Saturday, September 30, 2006 Neighbor girl, please select my most flattering user pics. If you do, I'll give you a pretty!
Today I slept and slept. I got up late, and Islept in the afternoon, and I nearly slept all night. I'd wake up every few hours and think "The alarm I set to wake me up never went off." and then I'd think, "Is that really so bad?" and then I'd think, "No," and roll over and go back to sleep.
I just got an e-mail from my mother that said in part, "Don't burn the candle at both ends: you're only human.
Gross, I know. I guess she might be right. I'll put a comittee on it, or I'll just ask the little neighbor girl that I pay to maintain my MySpace account to look into it. posted by Frenz | 9/30/2006 08:15:00 PM
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Friday, September 29, 2006 Effing fire me, content challenge
My babies, I have been busy. I spent probably the first 22 years of my life in leisure, and I'm not using to this whirl of gaiety yet. It seems like every time I get closer to turning 23 again, I look back and think, "Wow, my life has gotten pretty crazy! Isn't that fun? Isn't that cool?"
In truth, it is both cool and fun, but the crazy come more from the inside than from the raging tide of trends that swirl around my life at the moment. For example: about a month ago, I ordered a book called Getting Things Done. My housemates were away on tour, and it's always nice to come home to a package if you aren't going to come home to a person. Well, but I couldn't get into the mailbox, and I risked the household's mail getting lost in the dead letter office forever, because I never got around to calling the post office.
Finally, better people than I returned to the Cider House, and they got the mail, like I said in the post that blogger forbade me to post for a day or two. My book, Getting things done was in with the thousands of hot tips for fall in magazine form, and with all the goddamn bills.
When I got to the subway this morning, I realized that I'd left the book at home. The cat will probably eat it in my absence, but it doesn't matter.
I can't read. I can only type and wish for sleep. I was up past three last night, because first it was necessary to ride to Reading, PA with my housemates to see Jucifer, and then it was necessary to empty out my old bedroom completely so that the new housemate can move in. (I'm taking the other room, hoping to break a curse.)
Now it's time for lunch to be over and for me to wash a bus pan of dishes. I hope you're having a wonderful day. posted by Frenz | 9/29/2006 01:37:00 PM
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006 Don't trouble content 'til content troubles you
Maybe we should all just agree, as a species, to forget yesterday. We all skipped a day, across the internet, in history. I was going to update, but then I didn't. Sad story.
My housemate managed to break into our broken-locked mailbox for the first time in nearly a month, and boy did we have a lot of mail. The best mail was a hand-painted t-shirt from my friend Virginia. It says: BUTTRASH and in smaller letters, "The double -edged sword of summer". It also depicts a rashy butt. The shirt and the butt are extra large.
I was going to give everyone a thrill and wear it to practice tonight, but evidently someone from the Discovery Channel will be there to film an anthropologist having and "urban adventure" amongst us. I imagine this involves him putting on skates and us throwing dung at him, but I wouldn't know. My own world is fairly parochial, and I can't ever guess what TV people will think is interesting or worthy of being filmed.
The Sunpaper ran an article on our league today. I'm not sure what photos ran in the paper version of the paper, but if you click the photo gallery to the right of the article online, there's a really good slideshow of photos from the last bout. The audio nearly made me cry, especially when everyone started cheering and stomping when Justice announced the final scores and Dirty Marty and Jimmy Valentine, our announcers, are yelling but getting drowned out. It's been an interesting year. posted by Frenz | 9/27/2006 06:25:00 PM
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Sunday, September 24, 2006 There were plenty of virgins at that festival, but I still have my honor
This morning I looked down at my feet and legs, and they were a mess. Ground-in dirt with the ghostly outlines of fishnets, scabs, big purple bruises, blisters, scrapes. I collapsed into bed without showering when I came home last night. I left the house at 9:15 yesterday morning, and I got in at Jesus-Fuck AM. I spent 14 hours on roller skates, and then the devil told me to go to the bar, so I did, and there was a dance party more of my exhausted roller buddies.
Yesterday I ate food intended for far more famous people than I in the artists's tent, I scrimmaged on slanted, rough asphalt with metal fencing sourrounding the track to make it extra dangerous for us and protect the spectators. I got this close to going on stage with the Flaming Lips, along with the other roller girls, the milkmaids from Fluid Movement, the people dressed as shrubbery, and the people in Santa outfits, but at the last moment, Biff Beef, Head of Security said "No skates on stage!" We offered to take them off, but he said there were too many dancers, and started yelling at us to leave.
Biff had evidently seen someone spill a drink, and decided we were a risk, somebody told me, but Biff hadn't seen how many times we'd all had to walk up and down stairs, navigate through crowds of white-hatted slogan tee'd hecklers and fans, and skate through the tunnel of death that leads from the bleachers to the infield. The floor of the tunnel was shaped like this \_/. Not hard if you're in shoes, and not hard on skates either, if you pick up some speed. Of course, you're going from the brightness of daylight into the gloom of the tunnel, which other people are also using, and the visibility isn't the best. If you did pick up a good bit of speed, your momentum carried you pretty far up the uphill side. Eventually, I got word that if Justice Feelgood Marshall and I kept racing, we'd be kicked out, so from then on I had to inch down the tunnel like a little baby, all because the party cops are afraid of a little exuberance.
My scrimmage team, the black team, skated under the name The Mustache Ryders. Betsy Battleaxe had gotten a deal on false mustaches at target. She and I kept them on as long they would stick to our faces. We both had them for Gnarls Barkley, and we were the super hit of the 20 ft radius, if you can judge that sort of thing by the amount of unsubtle camera phone shots are snapped of you and the amount of people who come up and pose next to you.
People were definitely camera-happy, mustaches or no. A lot of it had to do with the way I was wearing a funny outfit and skates, but a surprising number of people came up and said they'd heard us on the radio, or read articles, and lots of people talked about the bouts they'd been to. I think that we definitely increased our visibility among the drunken dude 18-to-hey-baby set.
Cee-Lo forgot to ask for my autograph, but I might send him one anyway, because I am a deeply decent person. posted by Frenz | 9/24/2006 01:32:00 PM
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Saturday, September 23, 2006 V-fest
In just a few minutes, Sister Midnight is coming to pick me up, and it will be time to puzzle, enrage, and awe the crowds at Virgin Fest with women's flat-track roller derby. Instead of our usual teams, we're broken into The Black Team and The Pink Team. They divided us alphabeticlaly by derby name.
It's funny: given the size of teh festival, it's proabbly possible that more people will see us by accident today than ever see us on purpose at a bout, but I'm not too nervous. This is for none of the marbles. Except honor. posted by Frenz | 9/23/2006 09:20:00 AM
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Friday, September 22, 2006 it sinks
How was the Best of Baltimore Party? It was like all the parties I've been to as an honored guest on roller skates. The floor gets wet and slick, people bump into you, people joke about how funny it would be to push you down the stairs. When you pose for a snapshot with your friend who is moving away soon, you see arms snaking up behind your friend with the camera, and when the flash goes off, three or four more go off with it, so in the pictures, the ones you see at least, your eyes are elsewhere and you're doing something strange with your mouth.
I elbowed some hippy in the ribs. I was watching the musical act, and somebody bumped me hard from the back as they rushed by to get closer to the stage. I rolled wildly for a second, but regained my balance, and stuck an elbow out for more personal space as the first drunk person's friend also jostled through without a token "Excuse me". By the time the hippy came bumping up against everybody, that elbow had some juice to it. We don't smoke no marijuana in Muskogee, son. He started flashing me the peace sign. I started telling him the importance of watching where he was going. Then the rest of the girls formed a wall. I suppose this is what they mean by Girl Power. As the ever-wise Sister Midnight said, it's a shame we didn't win best Turtle Power.
Best of Baltimore, the smuggest little party of the year, is not just for the superlative among us. Regular City Paper advertisers and people who know people also end up with tickets. There are a lot of young people who seem to be at MICA on hair scholarships but probably have hip young businesses with fun rock-n-roll atmospheres, and there are older, squarer individuals who probably also have fun rock-n-roll atmospheres but no fun. There is an open bar, and the party is only from 6:30-9:30, so people were drinking hard and fast.
I guess that when you're the freak show, you have to expect some stares, and there's part of me that eats it up, but it's draining. I drank too much, and the end of the night was marked with the spectacular crash of my dignity breaking upon the rocks. Tomorrow is another day, though.
Tomorrow is a day of exhibition scrimmages at Virginfest. I can't wait 'til Cee-Lo asks for my autograph. posted by Frenz | 9/22/2006 09:49:00 AM
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it sinks
How was the Best of Baltimore Party? It was like all the parties I've been to as an honored guest on roller skates. The floor gets wet and slick, people bump into you, people joke about how funny it would be to push you down the stairs. When you pose for a snapshot with your friend who is moving away soon, you see arms snaking up behind your friend with the camera, and when the flash goes off, three or four more go off with it, so in the pictures, the ones you see at least, your eyes are elsewhere and you're doing something strange with your mouth.
I elbowed some hippy in the ribs. I was watching the musical act, and somebody bumped me hard from the back as they rushed by to get closer to the stage. I rolled wildly for a second, but regained my balance, and stuck an elbow out for more personal space as the first drunk person's friend also jostled through without a token "Excuse me". By the time the hippy came bumping up against everybody, that elbow had some juice to it. We don't smoke no marijuana in Muskogee, son. He started flashing me the peace sign. I started telling him the importance of watching where he was going. Then the rest of the girls formed a wall. I suppose this is what they mean by Girl Power. As the ever-wise Sister Midnight said, it's a shame we didn't win best Turtle Power.
Best of Baltimore, the smuggest little party of the year, is not just for the superlative among us. Regular City Paper advertisers and people who know people also end up with tickets. There are a lot of young people who seem to be at MICA on hair scholarships but probably have hip young businesses with fun rock-n-roll atmospheres, and there are older, squarer individuals who probably also have fun rock-n-roll atmospheres but no fun. There is an open bar, and the party is only from 6:30-9:30, so people were drinking hard and fast.
I guess that when you're the freak show, you have to expect some stares, and there's part of me that eats it up, but it's draining. I drank too much, and the end of the night was marked with the spectacular crash of my dignity breaking upon the rocks. Tomorrow is another day, though.
Tomorrow is a day of exhibition scrimmages at Virginfest. I can't wait 'til Cee-Lo asks for my autograph. posted by Frenz | 9/22/2006 09:49:00 AM
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Thursday, September 21, 2006 The big "Will it Float?" Party
In a little while, it will be time to egregiously abuse one of the lavish single-occupancy bathrooms at work and get ready to exude Girl Power and menace at the Best of Baltimore party. City Paper is trying to kill those in which it has identified Girl Power, because we are required to be on skates for the first hour of the three-hour party, and rumor has it there's an open bar. Luckily, it's the off season, and I can break my legs all I want.
Just kidding. The off season is a dangerous myth. posted by Frenz | 9/21/2006 04:17:00 PM
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Wednesday, September 20, 2006 It's about time!
It turns out that Charm City Roller Girls won a Best of Baltimore award from City Paper. Right there on page 54. "Best girl power," whatever that means. I suppose they think our perpetual counterclockwise motion will fuel the energy generating stations of the future. We are like the waves, or sunshine.
Still, we won! In your face, actual avowed feminist organizations!
It's a kick. For a town of about six people, Baltimore takes these awards more seriously than it would like to admit, probably because the City Paper gives umpty-seven of these awards every fall. If you don't brush up against one of them somehow, even if it's in a tangenital "That's MY shoe store! I go to the best shoe store in all of Baltimore!" way, you begin to feel a little small.
I hope they send us all copies of the award. I'm going to put it up in the kitchen, next to my housemates' award from last year. posted by Frenz | 9/20/2006 08:33:00 AM
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Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Sports cliches trotted out
On instant messenger the other day, a friend asked me how I was doing, and I told him all kinds of stuff. Then he asked, "So, how's stuff besides roller derby?" and I was like, "What do you mean?" Roller derby is a beautiful python, and I am merely a bulge in its belly.
I keep thinking about the last bout in amazement. I still can't believe it.
The way I look at it is that the Night Terors won, not that the Speed Regime lost. It was a close, hard-fought game, and as usual, the Regime played incredibly well. Losing to the Mods at Blind Rage was a turning point for us, I think. We started working hard as individuals and as a team to beat them in the playoffs, and we increased our momentum from there. In the past two months or so, three of us quit smoking and several more of us cut back dramatically.
I know I cut way back on drinking, and by extension, going to bars, and by further extension, secondhand smoking. Since Tracy moved out, I've been taking public transit and walking to get everywhere.
People on my team have gotten gym memberships (and started going to punishing fitness classes early in the mornings and on Saturdays). All of us started skating outdoors regularly, which gives you a workout and improved level of balance that you don't get skating on smooth wooden floor twice a week. For at least the past month, there have been about three Night Terrors a day going to Druid Hill Park to skate around the trails. Sometimes, we've had to get up early in the morning with the first wave of dog walkers and joggers and skate blearily around 'til we woke up.
We increased our attendance at practices, which, for some of my teammates who are back in school, involved moving the earth. We watched bout footage, which was humbling, especially our last bout against the Speed Regime. Watching yourself get knocked down to hard wooden floor to a "Boooooing!" sound effect is not something one expects to happen in one's adult life. My skating is awful on that DVD. Tottery and knock-kneed as a baby pony's walk, and about as fast and agile.
Once we got past the horrific sight of ourselves sucking out loud, though, we noticed a clear pattern of the way Speed Regime jammers were moving on the track. We also noticed flaws in our own defense that we'd known were there but hadn't been able to pinpoint, not to mention some overall patterns of play that seemed to hold true no matter which two teams were playing.
The week before the playoff game against the Mods, there was a lot of conflict on the team. It didn't help that I was big, walking, raw wound because of personal stuff, and that I damn near went door to door to alienate my teammates. After we got through that and won the playoff game anyway, I think we began talking to each other more, and goofing off at practices more, which helped us communicate better in the pack and work better together to knock other people down.
One of the reasons we worked so hard is because the Speed Regime is an incredibly good team, and we knew it would take incredible effort to win against them. I think, too, that from the start my team has felt a little like the underdogs. When the teams were first divided last winter, ours was one that had no coaches and no baord members. I don't think it was an intentional slight, but it illustrated that a lot of The Turquoise Team (as we were originally known) were not necessarily get-alongers, and none of us had fallen easily into a derby clique. We were the nerdy, artsy team. We had some of the smallest skaters on the league (including the sorely-missed Meanie Mouse). We took forever to decide anything. Our team theme alone was the result of weeks of bitter wrangling, due in part to the way we favored consensus rather than majority rule in our decision making.
I think in the end, this tendancy towards consensus is what helped us. Our last roster was a a group effort, where those of us who were able to make time to meet got together with some butcher paper and number 2 pencils and erased line-up after line-up until we found the ones that seemed right. We came up with plays together, and talked to the people whe knew would be in the pack with us.
My shtick for a long time has been that derby is a 24 hour sport about feelings, and I think that getting the "feelings" portion of the sport under control, along with all the training we did, is what helped us the most.
(crossposted to my other journal, because I am la-Z.) posted by Frenz | 9/19/2006 09:09:00 PM
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Monday, September 18, 2006 Night Terrors Win!
Night Terrors 57. Speed Regime 55.
No one burned any cars, which I guess was nice of them, but fans did rush the rink and lift Joy Collision, who scored 10 points to the Speed Regime's 2 in the last jam, into the air as she held the championship trophy. The DJs played "We are the champions". We were!
Thanks to everyone who came out. I'll post more details and pictures later, but now it is time to be very still. posted by Frenz | 9/18/2006 04:04:00 PM
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Sunday, September 17, 2006 In a town this size/ there's no place to hide
Hampdenfest went ahead OK without the cookies I ruined. I saw tons of people I hadn't seen in a while. I guess the demographic Hampdenfest attracts is what makes me feel like I know eveyrbody in Baltimore, and that really, that isn't the case, because there are dozens of people I haven't yet crossed paths with. Still, the town felt very small yesterday, in a good way.
This afternoon is the championship bout, and I have to get ready. posted by Frenz | 9/17/2006 09:23:00 AM
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Saturday, September 16, 2006 Liveblogging 9-12 minutes of Saturday
Even though I had promised to bring "Frenzy Lohan's Party Mix Out of Control" to today's bakesale, I have cookies baking in the oven instead. Party mix turns out o be kind of expensive to produce if you buy it ingrediaent by ingrediaent. I took the coward's way out, I suppose, but people like cookies. Cowards, too.
I'm also doing some groundwork for today's Transit Challenge. Do I wait for a bus that should take me exactly where I need to go, or do I take the Light Rail and walk a mile from the stop to my destination? On paper, it seems obvious, but Transit Challlenge is not played on paper.
Neither is baking challenge. I just went to check the cookies. Raw on top, burned on the bottom.
Make it work. posted by Frenz | 9/16/2006 09:58:00 AM
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Friday, September 15, 2006 Other sources say it's Ann Calvello
It turns out that the patron saint of roller skating, Lydwina of Schiedam, spent 40 years in agony after breaking a rib from an ice skating fall. It seems like tacking rollerskating onto her saintly patronage obligations, along with ice skating and prolonged illness, is both contrived and cruel.
In other news, it is still raining, and it will rain forever. I don't let it get me down, though. The only thing that could really get me down would be 40 years of a gangrenous broken rib. posted by Frenz | 9/15/2006 04:50:00 PM
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Thursday, September 14, 2006 Come on Sunday. Wear blue.
Soon I have to get my uniform in order, for the bout on Sunday and for Hampdenfest on Saturday. I have new wheels, and new bearings. A smooth talking salesman at the skatepark convinced me that the bearings were better than their low ABEC rating implies, and they were packaged in tins that looked like throwing stars. I don't see how they could be anything less than fine. posted by Frenz | 9/14/2006 09:06:00 PM
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Wednesday, September 13, 2006 If that diamond ring turns brass
Mama's gonna write a post and cover her ass. I have a long idea for a longish post, but if I start typing now, I might not finish before midnight, which is also the time I will be watching Project Runway, since I almost always have to miss it because of practice. My housemates fear Tivo, because some little elves who live in the cable company distract the guy who's in charge of noticing that maybe we have mysterious free cable. They are afraid that Tivo will frighten the elves. What assholes! posted by Frenz | 9/13/2006 11:10:00 PM
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Aw, dang
Yes, well, so, obviously I didn't write a post yesterday. I forgot. I am very bad at this challenge. I tell you, though, internet, if you get blue without me, just scroll down and look at that clip of the leg whip. It's mesmerizing, and you'll forget all about the written word.
Now, if you're in Baltimore, Maryland, (as all right-thinking people should be), turn on your radio at noon today, find 103.7 FM and the Ed Norris show, and listen for the sweet sound of my voice. I'll be there, along with Mercy Less and several other members of the Mobtown Maulers, the travel team of the Charm City Roller Girls. It's infotainment you can use, so unplug your stupid ipod, because we're going to radioland to party like it's 1935. posted by Frenz | 9/13/2006 10:39:00 AM
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Monday, September 11, 2006 Go, go, rain away
Many of you may have forgotten that this Sunday is the CCRG Championship Bout, but I haven't. I just got new bearings the other day, and they came in very appealing packaging, so I just don't see a downside. I am very tired, and this is all I am going to type today. posted by Frenz | 9/11/2006 04:53:00 PM
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Content takes a holiday
Well, I screwed up, and I didn't post at all on 9/10/06, but I know and you know that I did remotely, from my heart. posted by Frenz | 9/11/2006 05:44:00 AM
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Saturday, September 09, 2006 What TIME is it?
Time to stay in the content challenge running! I'd nearly forgotten. It's also 11:25 on a Saturday night, and I'm not at the party I said I'd go to. I have faith that it will carry on without me. I trust my teammates to represent us adequately, and I also chickened out. Fish gotta swim. Chickens gotta chicken. posted by Frenz | 9/09/2006 11:30:00 PM
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Friday, September 08, 2006 Look at this
Then look again.
That's a clip from the Bumberbout, the tournament that the Rat City Rollergirls hosted at the Bumbershoot music festival in Seattle, and what's happening, in barest terms, is that D-Bomb is whipping Femme Fatale forward ahead of the pack, with her leg.
The move is ridiculous, amazing, mind-blowing. Think about wheels, shifting weights, transfers of momentum, balance, and capacity for hip rotation. Think about split-second decisions, and physics. Think about phenomenal trust.
That's still not why this clip is significant.
These skaters are sisters, and within their own league, they're on opposing teams, so they never get to play together, but on their travel team they can join forces, so there's a human interest angle if you like those, but that's not it either.
Probably a hundred different girls in the next month or so are going to break their legs trying to get this down, but maybe a few won't. They'll keep practicing, and they'll teach a couple people each. Some of them will also break their legs, but again, some of them won't. Maybe this isn't like watching the invention of the slam dunk or seeing the first triple axle. For all I know, this isn't the invention at all, and some leagues have been doing this move forever, in their home towns, in front of their fans without the eyes of the world on them. Maybe once enough girls get this move down and it becomes expected, it won't be as effective. Maybe the cavalcade of snapped fibulas will keep it from ever catching on. (I doubt it.)
I don't know, but I think, and I think this is a manifestation of something amazing happening. Derby skaters across the country have felt it for a long time, and many more will feel it as leagues pop up out of nowhere like a fairy ring in big cities and podunk towns all over the world (Canada, the U.K., Germany, and New Zealand all have cities with leagues now, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more). What we know keeps us from getting downhearted the hundredth time someone insinuates that this is a sideshow or a cat fight. It keeps us doing this, joyfully, even as the money flies out of our bank accounts on gossamer wings, as we neglect our jobs and families, as our relationships break under the strain, as we get hurt again.
Suppose you wanted to start a basketball league, but anybody you met who'd even heard of basketball either thought that you still played it with a peach basket and some gumption, or they'd seen the Harlem Globetrotters when they were a kid. Suppose you knew that in your career in basketball, if you made a cent off the sport it would be because you started a business that supported its growth. You'd never get a scholarship. You didn't even know how to dribble, and nobody else you knew did either, but one night an angel whispered in your ear, and from then on you burned to play basketball.
Suppose you went around your hometown looking for people to play with, and most people thought you were an idiot (or they talked to you about peach baskets and the Harlem Globetrotters), but some people, almost before you'd finished your pitch said, "Yes. Yes. When? Where. I am doing this and you can't stop me."
I could stretch the simile, like, suppose you had to get somebody to watch your kids while you did this, and suppose you had to go around begging auditoriums and warehouses for a place to play, and you had to do your own publicity and come up with a standard set of rules, and on and on, but I'm not one to belabor a point.
Roller derby is a sport that people in the U.S. just made up one day, and its got America's miraculous, grubby fingerprints all over it. We love to make something out of nothing, (or to steal and pretend that what we stole was nothing), we love something new. We love the counterclockwise circle.
The story of the gensis of roller derby starts out boring. During the depression, people went for extreme, punishing fads and competitions, largely because they were broke. When Leo Seltzer came up with the spark for it, roller derby was equivalent to a dance marathon: hard to do, yet monotonous, grueling, yet repetive. Teams of one man and one woman had to circle a track in shifts until they had skated, in lap after lap, the distance between New York and Los Angeles. People liked it, I guess, because it beat watching the radio, but it wasn't a sensation until the first miracle of derby occurred.
Damon Runyan, the writer who split his energies between writing popular stories about small time hoods and floozies on Broadway and writing about sports, told Leo Selzter (in my mind, he sounds just like Jimmy Durante and speaks exclusively in the Runyonesque slang he made famous) that people really liked hitting, and that maybe the sport would be more successful if there was contact between the skaters.
Now, here is one of the coincidences that makes me suspect that roller derby is more than somewhat supernatural. Look at what the wikipedia says here: "He spun tales of gamblers, petty thieves, actors and gangsters; few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead to be known as "Nathan Detroit", "Big Jule", "Harry the Horse", "Good Time Charlie", "Dave the Dude", and so on." Damon Runyon was obviously a man who knew the power and beauty of an implausible name, of razzle dazzle. Here on another website, it says "Many of the great sportswriters of the time often let poetry creep into their work, but it would be a mistake to say the same about Runyon. He was a poet at heart who wrote about sports."
And here we come, back in a counterclockwise circle, to derby as I know it. This sport is lousy with poets, and if not poets, mathmeticians, and if not mathmeticians, strippers. Derby, this made-up sport, is the home of people who'd ordinarily have a pretty hard time getting paid or rewarded for their athletic abilities. (They're called women! Rimshot! Hayo. Take note, though: derby has included women since it began, and it was one of the first sports where a woman could be a professional athlete.)
Some derby skaters have played sports their whole lives until they got out of school and there was no one to play with, and these skaters are ecstatic to go back to a sport again. Lots of us, though, lots and lots of us, were too unpopular to get picked for teams, or too dreamy to watch the sky for the oncoming ball. Too fat, too short, too skinny. Some of were taught that sports interfered with the rich inner life of the mind. Maybe everyone we knew who loved sports also happened to be a complete jackass, full of malice and loathing and ready to torture anyone they could.
So, we became poets in our hearts, and a lot of never knew until our own miracles occurred and when we heard "roller derby" an instant, blind "Yes!" clicked in our heads, we never knew what we could do. Because of all the poets, we have skate names, team themes, hot uniforms...everything that draws other poets in, and all of us poets who up 'til now treated our bodies like big dumb animals we had to herd around are beginning to wonder what would happen if we tried to balance on one leg and whip somebody forward with the other.
Looking at a clip of D-Bomb leg-whipping Femme Fatale, I see a hundred new paths of what we can do, and only one of them leads to breaking our legs. posted by Frenz | 9/08/2006 12:49:00 PM
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Thursday, September 07, 2006 Putty Hill Skateland, Home of the Charm City Roller Girls
Down is up, left is right, and trees are growing upside down. Putty Hill Skateland and Charm City Roller Girls have come to an agreement that Putty Hill Skateland will remain not just a skating rink, but our official home rink, for another year. We're getting our logo and the boundaries of the track painted on the floor, and a big sign out front. Within the next few months, we'll be having special bouts against out of town leagues. If that wasn't exciting enough, we'll have a chance to host other events at Skateland. Can you say SKATEOFF? LOCK-IN?
Did we just save Skateland? I don't know, but we gave it a reprieve. My favorite adult weirdos from open skate, not to mention all the little kids who like to cut in front of me with no warning, and the teens on awkward dates their parents drove them to, and everybody! We've all still got a place to go. Open skate nights start up again September 14.
I never thought I'd be this attached to a big ugly barn of a building, but I am, I am!
Astute readers may know that the above paragraph has been on other internets than this, but I wrote it, and I wrote it today, so I think it still counts for content challenge.
Remember, the Charm City Roller Girls' Season Championship is not this Sunday, but next Sunday, September 17, at a new time. Doors at 3:00, bout at 4:00. My team, The Night Terrors are playing the (so far) undefeated Speed Regime for the first place spot. I have it on good authority that the Speed Regime is so worried about playing us that they're waterboarding each other out of sheer nervous exuberance. (Credit here goes to CCRG announcer Dirty Marty for the original version of this joke.)
The Night Terrors aren't worried. The Night Terrors are just menacing. posted by Frenz | 9/07/2006 10:42:00 AM
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Wednesday, September 06, 2006 David has called for a content challenge, so here is some content.
Last night I was reading before I went to sleep, and I thought I heard somebody trying to get into the house. Since I've overfed the pets, they make human-sized amounts of noise sometimes, and I know that, so that's what I told myself. I tried to go back to reading.
Just then, the power went out all over the neighborhood. All you could hear were crickets and the cats, who were fighting with each other. I decided that I should probably just go to sleep.
The moment I rolled over, someone's home burglar alarm started going off and didn't stop for about five minutes. The cats growled at it instead.
This morning I tried to carry the kombucha culture I'd grown into work to give to a lucky co-worker, and it fell over and leaked onto my skirt, so I smell a little of green tea and vinegar.
In spite of all that, it's been a pretty good day. posted by Frenz | 9/06/2006 04:03:00 PM
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Monday, September 04, 2006 Baby, you are so talented.
This afternoon David, a very kind person, drove me all over town so I could get a transit pass. First we went to the laundromat. "They sell bus passes at the laundromat?" "But it makes so much sense!" The laundromat was all out of bus passes, but the machine at the ball park had them in stock, so now I can go anywhere in town in a limited number of directions.
My dad wrote me an e-mail where he suggested I go visit H.L. Mencken's old house. I probably won't, but let's imagine, for a moment, that I'm the kind of person who goes to museums. It all seems so classy! Maybe I'll break myself of saying, "Where's that at?" too. I'm already eating vegetable after godforsaken vegetable. You wouldn't know me, unless you already did.
My dad also included a joke about a pig and a constipated boa constrictor. My friend Betsy Battleaxe and I have a running contest to see who can tell the best Dad jokes in day to day conversation, and I'd gotten a little cocky. I saw that joke, whose punchline was "This too shall pass", and I was humbled. I can watch Blazing Saddles until I'm blue in the face, and I'll come close to getting it, because that movie incorporates just about every conceivable touchstone of Dad humor, but there is no substitute for 70-odd years of puns and poop jokes. Maybe if you were a hard-drinking five year old, you could do it, but you'd have to have problems with your back.
I keep going back and editing this post: when I read over it, it sounds cruel, or at least contemptuous, which isn't what I'm after at all. Everything I say or write sounds a little bitter. This too shall pass. posted by Frenz | 9/04/2006 09:53:00 PM
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Saturday, September 02, 2006 Time and space are meaningless...in Baltimore!
It's always two years ago, it seems.
This morning I got and went out in the rain looking for a monthly transit pass. I walked to the nearest light rail stop, where someone had been trying to break into the machines. Instead of selling passes, these machines were sending out alarm beeps and flashing gibberish on their screens.
Even though a woman who was waiting told me that there was no reason to walk "They cna't ticket you for one stop! All they can do is throw you off." , I went a few blocks over to the next closest stop, where one machine was dark and silent, and the other refused to sell anything but round trip tickets and senior citizens passes.
I gave up and went to the hardware store to buy a lock for my gym locker. As usual, there were about eight people working, three customers, and a dog. I feel like my life just snapped back to where it was before, and that this is its default setting now. posted by Frenz | 9/02/2006 12:33:00 PM
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