Family Matters

The other day I heard a reference, on one of my very diverse themed sports radio shows, regarding the television show Family Matters. They said it was the second longest running sitcom starring predominantly African-Americans. It was second to The Jeffersons. No Cosby Show?? Well, Cosby was on for 8 years and Family Matters was on for 10. Get this, it was a spin off of Perfect Strangers!! Yep, the show with Bronson Pinchot playing Balki. Too funny. Anyway, I had NO IDEA what Family Matters was as I've never actually seen an episode. Turns out, it's the show with Steve Urkel on it, even though he was actually the next door neighbor originally. It just seems funny to me that with all the sitcoms I watch (I'm currently Tivoing Barney Miller episodes from 1975), that I've never seen an episode of that show.



On Tuesday the Olympics showed the USA vs. Germany in curling. If you aren't familiar with curling, it's played on a straight, flat sheet of ice and is basically like Bocce. The object is to end up with the most stones, or rocks, closest to the center dot in the "house" ( a series of concentric circles at either end of the playing surface).


Here's a stone or rock. It's made of polished granite and weighs about 40 pounds.













Here are four sheets side-by-side which is pretty common for curling tournaments. Four games can be played at once. Each game is made up of 10 ends, which are like innings in baseball.







Anyway, I mention curling because our Skip (the captain and final thrower) sucks!!! He was awful against the Krauts, though to be fair, the German Skip is 38 and might be the most experienced athlete in the olympics this time around. The dude made our Skip look like a Lead throwing Light and short of the Hog Line. Unfortunately, our team followed the 7-5 loss to Germany with a 6-5 loss to Norway and then a 7-6 loss to Switzerland. 0-3, crap. Germany is 1-2 and Norway is 1-1, so it's not like we're playing all the tough guys, though the Swiss are 2-0.