Curling, Etcetera_ A Whole Bunch of Stuff About the Roaring Game - Bob Weeks [11]
The movie’s villain, Algernon, then plants a bomb in a rock and slides it down the ice toward the four musicians. Ringo sweeps the stone, which is smoking at this point. The other three realize what is in the stone, grab Ringo, and run away. Algernon, who expected the rock to explode before the boys exited, goes to check on his bomb and arrives just as it explodes.
Men with Brooms
The only feature film ever made that used curling as an underlying theme was Men with Brooms, starring Paul Gross of Due South fame. A few facts about the movie:
• The title came from a meeting between Gross and Alliance Atlantis head Robert Lantos. When Gross told him he wanted to make a truly Canadian movie and use curling as the central theme, Lantos said: “You mean that sport that has men with brooms?”
• The movie about curling drew some unusual reactions. In November 1999, Gross told the Toronto Sun: “When I was in Los Angeles recently, I told people I was doing this thing about curling. It was as though I had farted. They didn’t know where to look.”
• A number of top curlers were given cameos in the movie, including two-time Canadian champion Jeff Stoughton as well as 1983 world champion Paul Savage, who played the role of the television announcer.
• Paul Gross didn’t know how to curl prior to his on-screen debut and said he used the book Curling For Dummies as his bible during the filming.
• Members of the rock group The Tragically Hip appeared as a curling team, representing Kingston, Ontario, their hometown.
• James Alodi, who played Neil Bucyk, one of the members of the team at the centre of the movie, fell and injured both elbows during the movie’s filming. His injury, bone chips, hurt so much he wasn’t able to rest his elbows on a table for weeks.
• The film opened on March 8, 2002, and set a Canadian record for opening weekend sales, with more than $1.1 million brought in at the box office. The movie opened on 213 screens. In the United States, however, it opened in September 2002 on a grand total of just 27 screens and brought in $14,765.
• A number of curling errors show up in the movie. For one, the scoreboard rarely reflects the scoring as shown on the ice.
• The budget for the movie was estimated at $7.5 million, quite small for a feature film.
NAME THAT CORN
Although they’re not even made any more, corn brooms once ruled the ice, at least in North America. It wasn’t until the 1970s that push brooms took over as the dominant choice for curlers of all levels. Over the years, many brooms came and went. Here are the names of a few of the more popular corn brooms of years gone by:
Rockmaster x-11
Zebra
Little Beaver
Little Otter
Little Mink
Mississauga Rattler
Pro Polka Dot
Wildcat
Thunder
8-Ender
Whipper Snapper
THE KING OF SWING
Shorty Jenkins is well-known as the first truly great icemaker in curling. Over the years he has established many techniques for making the playing surface better, and in the process he has become a well-recognized figure at major curling events. Here are some facts about the man:
• His first name is really Clarence.
• He was raised in an orphanage in Victoria, British Columbia.
• He served in the Canadian Air Force.
• He competed in the 1974 Ontario men’s curling championships and experienced such bad playing conditions, he decided he would do something about it and started a career as an icemaker.
• He was the first person to time how long it took rocks to travel down the ice. He used his method to judge the condition of his surface, but it has become a much-used way of determining the changing speed of the ice by competitive teams.
• He used an infrared gun to determine the temperature of the ice and learned that different colour rock handles can absorb different amounts of heat, which can affect their speed.
• He starred in his own Tim Hortons television commercial, which was later spoofed by the Canadian comedy