Once more with the rock

Yep, Team Anette Norberg have rocked out... yet again. This time on Eurosport’s Watts Pop TV show, where athletes show other talents that they have (or not).

In this YouTube video, taped in early October, the curling girls sing along to Joan Jett’s I Love Rock And Roll, followed by outtakes, along with a few bars of the AC/DC classic Girls Got Rhythm. Yes, they sure do.

“Watts Pop knew about the Hammerfall video and they wanted to do something similar with us,” lead Anna Svard (photo) told The Curling News. “The difference was that we had to sing ‘for real’. Very scary! At first we didn’t want to do it, but said okay after persuasion.”

Team Norberg is still atop The Curling News Top 15 despite losing on the weekend to Scotland’s Rhona Martin in the final of the Stockholm Cup. The gals are soon on their way to Canada’s west coast, where they’ll spend a few days in Vancouver before heading to Chilliwack for the Continental Cup, which has two air dates next weekend (Nov. 25 & 26) on CBC.

The squad’s growing legion of North American fans have suffered a blow with the dismantling of their blogsite, which was previously hosted by sponsor Johnson & Johnson. All that’s left is a link to the Hammerfall video. There is, of course, the team’s website, but there are no plans to post info in English.

Elsewhere:

• So, you’re the manager of the Hub City Curling Club in Saskatoon, and you open your electrical bill one day and see... a charge for $47,000 dollars. Whoops. Will TCN’s new Asham Club Corner feature be following up on this story? You bet we will ...

• They didn’t make the final, but the arch-rival Kevin Martin and Randy Ferbey teams had a little fun on the weekend, with curling fans in Lloydminster the beneficiaries. Quote of the day from the Ferb, directed at all front-enders everywhere: “The lesson you've got to take from this is even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.”

• Kudos to Lloydminster for dressing up their 20th anniversary Wayside Classic in fine style: namely with a huge $75,000 prize purse. It attracted more top-calibre squads, including champion Glenn Howard, who had super-sub Jon Mead on board in place of Richard Hart ...

• The Laurier University Alumni are the latest official partners of the Home Hardware Masters of Curling, the first Grand Slam set for late November in Waterloo, Ontario. The grads qualify for discounted tickets and it should be a noisy event, particularly when alumnus John Morris is on the ice with Team Kevin Martin ...

• DID YOU KNOW: that Canadian Curling Association CEO Dave Parkes has apparently served notice of his retirement date? It’s at the end of 2007 ...

• Quebec skip Eve Belisle – the darling of last spring’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts in London – is skipping her province at the Canadian Mixed in Kitchener, and she’s alone in first place at 5-0 ...

• The Pacific Curling Championships are Nov. 21-26 in Tokyo, and the host nation’s matches will be available online through webstreaming. Who is the provider, you ask? Say hello to CurlTV Japan ...

• DID YOU KNOW II: that Toronto almost lost another curling club recently; the posh Granite Club, a near-victim of burst piping ...

• Al Cameron is declaring that Calgary will host the 2009 Brier (subscription only), even if the CCA won’t be confirming this for just under a year or so. The last Calgary Brier, in 2002, earned a record profit of $1.3 million on 245,000+ spectators, the third-highest total ever ...

• DID YOU KNOW III: that Canadian senior squads – like the superstar Anne Dunn foursome – continue to battle scheduling snafus that see national champions unable to defend their crown if they go to the worlds?

• Who’s up on Dean Gemmell’s The Curling Show? Why, it’s the gal with the pipes, calendar pinup and Olympian Christine Keshen ...

• And speaking of, the calendar, over 500 of the new 2007 curling calendars have been sold since last week’s launch. Featuring a whopping 17 athlete/models, bonus pages and some colour images, it’s the perfect holiday gift – and a fundraiser, too. Calendar queen Ana Arce flew into Canada from Spain last week, and you can hear her appearance on the FAN590 radio morning show here ...

• DID YOU KNOW IV: that a Quebec pequiste is using Canada’s national men’s championship – errantly – as a public relations tool for the separatist cause? TCN’s own Adam Daifallah is thoroughly unimpressed ...

• Two-time world champion skip Marilyn Bodogh’s bid to become mayor of St. Catherines earned bronze last night. The brash Bodogh won 4,412 votes to finish third behind runaway winner Brian McMullan, who scored 15,067 votes ...

• BLOGBITERS: in no particular order, we have ...

That Kid in Seattle;

Jose – who has no clue – in Portugal;

Pilot in Saskatchewan (that’s one dangerous curling team logo, my friend);

Hugrun in Iceland (Sigurvvegarar!);

... and these truthful Yanks, who have voted curling to be an honest-to-goodness sport, by a 5-2 margin. How about that.

• Finally, tiny Stevens Point, Wisconsin, is the hometown of USA Curling. It’s also the home of the world’s biggest trivia festival, of which a new film has been made, which features a famous local curler as one of the trivia answers. Looks like fun ...