Get stoned! with curling

            Now that the intense hubbub and falderal of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics have passed over our quiet state, I think it is high time that more people learned about the noble sport of curling—my personal favorite.

            People make fun of my favorite sport because it looks funny.  In an attempt to educate the public about the true nature of curling—not the media-drenched, super-hyped, dramatized version you see today—I offer you a brief history of the sport.

Curling was invented four years ago for the Nagano Olympics when the International Olympic Committee decided that the games would benefit from having more sports that combined fairy tales and situation comedies.  Curling—obviously—was the lovechild of "Cinderella" and Cheers.  Not only does it include the high-intensity sweeping action of poor, mistreated Cinderella, but, also, all the players have the physique of postal worker Norm from everyone's favorite sitcom bar. 

However, curling has not always been the succulent roast ham on the smorgasbord of events that we call the Winter Olympics.  Its rise to non-stop media exposure and national popularity was hardly meteoric; indeed, the sport suffered many a setback before overtaking basketball as the most-played sport by eight to twelve year old American children.  In 1998, shortly after curling was invented, the Worldwide Association of Curlers (WAC) launched an advertising campaign with the aim of exciting and educating the public about curling.  Unfortunately, the tagline "Curling: We Made Shuffleboard Even More Dumb" and successor slogans such as "Curling: Shuffleboard With Heavy Rocks!" did little to incite the public to curl.

The WAC next tried to appeal to niche audiences, hoping to gain an underground following by taking a more "X-Treme!" approach to their advertising.  "You sweep and sweep but there's nothing to clean, / it's an obsessive-compulsive's dream," sang the Misfits on one WAC commercial.  The "Don't be whack—Join WAC!" campaign was intended to inspire the urban poor to curl and featured on-the-street testimonials by minority youths, one of which claimed that "curling is so chill, all you need is a 44-pound, smooth, polished stone with an attached fiberglass handle, two four-foot hard-bristle camel hair brooms, and a regulation-size 90 foot patch of perfectly smooth ice.  I play over on 84^th street.  Word to your mother, Ice out."

However, just as these attempts were beginning to foster curling enthusiasm, scandal struck the sport.  The number one curler in the world, Hans Benckendorff-Barbituate, was accused by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of having a silly last name.  After several months of fervent investigation and fevered media hullabaloo, it was discovered that not only did Benckendorff-Barbituate have a silly last name, but that his first name, Hans, was also, according to IOC chair Nagasaki Tegucigalpa Bongo Head, "somewhat silly, and entirely inappropriate for someone of Native American origins."  Benckendorff-Barbituate was stripped of his silly last name and christened Michael Hunt.

Hunt was then forced to speak publicly about the debacle.  I provide here some of the text of this address:  "In light of recent events, I feel that I should step away from the sport of curling, at least in a competitive capacity.  I will not be taking part in any further curling tournaments, and, while this pains me, I feel that, in light of recent events, I should step away from the sport of curling.  At least in a competitive capacity."

Curling had lost its star, its guiding light, and was in search of a new star, a new "guiding light."  However, like the Phoenix Suns under the leadership of Charles Barkley, curling would rise again out of the ashes of despair and fly again in the sky of success along with the geese of popularity and the clouds of media coverage.  These horrid metaphors would arrive in the form of a young advertising man from Bristol, Connecticut—Marcus Turpentine—and a former Saturday-morning NBC sitcom star—Tiffany Amber Thiessen.  Turpentine developed the now-famous advertising campaign that brought curling to the forefront of the public consciousness.  He decided to focus on the sexiest aspect of curling: the stone.  The beautiful, smooth, heavy, creamy stone with the handle.  Previous campaigns had neglected the attraction of the stone, but Turpentine's slogan, "Curling: Get Stoned" not only placed the emphasis where it was most persuasive but also appealed the drug-loving, X-Treme! counter-culture that the WAC had so long been trying to attract.

The WAC signed former Saved by the Bell co-star Tiffany Amber Thiessen to do a photo shoot with the stone in her cleavage, and all the pieces were in place.  The public responded with love and admiration for Thiessen's cleavage and, consequently, for curling.  Out of respect for the sport, millions of college students began to literally "get stoned," using controlled smokeable marijuana drug substance, ignoring the laws against such actions because of their X-Treme! passion for the sport.  This is, at least, what I have been told by 66 percent of the sample of people that I asked, the sample being three people that live in my apartment.

Some savage pundits, however, are worried about media overexposure for curling.  Curling is now the official Pepsi-Cola spokesperson, and appeared in no less than five whole minutes of Super Bowl advertising.  Curling's midriff seems to get more airtime than actual curling competitions.  Media analysts agree that curling is on the verge of selling out, especially now that curling has a movie in theatres.  Rumor has it that curling does not write its own songs.  Lies!  All lies!  Vicious untruths perpetrated by those who would see curling fall—the National Basketball Association.

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