The thrill of victory, and the agony of a commercial break

Joel is not a patient man.
He is a good man, but he is not patient.
I don't know how old he is--maybe forty,
maybe sixty-five--but so far in life
he has never walked anywhere.
He runs, somewhat under control.

Television commercials drive him crazy, or crazier,
but he has a solution: he has a TiVo.
He records everything,
and equipped with the quickest thumb in the west,
he fast-forwards through commercials,
time-outs, trivial stuff such as slow-rising floods,
and sumo wrestling. He says he has perfected
the timing of commercials, able to jump
precisely to the real stuff, again.

He has found the perfect sport
for a man of his impatience:
he loves curling.

In itself, curling is a bit slow,
with granite rocks sliding like molasses
toward a slight depression,
but with the fastest finger flick in the west,
Joel can catch a rock at three frozen moments
in its majestic move toward the bullseye,
and skip all the sweeping, measuring,
lining up, debating, and screaming.

Joel says that the rocks do not listen
to the instructions shouted at them, anyway,
so what is the point of watching it?

As a contractor, Joel is wondering
how he can get his hands on
imperfect, rejected curling rocks.
He wants to use them as deck footings.

He says he can concentrate
a whole curling match
down to a minute and forty-three seconds.
He won't say how.
The details don't interest him.

Figure skating, Joel says, is not a sport:
it is a judged exhibition.
Finger flicking a TiVo is a sport:
someone comes in first, faster.

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