Cloning, Double Rye and Coke and Investing with a Porpoise

Okay…have not blogged in forever. My apologies. I could make an excuse about work/kids/busy blah blah, but the truth is that my heart just has not been in it. I started a lot of blogs, but never seemed to finish them. Was a little heartbroken after provincials this year – so took a bit of a mental break from watching or caring too much about the game. But watching the Brier on TV, and playing at the Club has gotten me back in it! So here goes.

Random comments on the Scotties/Brier.

• Ménard was awesome at the Brier. They are clearly the best amateur team in Canada. The fact is that the 4 teams who finished above Quebec (McEwen, Gushue, Jacobs and Koe) are full time, pro curlers. Some might have day jobs, but for the most part, they are guys with nothing else to do but curl ! They play all the slams, 20-25 events and make enough $$$ to make a decent living. The fact that Ménard can compete with these guys while holding down a life and a job is actually pretty remarkable.
• Gushue winning in St-John’s was perfect. Imagine the scene if Gushue’s draw comes up a foot shorter. Would have been a travesty. Not that Koe did not deserve it after having played a crazy game, but it would have been the ultimate shitty ending to something great. Like the Soprano’s fading to black. No doubt that Gushue is the best curling team in the world right now. Period.  
• The Brier in St-John’s, as expected was a big success. Newfoundlanders are proud of their province and are generally the most hospitable people on the planet. I am assuming it will not be that long before it returns.   
• Looking forward to following the Newfoundland Tankard next year! With Gushue coming back as Team Canada, Newfoundland will see another team at the Brier. So who will emerge from the Rock? I am sure there are decent curlers there somewhere, just have not seen any out and about in a while. I think these guys have a shot:

Newfoundland Curling Team

• The sweeping seems to be back to “normal”. The mustard-yellow fabric solution seems universally accepted, and teams are back to disliking each other for far healthier reasons than sweeping choices - like excessive celebrations!
• Rachel Homan is by far the best woman’s team on the planet right now. As I write this, she is 9-0 at worlds, despite struggling with rocks and ice and apparently breathing in Beijing. You read it here first; she is a lock to go to the next winter Olympics. #boldprediction
• The Scotties was remarkably entertaining – including the epic final. Homan is quickly becoming one of the greatest clutch shot makers in the game.
• Great job by Team Bélisle at the Scotties. Going 7-4 and missing the playoffs was a shitty outcome following a good week. There is still room to improve, but they were playing some solid curling from what I watched.
• If I was not a happily married man – I must say I would be intrigued by a toe-tucking curler with an arm-sleeve tattoo and multiple piercings. #katecameronfanclub
• Man I hate losing at Quebec Provincials. My team was kind of shitty this year, posting a far worse result than we had hoped for. Not sure what happened. It was as if we all decided to be mediocre for a few games at the same time. #betterlucknextyear
• Losing at Provs. is especially tough because it happens in Quebec in the FIRST WEEK OF JANUARY. So I will go 9 months before playing a single game of curling that I really care about. That is a crazy long time. It also sucks for Ménard, who basically sat on his butt for 2 months waiting for the Brier - then started 0-2 (albeit against 2 monster teams).  Made me think we need to get a Quebec Curling Tour event happening in early February – something so that curling does not end in January. The fact is the top teams in the world keep getting better for 4 months, while in Quebec we play in nothing but drinking spiels after Jan 15th. I might have to reconsider my aversion to Mixed Doubles, just to have something to do until the end of the winter. #Iwillhaveadoubleryeandcokeplease

There have been a few team changes in Quebec worth discussing:

• First of all, we changed leads! Mig is taking a year off, so we picked up JF Trépanier to play lead. We are glad to have him on board – if only because he uses the coolest sliding broom this side of Manitoba. #tuckersrule
• Desjardins has reunited with JS Roy. JS is a shooter, and understands the game very well, and Bob is pound for pound, the top shot-maker in the province. Should be an interesting mix, however their team was already complicated, and is now even more so. So Pierre-Luc will call the game, throw second rocks (I guess). Bob will surely throw skip rocks, and sweep. JS will throw 3^rd rocks, and sweep. I think if they can figure out whose turn it is to throw they will be good! And I am assuming Bob is still working on a way to sweep his own rocks, while timing them. This is probably a good interim team for Bob, as he continues to work on cloning himself 3 times to make his ideal squad. #sendintheclones
• Not sure what else is going on. I am assuming that Jean Michel and Martin Ferly’s teams are sticking together, although I think I should make up another breakup/retirement rumor about JM’s team:  I hear Martin Crete is retiring from competitive curling to coach this young singer as she perfects her craft. Martin's vocal skills will come in handy here:

Martin Crete singing prodigy

•  The changes with JS and  JF will surely result in a lot of movement from other teams – but I am way out of the loop on these.

MIXED DOUBLES

Congrats to my teammate Felix Asselin and Jill Routledge on winning the mixed Doubles provincials! They will head to Nationals in April in Saskatoon.

For those of you not familiar with Mixed Doubles, it is a two-on-two 8-end curling game where each team throws 5 rocks each, and the ends all start with rocks already in play in pre-set situations. Amazingly it has been admitted as an Olympic discipline, making its debut in Korea in 2018. Canada will send one team of two.

I admit that I have made a lot of fun of Mixed Doubles in the past in this blog, and still I still think it looks more like a mini-golf version of the game I love, but if this is what it takes to get more millennials into the game, then so be it. The games are shorter, quicker, still involve a lot of sweeping and in the end come down to shot-making. They appeal to an ADD, short attention span crowd that can’t stomach the idea of watching baseball, or anything that last longer than 20 minutes.

I mean look at the sports that have gained prominence in the last 10 years: Ultimate fighting (which lasts 15 minutes – max), rugby Sevens instead of full rugby, Futsal soccer instead of a 90 minute game (although when I play soccer I always feel like 90 minutes goes by too fast). Even going to the gym is faster; everybody I know is doing cross-fit, which apparently involves completing as many chore-like exercises as possible in the space of 20-25 minutes, packaged as the WOD (workout of the day). Cross-fit people generally spend more time talking about about cross-fit then they spend doing it! Golf courses are closing – but golf activity centers are the new trend - where you sit on a couch and then drive balls into targets.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not disparaging any of these new sports, but they all have a common theme:  don’t waste my time with long, drawn out strategy or games requiring patience, let’s get this over with quickly. Within this context, Mixed Doubles makes sense. It is quick, fast-paced and active; everything a 10-end curling game is not. It seems like a perfect fit for the couple looking to curl and make it back in time for the babysitter. Its like Tinder for curling!

Anyway, I still have not been converted yet. I am still a dinosaur: I like long relaxing rounds of golf, a three hour 10-end curling game and a good baseball game on a lazy summer afternoon. But all the best to Felix and Jill at Nationals!!!

Random Grievance not related to curling:

I have been on a lot of Air Canada flights lately, and my new least favorite person in the world is Som Seif. Anyone who has flown on an Air Canada flight knows that Som Seif is the douchebag president of Purpose Investments who makes you watch his commercial before every single freaking movie they show on Air Canada flights. He basically walks around and tells you that he will invest your money with PURPOSE (as opposed the usual investment firm strategy of randomly burying your money in bags in your back yard). Maybe Som is the new Warren Buffett and some sort of financial wizard, but given that their marketing strategy seems to be to make you suffer through their cheesy commercials to watch a friggin’ movie – I think I will stick to my current Freedom 85 approach of randomly hiding rolled up $20s in my sock drawer.