I’d like to start by saying that the Winter Olympics as a whole produces about as much suspense as a mug of warm beer, which may be because I become snow blind if I watch for too long.
Now, to curling. Whenever I walk into a common room or by a television that isn’t playing men’s hockey, I usually see an ice target littered with pottery. And when curling isn’t on, you can tell it’s all anyone is thinking about.
It’s the darling of the Winter Olympics, and it is on the verge of some kind of baby Renaissance. Like an extremely lazy Polar bear, curling hibernates for four years at a time from our minds and reemerges to an America that neither knows nor cares much for the sport, unless a circumstance arose during the hiatus which required one to think of something that, against all odds, was ever broadcast on television.
The issue I have with curling is not our leap-year relationship with it (which borders both on fetishism and sarcasm), but rather, its vulnerability to the insatiable hunger of the death culture that is hipsterdom.
By co-opting anything that would otherwise drift away gently with the rest of our flighty trends, the hipster cannot be trusted with navigating culture, and furthermore, should be stripped of its right to sarcasm. Curling is nearing an athletic sarcastic peak, or a sarcleticism. If we look at the brief history of the hipster’s cultural domination, we see that sports have not been an integral part of their parasitic protocol. I would argue that “soft” sports like bocce, bowling, horseshoes, croquet, or even rock paper scissors (a debatable one) are hipster-ready due to the lack of coordination required to play them successfully. “Harder” sports like the b-balls, soccer, rugby, football, et cetera are hipster-repellant for many reasons, one being that cigarettes are hard to smoke with balls in hand. Curling is ball-less, uses brooms in an unconventional manner, and does not have specific rules against clothing or jewelry. Can anyone say Williamsburg Curling League?
My solution? The only way to protect curling from hipster takeover is to ignore it completely. We must wash our hands of our obsession with this freakishly dull and un-American (oh, but it’s so complex and nuanced! So is drinking milk if you follow it far enough) and leave it in the past like we did Everybody Loves Raymond. Yes, there are still reruns, or for all I know new episodes, but even if I were to stumble upon the show I would immediately tell myself it was just a mirage, like when Neo sees the black cat twice in The Matrix. And no, there’s no Trinity nearby to ask me if it was the same damn Ray (Romano).
To deny is not always to decry, and my proposal to let curling be will actually save the sport for the rest of the world and keep America on the straight and narrow. Now if we could just reinvent the mullet and rat tail so people can finally wear these styles without looking ironic, we’ll finally be partying like its 2010.
