Curling Cuties

Goodness us.

We have found the cutest curlers ever – yes, even cuter than these two – and they happen to live in Seattle, Washington.

Watch them in action right here, courtesy of this KOMO-TV episode of Eric’s Little Heroes.

As you can see, today’s quickee blogpost is aimed at merely applying a smile to your face.

And as an added bonus, here’s another Friday Fingerfest – please stretch your digits before attempting any strenous linkclicking...


• Brantford Expositor sportswriter Ed O’Leary is having fun, we think. Of Glenn Howard’s opening SunLife match this morning against unheralded Darcy Garbedian, O’Leary theorizes when Howard’s second game might take place “If Howard manages to eke out a victory”...

• The 2010 Ford World Women’s is going to Swift Current, Saskatchewan. The official announcement is here and a local CTV news story can be found here. Meanwhile, the town also has this season’s women’s provincial, and they’re looking for more volunteers and sponsors ...

• Joe Pavia has this on young superstar Rachel Homan ...

• Here’s a Jim Armstrong wheelchair feature for you ...

• Speaking of wheelchairs, Germany and – yes, China – are off to the Worlds in Vancouver ...

• The Mixed is over, and we have wrap-ups from locals townie bastard and also Clare, a local from Arctic Bay in Nunavut who wants big numbers... so, let’s give it to him, people!

We also have a final column from the champ, Sean Grassie... he’s quite a writer, somebody should hire this guy! Hmm...

And finally, we have this note on the Nunavut legacy ...

• Bear Mountain is close to confirming their top-notch field ...

• Okay, we lied... looks like she is playing (a little) ...

• Only a mere decade into his career as the curling guy at the venerable Globe and Mail, it was still a real shame to see some Globe desk jockey misspell Bob Weeks’ first byline of the season ...

• Although they did repost a corrected version later ...

• Nice scarf!

• Nice license plate!

• Sorry! but this might as well be labelled a new curling board game ...

• Lisa led 52 youngsters out onto the ice recently ...

• Janet, from Japan, tried curling in Germany ...

• The Virden CC welcomes two new bartenders. For what it’s worth, we love curling bartenders!

• Golden Ears needs a new club manager, and right away ...

• CBC curling host Scott Russell loves that Million Dollar Button thang ...

• Grey Power Insurance is back in curling, as the new title sponsor of the Players’ Championship ...

• Look who’s coming to Clermont, Quebec ...

• The Little Mosque on the Prairie curling episode “Jihad on Ice” (remember this? And this?) is now posted on YouTube. It can be viewed in three parts, all of them located here ...

• And finally, here’s a major, humungeous U.S. wrapup:

– they’re pumped in Kalamazoo, Michigan as the U.S. Nationals are headed their way in 2010;

– KXMC in the Dakotas has a promo story here – including a slideshow – and even a video, located here;

– there’s this spotlight on Indy;

– and this one on Colorado ...

– and in Simi Valley, California ...

– and in Sweet Home Chicago ...

– and this, on radio and transcripted, from Detroit Rock City ...

A Wrenching TV weekend

Ontario curling fans are in for a treat this weekend, as legendary two-time Brier and world champion skip Ed “The Wrench” Werenich will put on the headset and become a TV curling commentator.

The Wrench (photo) will actually be in his second stint as the colourman for the Toronto Curling Association’s Energizer city spiel, one of the oldest and largest tournaments in the world (Winnipeg’s MCA Bonspiel, hosted later this month, is another massive event).

And you thought golf’s Johnny Miller was a blunt instrument. Hello!

Eddie will commentate the Open (Men’s) final on Saturday, January 12 at 8:00pm ET across the province’s Rogers Television Network. The Seniors finale will air the following Saturday, January 19, at 8:00pm ET, also on the entire Rogers network.

Both finals will also air this Sunday, January 13, albeit on Toronto-area Rogers stations only: The Men’s at 2:00pm ET followed immediately by the Seniors at 4:30pm ET.

Eddie is also scheduled to appear at an outdoor rink in Waterloo, Ontario on January 19, to promote February’s TSC Stores Tankard provincial.

Here’s a surprise: apparently no one can recall if or when the Ontario Men’s Championships have been held in Waterloo. “It hasn’t been here in our time,” says former K-W Granite Club president Lew Ayers.

No way, we say. There must have been a Tankard hosted in K-W. Calling all curling historians: confirm or deny, please.

In other big Toronto news, the pre-sale of half-price ticket packages (only $150 instead of $300) for the Toronto 2009 megaspiel at the Air Canada Centre has been extended to March 15 (hooray!)

In a message sent late yesterday to the city’s 23 curling clubs, the Toronto Curling Association said:

Pre-launch ticket sales for the Toronto 2009 curling attraction are increasing as word about the ‘once in a lifetime event’ spreads! The support from the clubs is gratifying. This Grand Slam event will put Toronto on the curling map.

Paul Boutilier, Executive Director of the Asham World Curling Tour has just advised the official launch has now been scheduled for early April 2008. TCA clubs can continue with the discounted pre-sales until March 15, 2008. Enclosed are several stickers to place on your posters.

Initial payments of $75 (half of the package price) minus the $25 club portion = $50 for this championship event will not be requested from the clubs until March 15, 2008.

We know that two of the Canadian men’s participants will be Glenn Howard and Kevin Martin. Details about the ‘Patch’ and the Saturday night entertainment will be announced shortly.

Great news, and you can read more on the Toronto 2009 website, and also our own exhortations located here.


Elsewhere:

• Everyone is watching the Edmonton vs. Kamloops battle to host the 2008 Canadian Olympic Trials, but has anybody thought about where the pre-Trials Qualifier should be held? Winnipeg has, and will be bidding, and now Prince George, B.C. wants it, too (click here and also here) ...

What’s interesting about the Trials hosting battle is that the person generally acknowledged to be the top CCA grass roots event manager – Edmonton’s Janna Tominuk, who steered last year’s Edmonton worlds and the 2005 Edmonton Brier – is now working for Norm Daley’s Strauss Canada Cup out in – you guessed it – Kamloops...

• Wednesday’s curling episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie is already available on a streaming website, and there’s also this detailed episode summary, with photos, located here ...

• Last month, the Korbel Elite Challenge was aired, and the outdoor show – taped from New York City in horrid conditions back in October – has caused questions about its value as a promotional opportunity. Well, San Jose, California also had an outdoor promotional sheet set up last month, and the conditions actually looked slightly better than that of Manhattan.

Alice was there, and Pabu has mirrored the NBC report, while he waits for news about curling in Mexico City (unlikely at this point).

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the brilliantly-named Hollywood Curling Club (“Where We Curl Like Stars And Do Our Own Stunts!”) is busy with another outdoor curling exhibition tomorrow, complete with live KTLA TV coverage; this will mark the station’s second curling “show” since November (here’s the first). Sunday is yet another open house, this time in Panorama City.

Great stuff, guys. To keep the PR machine rolling, we suggest a temporary befriending of the train wreck known as Brit-Brit (aka Britney Spears), with the goal of getting her out onto the ice along with her pack of paparazzi. But we’re sure you’ve thought (briefly!) about this already...?

• Here’s a look at curling in Boise, Idaho ...

• And the Cape Cod CC has a new $470,000 upgrade...

• Still with U.S. curling, Scott says that Portland’s recent open house was busy enough to make it tough for him to get hands-on access to the Roaring Game, which is good news, we guess ...

• And let’s not forget Catherine, who curled in Chicago ...

• Here’s a brief look at outdoor curling in Boston, circa 1903:

• Four curl in O-H-I-O ...

• And this U.S. baseball fan played in Quebec at the tail end of ’07 ...

• There’s some big bureaucratic news out of Scotland ...

• And a spotlight is thrown onto curling in Wien, aka Vienna, the beautiful capital of Austria ...

• Meanwhile, here’s a French news story on curling – which has nothing to do with the worlds nor the Olympics – and this is certainly something new ...

• Here’s a calendar of new hoped-for holidays, and we agree with February 23, don’t you?

• This blogpost tells us about a typical curling weekend – lots of curling and late nights – in tiny Hanley, Saskatchewan, from the eyes of a retired RCMP dispatcher. Long live grass roots curling in these, sadly, fast-disappearing prairie towns ....

• Bill, from New Jersey, puts The Weakerthans’ Reunion Tour album – and their tune now known as The Curling Song – at number four on his Top 10 list for 2007 ....

• Today’s Winnipeg Free Press sees writer Chris Cariou quoting 2005 Manitoba champion Randy “Lunchbox” Dutiaume as calling himself curling’s Homer Simpson.

“I stumble and I have a booger hanging out of my nose,” Dutiaume explains. “I’m just meat and potatoes.”

God, we love this guy. Thanks heavens the Brier is in Winnipeg, so he’ll be there, no matter how his provincial playdowns end up ...

• DID YOU KNOW: that B.C.’s Blind Championships are underway this weekend?

• And finally, four Canadian teams are in Switzerland battling at the International Bern Damen Cup, including Kelowna’s Kelly Scott (who will stay on for Scotland’s new Glynhill Ladies International the following weekend), Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones, and Calgary’s Shannon Kleibrink and Cheryl Bernard ...

Glenn Howard: Union Guy

Nice job, Mercy.

As promoted yesterday, the fictional Saskatchewan town played host to last night’s “curling” episode – Jihad On Ice – of the CBC-TV show Little Mosque on the Prairie, featuring a few interesting things... besides the world’s first fictional Muslim curling team, of course.

“I was in the bubble bath, up to my pecs in bubbles,” recalled actor Manoj Sood of one particular scene.

“I thought to myself... never in TV history has there been a scene where a Hindu-Canadian actor, playing the part of an orthodox Muslim, is in a bubble bath with a shower cap and at the same time reading a curling manual!”

Note that we said fictional Muslim curling team. Faithful TCN readers know, of course, that there is now a tiny pocket of real curling in Rabat, Morocco, as profiled in the December issue of The Curling News.

As blogreader Mark pointed out yesterday, the curling episode was shot last May “at the fabulous Richmond Hill Curling Club.”

And what of last night’s anticipated cameo appearance of a real curling star? We’ll let First Assistant Director David Manion take up the story.

“The executive producer was from Western Canada and he thought of Kevin Martin,” said Manion. “I said we had the current Canadian and World champion right here in Southern Ontario and he is a great guy (like most curlers I know).”

Take a bow, Glenn Howard (photo by Sophie Giraud).

“It was fun,” said Howard, who finally arrived home last night after from winning Scotland’s Ramada Perth Masters on the weekend.

“The crew treated me like gold. I practiced my lines, all two of them, and I think it worked out okay.

“I really like the part when they dissed me,” Howard continued. “That was funny.”

“(Glenn) was great to work with, knew his lines, hit his mark everytime and took direction well,” concurred Manion. “Also on time and friendly as hell.”

The best part of the story? Manion and Howard do indeed have a personal history, although it dates back to the final of the 1980 Ontario Junior championship many, many moons ago. Manion won, and Cliffy lost.

“(David) called me up and said ‘Glenn, I don’t know if you remember me’,” recalled Howard. “I said ‘Of course I remember you!’. I mean, I was so young back then and it was such a big game, how could I forget?”

Manion, who played lead for the John Kawaja squad out of St. George’s in Toronto – which also featured Graeme McCarrel at third – went on to lose the national junior final to Quebec’s Denis Marchand.

Want more? Check out the February print edition of The Curling News for more exclusives from the Little Mosque set... and perhaps a photo or two of that 1980 junior final thrown in for good measure. You should see the hairstyles.

“It was thoroughly enjoyable,” said Howard.

“I even had to join the union.”

Little Mosque Curling

A reminder, as mentioned in Monday’s January issue preview, that the Canadian comedy Little Mosque on the Prairie returns to television screens tonight (8:00pm ET, CBC) with a curling flourish.

Jihad On Ice sees the local Imam assemble an all-Muslim curling team to challenge a well-known club team. And the episode also features a well-known curling celebrity making a cameo appearance (any guesses?).

This isn’t the show’s first brush with the sport. As blogged almost exactly one year ago, and also written up in the March 2007 issue of The Curling News, last year’s inaugural season saw the cast film a curling promo at the York Curling Club in Newmarket, Ontario. Only some 10 seconds of content was aired, but it had a huge impact.

“As soon as the curling promo piece aired just before season one, people would stop and ask me when does that episode come out?” said actor Manoj Sood, who plays the character Baber Siddiqui (photo by Sophie Giraud).

“I told them that it was just a promo piece and there is no curling episode as such. So many people asked us about the promo and if it pertained to an episode, that production eventually made a decision to make a curling-specific episode in season two.”

And this time, the cast and crew went all-out.

“The promo piece took a a day to make, basically doing a few shots over and over again... there was no real story attached to (it),” Sood said. “In this new episode, we spent almost a week at a curling rink.”

We’ll have more on tonight’s episode tomorrow on the Blog – and extra content in the upcoming February 2008 issue – including a quote from the mystery celebrity. And Sood, for one, sees tonight’s episode as a benchmark “CanCon” moment.

“Until I filmed the promo, and the actual Jihad On Ice episode, I had no idea how many people curled in Canada,” said Sood. “My dad told me that when we first moved to Canada in 1964 that even he had joined a local curling team and curled for quite a few years until we moved to a large city!

“It’s interesting to see and appreciate how important curling is to our country’s cultural and pastime fabric. When people see curling I feel they see Canadian. Our show is very much Canadian and so I feel that Canadian curling and Little Mosque On the Prairie make a great pair. Watch the episode and you will see what I mean!”

January 2008 issue

Howdy folks.

As you may have gathered from our previous post on the Lobel brothers, we’re back from vacation... and not a moment too soon. We’ve got a January issue to promote, after all.

You don’t want to miss this one! Inside we have:

– Open air curling: behold the great outdoors
– Euros 07: Norberg and Murdoch serve notice
– Famous rock band seeks curling stones
– Larry Wood blames it all on television
– Little Mosque goes curling on Jan. 9
– Gold Trail update
– Discovery Channel tells curlers How It’s Made
– Matt Hames behind the scenes at the Rama Skins
– Jill Officer asks Wayne: have the Olympics really ruined curling?
– Teri Lake on a brand new curling club - from the ground up
– The Grand Slam rocked Quebec
– Memories of the 1972 Brier, held at that same Slam arena
– Rodger Schmidt: things that I like
– The CCA asks you to help a friend Discover Curling
– The JVC Curling TV Guide (but of course)

Subscribe here, ladies and gents.

What else is goin’ on?


• Here’s TCN’s Mike Haggerty from across the pond in Scotland, with a special blogreport:

Canada’s world champion Glenn Howard from Ontario won the final of the Ramada Perth Masters yesterday, beating fellow Canadian Kerry Burtnyk from Winnipeg by 6-2.

(Yes, we love how those Scots talk/write – Ed.)

Earlier, Burtnyk had eliminated the last surviving Scottish team with a 9-5 semi-final victory over Atholl’s Gordon Muirhead. The other Scottish teams that qualified for the knockout stages fell at the quarter-final stage, Kilmarnock’s Alan Smith going down by 3-8 by Burtnyk, while Howard beat Stirling’s Logan Gray by 7-0. European champion David Murdoch from Lockerbie also crashed out in the quarter-finals, losing by 1-7 to Switzerland’s Ralph Stöckli, conceding the game after just five ends when the Swiss scored five shots.

(Shots? He must mean points... – Ed.)

After this it took all the way to an extra end before Howard eliminated Stöckli in the semi-finals by 7-5.

The final itself was also a surprisingly one-sided affair, with Burtnyk struggling throughout. Howard opened with single steals in each of the first three ends and then moved further ahead with three shots in the fifth end for a 6-1 lead. Burtnyk could only muster a single shot in the sixth and conceded the game. Howard and his team of Richard Hart, Brent Laing and Craig Savill travel back to Canada with a winner’s cheque for £5,000, while Burtnyk gained £3,400 for his second place finish.

FINAL RESULTS

Quarter-finals: Kerry Burtnyk (Canada) 8, Alan Smith (Kilmarnock) 3; Thomas Ulsrud (Norway) 4, Gordon Muirhead (Atholl) 5 (extra end); Glenn Howard (Canada) 7, Logan Gray (Stirling) 0; Ralph Stöckli (Switzerland) 7, David Murdoch (Lockerbie) 1.
Semi-finals: Burtnyk 9, Muirhead 5; Howard 7, Stockli 5 (extra end).
Final: Burtnyk 2, Howard 6.


• Y’all have read much about the next big thing in women’s curling, one Team Rachel Homan from Ottawa. Surprisingly, despite massive success in the adult ranks, this squad hasn’t been able win the Ontario junior title.

And they were disappointed again last night, when Wilfrid Laurier student Danielle Inglis and her Burlington Curling Club team drew to the four-foot against two Homan stones to win the 2008 championship by a 5-4 count.

The Ottaweans was reportedly devastated by the loss. Homan – whose team lost their first two games of the competition – held back the tears after the match, and told journo Tim Gall that her team played well to get as far as it did. “We just didn't play well (in this game),” Homan said.

Coach Earle Morris said the Inglis team should get full marks, and added he was proud of his team for battling through injuries lead Alison Kreviazuk has a bad knee and Homan herself is believed to have a torn meniscus.

Homan won a tiebreaker and then defeated defending Ontario champion Hollie Nicol’s Kitchener-Waterloo team in semi earlier in the day.

Travis Fanset of St. Thomas won the junior men’s championship, incidentally, with a final-game win over Ottawa’s Neil Sinclair.


• In other junior results, Mary-Jane McGuire won the N.B. women’s title for the third year in a row despite losing two games to former teammate Ashley Howard, the daughter of Russ Howard. McGuire finally beat Howard 10-3 in the semi an then passed Marin McLeod 8-2 in the final. On the men’s side, defending champ Steve Burgess was upset 5-4 in the final by Jon Rennie... in B.C., Vancouver’s Jay Wakefield thumped Darren Nelson of Vernon in the men’s final while Kelly Thompson of Richmond beat Kelsey Samborksky of Kamloops in an extra-end thriller... in PEI, Summerside’s Erin Carmody went undefeated for the second year in a row, winning her title-clinching match 12-4 over Charlottetown’s Katie Sharkey. In men’s play, Spencer Pitre of Alberton must beat 2007 national finalist Brett Gallant of Charlottetown three straight times, starting today, to prevent a Gallant victory... on the rock, Julie Devereaux of St. John’s – led on her sister Stacie’s 2007 Canadian Junior championship team – won the 2008 provincial title with a 7-4 win over clubmate Sammi Adams. The men’s final is underway... Manitoba’s finals are also today, Nova Scotia is wrapping up today and/or tomorrow and three provs – Saskatchewan, Alberta and Northern Ontario – play down this coming weekend...


• Great behind-the-scenes story from Mike Harris, about the late Don Chevrier, in the current online webisode of the Capital One Curlers Corner; check it out ...


• The champions of the Manitoba Curling Tour for this season are the resurgent Mike McEwan team from the Assiniboine-Memorial in Winnipeg, and and Barb Spencer’s Winnipeg Fort Rouge foursome.

McEwen went undefeated with five straight wins in Portage, capturing the MCT men’s division title in a field of 24 teams. With support from B.J. Neufeld, Matt Wozniak and Denni Neufeld, he defeated Ryan Fry 4-2 in the final.

Jeff Stoughton and Rob Fowler could not play in Portage, so Fry and Steve Gould picked up Chris Schille (who plays for Brad Gushue in Newfoundland) and competed as a three-man team all weekend. They earned runner-up cash of $4,000.

McEwen earned $7,000 in prize money plus the MCT berth in the Manitoba Safeway Championship, to be held at the Brandon Keystone Centre, February 13th to 17th, 2008.

Terry McNamee of Brandon and Reid Carruthers of Beausejour received $2,000 apiece for reaching the semi-finals, while Don Spriggs of Portage and James Kirkness of Winnipeg’s Deer Lodge each earned $1,500 as losing quarter-finalists (24 teams – 6 qualifiers).

Spencer skipped her team of Kristen Williamson, Brette Richards and Barb Enright to a $4,000 cheque for a final 11-4 victory over her sister Darcy Robertson of Fort Rouge, who earned $2,000 as the runner-up team in the women's division. Holly Scott of the Granite and Maureen Bonar of Beausejour received $1,000 as semi-finalists (8 teams – 4 qualifiers).

This was the 17th MCT Championship (starting in 1991-92) and caps off the 2007-08 tour season. McEwen’s tour title is his first, and it is a third in the women's division for Spencer, who won previously in 2001-02 and in 2003-04.


• Bob Weeks is stepping it up these days. His Glob & Flail columns – today’s is located here – are running more frequently and now he has officially entered the blogosphere – welcome aboard Bob!


• Finally, the January issue content list above talks about something called Little Mosque (On the Prairie)... check out the webpage for a hint of what’s to come in Wednesday’s episode (January 9). This is a Canadian television show, BTW, although it is rapidly becoming available in other world markets ...