ball-a," references.
And I am also fascinated by curling simply because it is an Olympic sport. I happen to be a big fan of the Olympics (especially the Winter ones), since they only happen every four years and they provide a unique showcase some of the coolest sports on earth. For instance, bobsledding and skiing rule and they should be on television every day of the week all winter long. Damn you ABC for getting rid of Wide World of Sports!
But one of my favorite aspects of curling is the unspoiled nature of the game. The people who make curling are making curling because they are curling makers. The people who spectate curling are spectating curling because they are curling spectators. There are no cheerleaders, there are no obnoxious announcers telling the crowd to make some noise, and every time Pete Fenson steps up to the hack, I am not assaulted by a mediocre pop song that everyone in the crowd is already sick of. I will never be subjected to "Who Let the Dogs Out" when I watch curling. In fact, the only extra noise at a curling meet will be the people who are there for the sole purpose of watching a curling derby.
I went to an NBA basketball game earlier this winter and it was the worst sporting event I have ever attended. The entire event was one long sequence of attempts by the team to "generate excitement". Personally, I think that if a team needs to generate excitement, it is an admission that they or their sport are not exciting on their own. And if people at a basketball game aren't excited for basketball, then why the hell did they go to a basketball game? In fact, there was more excitement in the stands for the Shitty T-Shirt Cannon than the actual game.
Here's the thing, I watch sports because they are exciting for me. If I needed people to generate excitement, I wouldn't be watching something that wasn't exciting. This is the same reason that I don't bet on college football. I don't need to make it interesting. If I need to make something interesting, I would really prefer to do something that is actually interesting.
Besides, this is the Olympics. A quadrennial sporting event packed with games and contests that celebrate all that is strange and beautiful in sports. An infrequent event that gives us all a chance to see new things, enjoy new events, experience new thrills and meet new people that we will probably never meet again. And when it takes the shape of a wonderfully wacky sport like curling, so much the better! I am going to watch it, enjoy it, and appreciate it for all that it is. Which is a rare event that is no sillier but much rarer than any other sporting event on earth.