Random March Musings

 Welp.  It seems I'm doing just so well keeping up with the blogamathing.

Can't blame being terribly busy for February, because while we were able to keep ourselves from going stir crazy, it won't be like it will be in four weeks, where I'll be on the road six or seven days out of the week.

I'll blame the Olympics, which were in February.

Also, birthdays.  My birthday, Shyam's and my mother's are all in February, and we each celebrate it with ritual combat, and I'm going to tell you that at 49, that takes longer and longer to recover from.

Olympics?  It's nice having a job that lets you enjoy something, from time to time.  

Enjoyed this year's Olympiad from Milan/Cortina.  Men's and women's Ice Hockey were my main focus, but caught a good deal of curling, and was mesmerized almost daily for a few minutes by everything doing on the ice slide....luge, skeleton, bobsled....all look like means to certain injury.  And now that we're past the Winter Olympics, will somebody please finally just admit that two man luge is a drinking game that just got out of hand?

I didn't lose any family relations over this Olympics, which is a small relief.  A cousin popped off after the Last Supper depiction at the beginning of the Paris Olympics in 2024, calling it an attack, and that Christians needed to fight back.  I responded with about a dozen pop culture depictions of the Last Supper, and mentioned that philosophical attacks are one of the biggest arrows in Christianity's quiver over the years, so that glass house is nearly windowless at this point....

And I lost contact with that cousin.  Blocked across all social media.  

Which sucks.

But no familial relations destroyed by this Olympiad.

-----

Tangentially related to the Olympics is a book I read:

Cullen co-hosts What is a Jeopardy Podcast? which is a weekly listen, and also hosted a mini-series on a scandal in the Curling Community called Broomgate, which I really recommend if you're looking for a good listen.  I also recommend his book, which is easily the best book on Curling I've ever read.  Considering I've read two, I guess it mean's in the better book on Curling I've ever read.

Funny, and a bit self-deprecating, it's not lacking for passion for the game.  

The book occasionally gets granular with personalities and events, but it just underlines how much Cullen appreciates the game and the people who've played it, and worked to bring it to the prominence its achieved.

Early in the book, he mentions a curling venue, Tee Line,  in Nashville, and I might be tempted to wander out to Middle Tennessee to give the game a try, even though I'm possibly nearly as athletic as one of the stones ....

-----

Your old pal Tommy just looked at the prices of the aforementioned Tee Line in Nashville.  And it's not prohibitive, but it's still more than my mind, which is stuck in about 2009 when it comes to expenditures, wants to pay for things.

I guess everybody needs to make money.  And Curling Venues aren't free to build.  So I get it.  

Excuse me while I grumble to myself that sometimes it just feels like there's somebody on every corner looking to charge you $39.95 just for existing.

-----

A little bit more Teevee that Shyam and I have watched.  We wandered into the world of Taskmaster a couple years back, and from Taskmaster I've wandered to Eight out of 10 Cats, and even more into Eight Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown in the mornings, while she gets ready for work.

Prime recommended this one, a variant on a game show that apparently has iterations from a couple dozen countries....from Norway to Thailand to Argentina to Poland.

Simple enough concept.  10 comedians, actors or personalities are locked together in a room, and the main rule is that you are not allowed to laugh.  Using soccer rules, one laugh warrants you a yellow card, and a second in the 6-hour period gets you ejected from the game.

No prize is mentioned that I can recall in this British variation, so the whole shebang may have been just for pride, shits and giggles.  Considering that most of these actors and comedians have been cross-pollinating on each other's panel shows for years, many of them knew that there were buttons to be pushed among their competitors.  It was also interesting to see how difficult they thought it might be to get Bob Mortimer, Judi Gold and Richard Ayoade to break.  (Spoilers:  Indeed, it was Mortimer & Ayoade who came down to the last, and Judi Gold essentially being taken out by an accidental creak of a chair more than any attempt to get her to laugh).

It turned into an interesting psychological game to watch, watching people essentially torture themselves by not giving in to the urge to laugh.  A couple players kept themselves in a dark mindset.  A couple disassociated:  watching Harriet Kemsley maintain a 1000-yard stare for much of the show was somehow the highlight of it for me.

We've moved on to the Canadian version, which doesn't seem to have the same chemistry:  not sure how many of the 10 comedians knew each other beforehand.  It's fun, and it's an interesting mix to have Tom Green, Dave Foley, Caroline Rhea and Colin Mochrie rubbing elbows with K. Trevor Wilson and Mae Martin (another Taskmaster favorite).  

We give high marks to the first season of the UK version, and look forward to the second season, that airs on Prime later this month......