CURLING MANIA!

You can't read this, don't even really try, and even if you could , it really would not make all that much sense. But, it is true, Curling mania is .... ( wait for it)..... SWEEPING THE NATION.

From TIME : "During curling's run in the Olympics every four years, much of the sports-viewing world gets either strangely addicted or totally bemused by watching the old guys push stones and sweep brooms in what often looks like shuffleboard on ice. But at this year's event, emotions seem to be at an all-time high. Every day, capacity crowds of 5,600 are filling the Vancouver Olympic Centre, mostly to cheer on Canada, home to 729,000 of the 1.1 million curlers around the globe. The atmosphere is even more electric than the scenes in arenas for other sports, like figure skating. There are two sports in which the Canadians expect nothing less than gold: hockey and curling, and not necessarily in that order." (more...)

Well the U.S. beat them in the mens hockey, so now it is all curling, all the time! MSNBC has somewhat shuffled Keith and Rachel and along with CNBC ( which I did not even know I had..) has become all curling, all the time. Heaven!

From what I can glean so far, if your grandfather did not play the sport every day of his frozen life, then it is all but impossible to really understand the rules. They seem to change at will, and everyone seems fine with that. It is just loads of fun to watch. And , ummm.. well.. ok.. the Great Britain and Canadian Mens teams are SMOKING HOT! Seriously..

This is David Murdoch: reason alone to watch the games....

And also,from a personal point of view, it is, with out a doubt ,the most moopah of all " sports" ever. I mean, from the looks of things you can drink , and smoke if you like ,with the tv on.. and still do really well at the game. There is a whole lot of standing around, talking about what you are going to do next, a very moopah thing, you know, not DOING the next thing, but really talking about what you might do next, for a good long time, while having another beer...

AND what might be my favorite part of the whole thing - OTHER than those white shirts that the Great Britain team wears - is the fact that if you are down by a lot, or really , from the looks of things, just get tired of playing, you just walk over to the other guys team and shake his hand, and its all over!

None of this " YEAH COME ON! WE CAN DO IT " loud sort of Gipperish bs, just a gentlemanly shake of the hand and off to the bar.

5:00 pm (est) tonight folks, Canada ( !!! ) v China , should be on that CNBC thing.. maybe I'll live blog it...

(feeling a TINY bit better about IZZY after these guys...)