Saturday 14 December 2013

Sb liveblog: bout 3 & 4

I have a bit of a break now, and there is the second 1-year bout on. There is a fair amount of good talent here in milk vs cookies. They are back bridging and walling up, and acting on power jams. And bleeding on the track apparently so emts have to clean it up:

The teams are mixed from leagues so usually they are pretty close in skill. Final score: cookies 120, milk 66.

Second intermediate bout was also pretty good, and and you could see a lot more blockers switching from defense to offense. And there was a lot more talking.

I picked intermediate this time since I don't think I would make it in the advanced bout, but even at some pointswith  intermediate I felt as if it wasn't as hard as I had expected. 

Anyway, then that bout was over and it was time for mixed skills!
 
Yay!


Sb liveblog: bout 1

The first intermediate bout was awesome!

Also, there were people wearing this:

I jammed a fair bit and didn't go to the box, hooray! The floor was pretty brutal and I fell a bit. But I also managed to hit people and they fell! Yay! Anyway, my shins are a bit sore from all the concrete pounding, and we only lost by 6 points, but it was a good start to year 2!

Sb liveblog: we have arrived!

Hello Richmond!! Our first bout just started for people under one years experience. So far we are just warming up while the first year bout is going on. Whee! 

Friday 13 December 2013

Seasons Beatings, the second year: the night before

So here I am packing seasons beatings again. However, this year I managed to only pack two bags of food, which is equivalent to about this much:

That foil thing is two PB&Banana and two PB, Nutella and Banana sandwiches.

Goliath once said that I take enough food to a bout with me to feed a small village. Heh.

I'm super stoked to be driving up tomorrow to see and skate with all the awesome people I met last year! Yeah! 

(Also, this post was a sneaky way for me to test my liveblogging capacities. Phew!)

Seasons Beatings, the second year now liveblogged!!

So a few exciting things:

1. I now have entered the 21st century and have a smartphone.

2. I am going to Season's Beatings again this year. It is this Saturday! We're driving up in the morning and my first bout is at 11:45.

This time will be mega cool; the people I skated with last year in the beginner division have been in touch and we're all stoked to go back to where we met (but now in the intermediate group) and also, there'll be more people from NRV headed up (and now that I know them better, it's like there are more friends all around. Yeah!). So hopefully that will be good. Last year it was super fun although afterwards I could barely walk or do anything.

So what I'm going to do is try to liveblog the event if I can get my phone and blogger to co-operate. Yeah!

Monday 2 December 2013

League of Legends gets onto the derby franchise

In my non-derby time I am a bit of a gamer nerd. A few weeks ago, Blizzard made a roller derby alternate outfit for one of the chars in their League of Legends clone.


She's supposed to be a roller derby girl I guess, and she has the pads and quads and a jammer star on her head and pigtails coming out of her helmet... what? And what's with the weird bra thing? I'm not sure how I feel about the typical roller derby outfit being all short shorts and long socks, since I guess that works for some people but I've seen a lot more skaters move towards more athletic pants and not weird boob armor. At least she's got the appropriate derby gear on, which you don't usually see when people try to derbify other things. :P

Friday 22 November 2013

Rebel Girl

So this is popping up on the interwebs today. It's Estro Jen, being badass as usual.


Holy crap. I get so nervous with outdoor skating, but this looks TOTALLY awesome. I wish I could do like 10% of the stuff she does in this video. I have to admit that I do find it a bit cringeworthy when she's skating all like this without pads on, but it's nice to see that sometimes even the superstars still stack on sidewalks though. :)

Happy Friday!

Thursday 21 November 2013

Glitter everywhere

So, the league has a monthly meeting, in which they recognize a "member of the month". And at this month's meeting, it was me!
Again, getting this was a WAT moment.

I'm not good with stuff like this so I probably wasn't even paying attention when they announced it and then if I hadn't already been sitting on the ground at the meeting, I probably would have fallen off my chair. Apparently I've been improving a lot, and I have a good attitude and am willing to learn. Yay me! (Also, Bettie said that if I shit glitter and rainbows it is with a degree of cynicism. Heh.)

I do feel very humbled by the acknowledgement, though. In previous months the people who win this are people that put tons of time and effort into the league. That said, I feel like I have been learning a lot in the last few months (although knowing when to apply it can sometimes be harder since it's like I KNOW what I should do but my body doesn't know how to do it in time, or I realize like 2 seconds after the fact that I should have done something else, or something dumb like that). This blog helps--it's like I can take notes on the stuff that I am learning to help keep it in my brain.

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

Friday 15 November 2013

Save your point!

Here's one thing that I learned about blocking if you're not doing a 4-wall (i.e. in a straight line). Suppose you're all rushing to the front of the pack to save your point. How should you go about that?


To illustrate this, suppose the yellow jammer is coming up to the blockers (as seen below):



You would probably want your weakest blockers (2 and 3) to be furthest up front. Why? In virtue of being the weakest blockers, they are the most likely to get sucked back into the pack. So you want to keep them in the pack, but as far away as possible from the opposing jammer, who would get their point. (And I guess you'd also want them as far away from the opposing blockers, who might goat them. But of course, this should all be done while still maintaining the pack.)

Of the two of those, you might put the weakest one in Blocker 3's position, so at least 2 can hold the inside line (with B1 if necessary). Plus it would take the jammer more energy to get to the outside past B3. 

This would entail that you also leave your strongest blocker (Blocker 1) in the back, and if necessary they can tractor-trailer off the frontmost blockers, to hold the jammer in the pack and stop her getting the points of all three blockers.



This probably all sounds really obvious in retrospect, but sometimes I need obvious things explained to me to help the light bulb go on!

Thursday 14 November 2013

A very derby weekend

So two weekends ago was very derby-eventful:

Hehe, Mouse with a mouse. I am so funny sometimes.
(Photo: Bettie Lockdown)
Thursday was the league's Trunk or Treat at the skate rink. Basically all this means is we do Halloweeny stuff and give out candy to the local kids. I can't say that this event is a great success, since there's usually a godawful low turnout of children (well, the rink is kinda far away from everything really), but I got to eat a shit load of candy bars and pixie sticks. And I revived the pikachu outfit but this time it was family friendly and I was sober (but full of sugar).

Halloween is also the anniversary of my munty hand injuries. One year later, my fingers are still slightly crooked and still require physical therapy. Good times.

Friday was a party at Pumpkin's house. Pumpkin is my Team Pie collaborator here at NRV. She is super artsy and makes awesome food. So a party at hers means a shit load of awesome food and lots of nice homemade arts and crafts things. A bunch of people from the league showed up (in costume!!) and I learned about some awesome American cultural practices like this totally INSANE game where you wear oven mitts and punch open boxes (yes, WTF!) and then we did things like drink a lot of booze and play spooky bingo.

Arrak-Kiss and I wanted to play a geography game where people would have to list the states in Australia (given that I get shit for not knowing where ANYTHING is in the US, I thought it'd be nice to reciprocate), but we had maps of Australia and Canada and I didn't even know Canada looked like how it did until someone pointed out that I was looking at a map of Canada. MEGA FAIL. :P But it was a super fun night, yay.
Okay, seriously, how the fuck was I supposed to know? :P


Then Saturday was pre-bout day! The B-team had a bout out in WV, and a few of us decided to take Beth's RV and go camping the night before. Hell, it was more like GLAMping--this RV is the fucking shit. It was super fancy and had a TV with cable and a fancy kitchen and oven and running water and everything. It was seriously good fun and an awesome team bonding experience.

FANCY SHIZ YO! (Note presence of TV)
And we got to have fire-roasted bananas and smores for breakfast the next day! How fucking fancypants is that, really!

Fucking breakfast of champions!
(Probably not really, because too much chocolate = crash)

And finally, Sunday was bout day! We had a lazy morning (complete with smores--see above), showered, played with some of the native wildlife (well, some of us wanted to throw grasshoppers in to the fire... :/), then we packed up the RV, and then headed over to the Civic Center in Charleston for some bout prep. There's an entry about it here, but this was basically the pinnacle of an awesomely derbylicious weekend. Yeah. That felt good.

Friday 8 November 2013

Bout v Chemical Valley

(I know there was a photographer at the bout, but I haven't found any photos yet, so I haven't posted them. Plus--as you'll see--chances are that most of them involve me getting my ass kicked or my face punched in.)

So our last bout of the season was a B-team bout against Chemical Valley in Charleston, WV.

Due to some previous stupid shit, our bench was much, much shorter than we had anticipated. We played with only nine skaters, which meant that there were a lot of back-to-back jams for people. Lindy and I were primarily jammers, so we went in every second jam, with Ape occasionally coming in as a relief jammer when we got too buggered.

And hell did I get buggered. First of all, I was told to be in the first jam of the bout, and I am REALLY not good with that. I usually take a while in the bout to get my head in the right space, so being told I was not only jamming in the first jam of the bout but also doing that slow-mo demo jam before hand was seriously like a deer-in-the-headlights moment for me. I was nervous about fucking up the demo jam, hahaha. Ugh. I hate all that stupid winding-up-to-the-bout stuff that happens, with intros/national anthem/demo bout stuff. I just want to start skating dammit!

Lovely rink rash from sliding on the concrete, or is that
just from someone's velcro? I don't even know anymore.
But when that happened, shit was tough. The first two jams CVRG broke first and got lead, so we didn't get any points on the board until the third jam when I got lead jammer and put five points on. Then it was a slow crawl up the scoreboard, but at the cost of getting seriously pummelled. I don't know why but my ankles and shins were super killing me (I think it was playing on concrete and banging my toe stops on it when I was running, or something?) and as I got tired, I got stupid and sloppy. In fact, at one point I cut track, got sent to the box, came out (the other jammer got sent to the box), cut track again, got sent to the box AGAIN, then the next jam started when I had 0.16 seconds left on the box so I came out and immediately backblocked the shit out of someone, then got sent to the box AGAIN. I was sent to the box THREE times in two jams. How fucking embarrassing. UGH. I wanted to punch myself in the face.

But after all that time out I got my shit together and didn't have any more penalties for the entire game. Yay. And I didn't need to punch myself in the face because my face (and the rest of me) was suitably tenderized by CVRG. They have a pretty big team, so my face was a prime target for elbows, fists and shoulders. Surprisingly, I didn't get a bloody lip this time, but I did get elbows to the eye, and shoulder blocked so hard in the face I had someone's number on my cheeks. I got at least three people boxed for high blocks. I also stopped counting how many times I got hit in the face after about six. :P
Lovely face bruise, complete with blood pooling.

The best one was an elbow to the meaty part between my cheek (like the bottom of my eye socket) and my eyelid. Apparently the refs were going to make that an ejection but then they rescinded it. :/ But I got ice on it and after a while my field of vision got a bit obscured by puffy eye meat. Lovely. I took the first four jams of  the second period off, while I was trying to sort out my shit. But once I had had a bit of a rest, I did feel much better going in. We racked up a few more points in the second period but didn't end up winning. No biggie though.

The score differential was so much that I don't think we really cared. On the B team we don't get to do a lot of bouts, so I think most of us were just super stoked to be bouting at all. It's hard to get practical bout experience if you're not an A team or bridge skater, so being able to have our own bout (with some A teamers helping us out of course) was a very exciting experience. And there aren't really that many just B team skaters, so sometimes it doesn't feel like we get a lot of bout time, or bouting experiences. So I think we just wanted to get out there and skate, and we really did. We busted our asses out there and tried our hardest, and it showed. We were still learning, and it was still fun for us even if we got our asses handed to us on a plate. We didn't care about that.

Oh, but this was the best bit:

The mug was actually full of Kit Kats,
but we ate them on the ride home in the RV.



Seriously. I vaguely heard them announce it after the bout and I was just like, "WAT" until somebody (Psycho? Shilo?) told me to actually go up there to get my award. Haha. I'm so dumb. The cynnical part of me wants to say that it was because CVRG felt bad for punching me in the face too many times. :P But whatever it was, this was a seriously humbling experience. I totally never expected anything like this because all I wanted to do was jam (and not get pummelled too much).

But yeah, hooray. :) And that's the end of our season!

Monday 4 November 2013

Happy NSOvember!

If this is what they say beforehand, they actually do!
Yep. So somehow it's sprung up that November is the month in which we celebrate those unsung heroes of derby, the nonskating officials. We usually take their efforts for granted, but NSOvember is about changing that!

Okay, so I've NSOed a bit in a couple of different positions and THAT SHIT IS HARD. You're doing some realtime work, and how you perform affects the overall quality of the bout. Like, when I had to penalty track and do IWB, you have a set number of tasks that you have to do within seconds, really. Or when I did jam timing, you're responsible for how long the bout goes for, and that could affect which way the score goes. And your brain has to be switched on the WHOLE time. And, unlike skaters, you don't get breaks between jams--you spend those 30 seconds doing other work. And then half time is spent doing work. It's actually surprisingly tough.

So, props to you, NSOs. Everyone knows that it takes an army of NSOs to run a bout. We literally would not be able to do derby without your contribution.

Tuesday 29 October 2013

How to not dress for Halloween.

(Warning: lots of pottymouth ahead because I am mad.)

One thing I hate about Halloween is the rampant sexification of women's costumes. Like, seriously, WTF. Fuck No Sexist Halloween Costumes does a pretty good job outlining the ridiculousness of this. And this year I came across Sexy Osama Bin Laden. Like, okay, what the fuck is wrong with you people, really.



When you think about the ridiculousness of things like Sexy Osama Bin Laden and stupid shit like Sexy Fruit Salad (and why the fuck are women's costumes the "sexy" version of the norm?) on the one hand, and then even stupider racist shit to throw on top of the misogyny (e.g. this Trayvon Martin costume, complete with blackface) it almost makes "sexy roller derby skater" not offensive.


I'm sorry, but what the fuck is this shit.
Let's ignore the fact that the first time I saw this was on DNN. Or, let's not. Like, maybe if they weren't also promoting athleticism and whatever about derby, then that might be okay. But if people go to them for a source of information on derby and see this, doesn't this just give a really, really wrong idea about derby, especially since people don't already have much idea of how it is played (besides the obvious "oh I saw Whip It so I understand it" sort of thing).

Of course, I'm not saying that derby is a special case, since pretty much every sport (involving women or not) is sexified at Halloween. But this one doesn't even make any fucking sense.
Here's an alternative one from Value Village.
It's not perfect, but it is much less ridiculous,
and hey, she's actually got pads and a helmet
AND SKATES with it.

In the image above, there are stars on her boobspenders (I call them that because as far as I can gather the suspenders are connected to the boob tube?), and stars on derby helmet covers, so maybe that makes it derby?! I don't know, but I'm really reaching here. Also, if you go to the store website for this, the pads aren't even included. The only thing remotely derby-ish about this picture isn't even included. *headdesk*

 So besides the unnecessary sexification of women with this costume, the fact that DNN posted this apparently "for fun" could potentially be leading people who might want to know about the sport down the wrong path. It's different from something like this sexy football player costume because hey, people actually know about football, so they KNOW it is a costume. They don't know about derby, so it is actually possible that people think that we actually wear shit like this to skate. It's like when people talk about whether or not derby is a sport--shit like this makes it look much more NOT like a sport, because people have much less to go on than in other sports for information.

Okay, but let's try to find a silver lining. The only thing derby about this is if you went to a party wearing this and someone who did derby asked you what you were supposed to be and you told them, they would probably hipcheck you in the face because this costume is so freaking stupid.

But if you're still looking for a nonstupid costume, do not despair! At least there are some other choices available. Take Back Halloween has an awesome list of non-sexified, historically accurate (to some extent) representations of strong females on which to base one's costume. (They even have one specific for my wife, yay!)

Saturday 19 October 2013

Yeah! Science, bitch!

Well, not really, and this might just be the Breaking Bad withdrawals or whatever, but I came across this roller derby periodic table (click here for the high res version) and it looks pretty neat.



I like how it spells out what the penalties are, and the bottom block are the variants of the ones in the top part of the table. The only thing that could make it cooler is if the "atomic weights" of the offenses were such that they related to the sections of the WFTDA rules, but otherwise, this is pretty cool. (Plus it makes it easier to learn the codes you need for being a NSO penalty tracker!)

Also, I just wanted to post this:

Needs more punctuation. But you get the point!

Monday 14 October 2013

Ducks in a row

This one comes courtesy of Smooth Operator, who was our guest coach at practice tonight! One skater is designated to be "Number 1" (or I like to say, "Mother duck"). All the other skaters skate behind and basically try to get the number 2 spot right behind her, and maintain that spot. You can block people out of the spot if necessary, or hit them out of bounds, or knock them over, so long as it's all legal.
Out of my way, bitch!
It probably looks less like a line of ducks as much as it looks like the mother duck with a clump of aggessive ducklings behind her who keep hitting each other.

Two rules though: if you touch the number 1 mother duck person, you have to skate a lap and rejoin at the back. Also, if the mother duck stops and you stop ahead of her or go out of bounds to stop, you have to skate a lap and rejoin at the back.

So you're practicing staying really close to someone without plowing into her while she's speeding up and slowing down and whatnot. And people are hitting you all this time.

Also, apparently, for people watching us do this drill, it's like watching NASCAR.

Monday 7 October 2013

Super heroes do roller derby!

Yep, and now there's evidence of it!

Check out these cute DC vs Marvel comic rollergirls, done by Kevin Bolk (aka K-Bo).


I have to say that I certainly do approve of them all wearing appropriate derby gear, since you get so many pictures of "roller derby" where it's a girl on skates without pads or a helmet. So this at least gets that bit right. But hey, they have pads on, but not just any old pads; their pads are character specific. I mean, check out Harley Quinn's wrist guards or Spider Woman's kneepads.

And they have proper derby skates on, not those artistic crazy boots. Yay!


More of his art is here on Deviantart.

Squee!!

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Skater awareness drill

This is a drill I've been thinking about for a long time, but I don't think we've ever done it. I think I was talking to someone about this at Post Tax Smacks a long time ago, and they did this at their league and it was really helpful (although I can't remember who it is, so if it was you, let me know so I can thank and credit you!)
This is what it is like.

Basically the idea is that awareness of  where your teammates, the jammer, the OJ, etc. are are REALLY important to know in a bout situation. So you have everyone skate around as per a jam situation (maybe at 60-70%, so no balls to the wall business for reasons that follow).

On the whistle, all the skaters have to take a knee and close their eyes (once they're down, so it's not like you are taking a knee and plowing into someone). When everyone is down, randomly ask people who is next to them, or where their teammates are, or where the jammer is, or ask the jammer how far they are from the pack, or where the OJ is, and so on. Or you could even say "where is [this particular person]". Then when people have made guesses as to where they think the relevant people are, have them open their eyes and actually look.

You'd be surprised. Where you think people are is usually NOT where they actually are. Unless you have a very close working with your teammates in terms of knowing how they skate and where they like to be (inside/outside etc.), this is a really good learning experience. After you repeat this a few times people will become more aware of where their teammates are, where they should be, where the opposing jammer is, etc. and then they will actually move to places where they can be more effective.

This drill also works for the refs, in terms of them being aware of where everyone is, where their jammer is, and so on. So everyone wins!

Friday 6 September 2013

The Lurby Circle

When I started at VDL, Pitts (who was then-President of the league) introduced a new term: lurby. It's supposed to be some portmanteau of "derby love". I'm not a huge fan of the spelling but whatever, the idea is that you have love not just for roller derby itself, but those who play it, and those who enable you to be able to be part of it.

Sometimes we all need a bit more lurby. Every league goes through some drama where there's some internal squabbling over something or another. But in doing so we sometimes lose sight of what matters, and then people get angry and frustrated, and then they cry and walk away.

I've already written a whole giant blog entry about derby drama. I'm not going into that again. But when I was recently back in Australia and skating with VDL, I noticed that they had a new tradition to counteract the problems that came with politics and drama. Basically, at the end of each practice session, all the skaters--regardless of their skill levels or who they were--sat down in a circle while they were taking their gear off, and each went around and said who they had lurby for based on that session. So you might say that you have lurby for a freshie who has just nailed a new skill, or for a coach for an awesome session, or whatever it is. But it was a good way to bring everyone together at the end and just refocus on the important stuff, which is the fact that we are all in it together.

P.S. The awesome Derby Love ring showed above is available at I heart roller derby. Squee!

Friday 30 August 2013

What is this I don't even

So in my internet trawlings, I randomly came across this yesterday:



Two things:

1) Richard Simmons has a music video.
2) THE LA DERBY DOLLS ARE IN IT.


WHAT?!

Happy Friday :D

Saturday 24 August 2013

Jam Timing is fraught with peril

So in the last post I said that the Jam Timer stuffed up in a WFTDA Divisionals bout.

Specifically, it was during the Santa Cruz v Tri-City bout, and it was a close one, so hence the controversy. There's information about it on DNN here.

In particular, this part:

"It transpired that the jam timer thought overtime jams were 60 seconds long, and whistled the end at that point. Discussion followed and Rule 2.5.1.1 (if an overtime jam ends before two minutes for any reason, the bout ends immediately and the score stands) came into effect. Santa Cruz won, 236-231."

So there are a couple of things that come into mind. Obviously at a divisional playoff you'd think that the officials would know the relevant rules. But overtimes are really not that common, so perhaps the JT wasn't familiar with the rule in practice.

But are they completely to blame? On the interwebs I'm also seeing things like people saying the Head Ref (but not Head NSO?) is also partially responsible; before the overtime jam happens s/he should call an official time out to go over the rules again with the ref/official crew. The Head Ref is pretty much like the captain of a ship in this sense; if shit happens and the ship goes down, then it doesn't matter who made the ship go down, the captain still assumes responsibility. Or so the online discussion goes.

I'd like to think that that's only partially true. Individuals who assume positions of responsibility are, well, responsible for what happens in their role. How about that? So only to the extent that the Head Ref is responsible for what other, responsible agents are doing, that's all they are to blame.

But then there's also some broader issues. WFTDA currently doesn't have any recourse for situations like this. I think all they've said so far is that all they could do is follow 2.5.1.1, but there's no rule in place (yet--there probably will be soon though) for resetting the jam or points or anything like that. Also, given the wording of the rule, it seems like it'd be easy to throw a game one way or another, just by having someone whistle off the overtime jam early. In this case it was totally an accident I'm sure but the possibility of less scrupulous motivations would still be problematic under this rule.

I'm jam timing today, so I made sure to look up the relevant rules, in case this happened again. Lightning striking twice and all that, right? :P

Friday 23 August 2013

Thunder in the Valley, the prequel

Tomorrow is the Thunder in the Valley double header over in Salem!

 Star City Rollergirls are hosting, and basically the nearby leagues are coming to bout. NRV's All Star team is playing Chemical Valley in the first bout. And then the NRV B Team skaters are skating for Blackwater Rollers as guest skaters, and there will also be some other skaters from Iron Mountain to round out Blackwater's lineup.

It'll be a long day for me. I'm NSOing the first bout and then skating in the second. I'm also NSOing a position that I've not done before, and it's probably the scariest one to fuck up. I'm jam timing. I have to practice blowing my whistle. Fox40 whistles are fucking confusing, especially to get the four blasts to end the jam. I feel like I'm drooling everywhere. And because of the venue, I'll have to be extra shouty. And then of course when I'm bouting I'm going to need to be extra shouty too.

I'm particularly nervous because Jam Timing is one of those positions where if you fuck up, EVERYONE knows. So apparently tonight at the WFTDA Division 2 playoffs, the JT thought that overtime was one minute jams, and then stuffed that up. I haven't found out all the details yet, but knowing that there will be a sufficient amount of rage if I fuck up makes me a little twitchy. Hell, you have a whistle and if you sound wimpy blowing it, then you kinda suck. Now I'm not a super loud person so this will be an interesting experience on the boundaries of my comfort zone.

In fact, I think I'm going to go down to the car and lock myself in it and practice blowing my whistle. :P

In an unrelated note, the place we are bouting at tomorrow is also know as the stadium where the rodeo scene for Borat was filmed:



I hope the audience will be more friendly. :P

Friday 16 August 2013

O HAI

Wow! I haven't updated this for a while. Sorry. Anyway, a LOT has happened since my last entry. I spent three weeks back in Australia, did my Ph.D. graduation (for which I deliberated wearing skates, but there was carpet and LOTS of stairs, plus I wasn't sure how wearing a giant robe on wheels would work without eating shit), went to a bunch of derby practices and did an awesome epic lake skate with Boudi. Actually, when I was in Canberra, the things I did the most pretty much was all skate related (even though I also had graduation and a conference to go to, I managed to wrangle a lake skate, skate shopping, social skate with CRDL and a few VDL practices. It turned out that I got to do something skatey pretty much every day. Yay). 

I learned a lot while I was away, and in the next few weeks I'll be doing a bunch of posts about particular things that I saw work well at other leagues, new drills I learned, and whatnot. Keep your eyes peeled!

Wednesday 3 July 2013

Now for some art

So one of the ladies I used to skate with back at VDL (Cruel-Roller De'Ville) is also is in the States now, going to cartoon school in Vermont. Roller made a comic about the state of Men's Derby in Vermont. It looks like this:



The merby issue is an interesting one. There are no sports I can think of which are predominantly female oriented that don't also have an element of the athlete doing things that look good-- the "looking good" ones I had in mind were gymnastics, figure skating and cheerleading (hell, there are few sports I can think of which are predominantly female oriented at all). I am totally on the fence about whether or not merby poses a threat to derby as we know it. Recently, the best mens' derby league at the moment (Your Mom) beat Gotham at a private scrimmage, and there was a lot of talk of the men coming in to take our sport away or whatever. I don't think that's the case, but I can see the worry if you're not willing to share the sport or whatever.

On the other side of the fence, I also know some men who think "Merby" is a derogatory term. I'm not sure exactly why but maybe it goes along the line of "moobs" and "murse" as well. To be fair, I don't see it as derogatory but it's not great; you could just call it "derby" for everyone without needing to make that distinction. It's like, why do you need to say "female doctor" or "female parliamentarian" or something when they are just doctors and parliamentarians?

Roller's full comic is here.




Thursday 20 June 2013

Return to SCRD

I skated with SCRD as a visiting skater last year, and they are an amazing bunch of ladies. I wrote a lot about them in earlier entries here.

Right now, I'm back on the West Coast visiting Ze Boyfriend. Last week, I went back there since (relatively speaking) I'm in the area. I like what they've done with the place. They took out the middle wall so now there's more room for the track, as well as a few little ramps on the side. Also, as a side note, they DID end up doing the OCD floor tile thing with the sport court that I got shit for last time. HA!
Junior derby in action. They are so tiny!
 They also have a whole new batch of recruits, which is great. I met this super cute couple whose derby names are (get this) Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust. Now that's like a whole new metalevel of derby naming when you coordinate your name with someone else. I also was reunited with a lot of the old guard, which was also lovely. There were a lot of hugs. Yay.

Anyway, we started with some crossover technique practice. Now there's some sense in which I can do crossovers, but there's another sense in which I don't, because I don't push with my inside leg. Psycho calls it a "squirrelly thing I do with my legs" when I cross. So we did a bit of just grapevining across the room, focusing first on getting a big step over with your front leg, and then on the "flick" thing you do with your back foot, and then getting as low as possible while doing it, and the putting it all together.

We did some other drills, which I'll write up separately. And there was scrimmage! The teams are basically the A and B teams split evenly (so they sort all the A team players first, and then the B teams). I normally just get put with the B team, and that's fine by me. And D said that EVERYONE had to jam, so that was good. I managed to avoid a few hard hits but when I got knocked off the track, I tried tomahawking on their floor at speed to turn back and I fell on my ass because the floor was so much slicker than what I'm used to. It was like I put my toe stops down and my feet just went from under me.

But one thing I really like about SCRD (which I've not seen done at other leagues) is that everyone warms up together, and then everyone sits in a circle to stretch at the beginning of the session. This is a good time for introductions or to go through announcements (from committee chais) and whatever. I really like how they do that. Plus they also spend a few minutes doing that at the end of each session, as a cooldown and also to remind people of upcoming events (e.g. they have a bout coming up, so everyone please sell your bout tickets, or be here on a particular day to pack up the floor to take to the venue, or whatever).

So we did that, and then D made everyone go around and introduce themselves again (since some people came late to the session) and then also promise something they were going to do, and people said things like they would wash their pads or drink more water or whatever. I didn't know what to say so then I said while I was visiting, I would bring cake at some point. Ha.

So that was last week.

And then yesterday, CAKE! Yes, I am a lady of my word.

Lemon raspberry mini cupcakes. NOM!
Actually Tila also brought cupcakes because (unbeknownst to me) it was Karen's birthday. But that meant there was multiple cake, so hooray!

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Science is awesome!

(Or is this in the realm of math? Or engineering? I don't know.)

So, I read today that a guy in California has invented a wheel. No, keep reading. That's not the end of it. It's a wheel that rolls faster and better than a round wheel, across a variety of terrains.

AND IT IS SHAPED LIKE A CUBE.
 
YES. A CUBE. LOOK AT IT.

Okay, it's not SO crazy. The cube shape has a wave pattern, so you would still get a roll on these wheels. The grooves in them mean you don't roll over debris, but they get "funnelled" off to the outside, so you're less likely to trip and eat shit if you skate outdoors. Plus because there are those big grooves, there's less contact area with the ground so you have less friction, which would result in a smoother roll on a variety of surfaces.

So far it's only available for skateboards, but if this takes off, I wouldn't mind trying these for derby, especially given the way these are made. The super cool thing about this is that they're made by snapping together smaller wheel-parts of different hardnesses. So if you wanted a sticker inside on your inside wheel (e.g. if you push more on one side of your wheel than the other--and you can see how much you do this by checking your wheels for coning), the bam! You just put together different segments of different hardnesses and Bob's your uncle.

(That said, there's already something like this on the market in the form of Faster skates' demilune wheels, which were released several months ago, but haven't seen to have taken off. But they have a little strip of sticker urethane closer to the axle on each wheel for more push.)

More information is available on the kickstarter here.

Thursday 6 June 2013

NRV also has a new website!

And NRV also has an updated website! Yay! Hahaha we did headshots the other day for it, but I didn't expect them to be up so soon. I remember we got to do "smiley" ones and "scary" ones where you looked serious and intimidating. I was really bad at those and the photographer had to keep telling me that my stink eye was bad and that if I stood up straighter I would look scarier and so on. :P

But yay, new website! Also, boo shiny face :/

Tuesday 4 June 2013

NRV gets a new logo!


NRV had been doing a contest for a new logo for the past few months. Rebranding can be hard, but I don't think anyone was super tied to the original logo we had. This is what it looked like:


It didn't really do much in terms of saying anything at all about roller derby, and the font was weird and hard to read, and reminds me of tribal tattoos from the late 90's, which are probably on a lot of wrinkly and saggy lower backs and upper arms right now.

So we put the call out we got a bunch of possible candidates. The entries that we got were a range of different ones in different shapes, ideas, and symbols of the New River area. A few weeks ago the league looked at the finalists and put it to a vote.

This is the shiny new one, unveiled last night:

Yay! The pictures are black and white here, but there is also a black/pink/white versioon if we were printing in three colors. I like it. It's at least clearer that it is actually more skatey, and I guess there are mountains in the area (well, it's New River VALLEY, so of course there'd have to be some hilly topography to make it such the case that valleys exist). 

Also, it helps resolve the problem I had with never knowing if it was "Roller Girls" as two words, or "Rollergirls" as one. (I thought it was one word; apparently it is two.) :P

Sunday 26 May 2013

Hitting/timing drill with pace line

We've been working more on timing our hits, and I like this one a lot because it sounds easy but it's actually pretty hard to do well.

So you start with a pace line, going at a moderate pace in the middle of the track:

Yes, my paint skills are so good.
The last two people peel off the pace line and skate to the front. One goes on the inside of the pace line, one goes on the outside. The skater the inside is the "blocker" and the skater on the outside is the "jammer".

When they reach the front of the pace line, the blocker is to hit the jammer out.

This is much harder than it sounds; the jammer is flooring it (usually) and even though they're on the inside, the blocker has to actually skate pretty quick to catch up, but not too quickly that they overshoot the front of the pace line and leave a big hole behind them for the jammer to go through, or getting too much speed so the blocker goes out with the jammer.

Then when they're done, they form the front of the pace line and the next two go.

Variation: once you've done the basic version, you can also do a more advanced version where the blocker can hit the jammer out in between other skaters in the pace line. Timing is crucial here, since otherwise the blocker will hit other skaters, or fuck up the pace line.
 
(And that's embarassing because it screws up the drill so you don't want to do that.)

Saturday 11 May 2013

I have taught them well.

I have a lot of derby posters on my door so it's
not hard to guess that I'm into derby if you're
a student who shows up for office hours.
Right now I'm not doing a lot of big posts because I'm busy with the end of the semester in my non-derby life, which involves (among other things) a lot of grading.

I usually don't tell students upfront that I do derby because 1) I did this last semester and then one of them tweeted it to the internet from class and 2) being in a college town, it's already hard enough to have a life away from academia and students, so I try to keep those things separate.

But of course, the derby monster is a big monster, and occasionally he creeps into my academic work. I advertise our bouts on my office door. I also wear my derby helmet when I ride my bike to work. I also had a diagram of a track on my whiteboard in my office once because I was explaining what derby was to some students who came by to ask. Yep.

Anyway, this semester, I taught a graduate seminar where one of the main topics we talked about collective responsibility and whether group was anything over and above the individuals that constitution it and that sort of stuff. It was a good class; the grad kids all know I do derby, since they have offices down the hall from my office anyway and can see when new flyers go up.

So I found this today in a paper I was grading:

Consider, for analogy, a roller derby team.  When they lose or win, they do so as a team, and this means more than each of the members winning individually (the coherence of which is doubtful).  Although the individual performances strongly affect the outcome, there are properties that the team has as a group that affects the responsibility for their performance.  For instance, if a team lacks a particular position, say a really scrappy jammer, they would be far worse off than a team composed of individually equally-skilled players that includes a jammer.  Yet, there is no straightforward way in which the responsibility for not being a jammer is "shared" by the members of the team. 
To be clear, I hvae no idea what a "scrappy jammer" is, but considering this student didn't know anything about derby at the beginning of the semester, I'd say he's done pretty well. :D


Saturday 4 May 2013

Rollerbones bearing tool

So shiny.
I decided to get a proper bearing tool for changing my bearings. Until now what I'd done is use the allen key that was on my T-tool to prise out bearings and then I would use the blunt end of the T-tool to shove them back in. So yeah, that's not a smart idea because it can mess with your bearing covers and the bearings themselves.

So here's the rollerbones bearing tool. It's this little handheld thing that you can carry around in your gear bag without looking like you are lugging a bearing press. It has a little button on the top which retracts the two little buttony things along the bearing tool post.


When you want to put bearings in, you simply put a bearing on the end of the tool (with the button down) and then use the tool to push your bearing into the wheel. The button thingy is pretty strong so it's not like the bearing or wheel will just fall off.


If you want to take bearings out, you just put the tool in, push down the button and with the button down, pull the bearing out, and it should just pop out. Pretty straightforward, no? This thing is so easy to use that it doesn't even come with instructions.


I really like this bearing tool. I have more wheels than bearings and I often just switch out my bearings out, and this is much easier and less annoying to do that with my jankety old T-tool. Plus, at $15, it's also way cheaper and easier to carry around than a bearing press.

Saturday 27 April 2013

SISU mouthguard (formerly known as ProTech Dent)

After my disgusting story about how I got cavities from my year-old mouthguard, I decided it was probably a good time to get a new one. Probably.


I really liked my old mouthguard, it was one of those ultra-thin ProTech Dent mouthguards that you mold yourself at home. Apparently now ProTech Dent is called SISU for some reason, but it's more or less the same thing.

The SISU mouthguard is basically a really thin piece of plastic that you custom mold to the shape of your mouth. It has lots of litle holes for easy breathing and drinking water and whatever, and I think having the holes also helps with with absorbing shock (kind of like how shock absorbers on cars have spaces in between them for compression).

The molding process is relatively easy to do. You start with the mouthguard being this flat bit of plastic, which you drop itno a cup of hot water:

Cup O'Mouthguard. Mmmm.
Then when it's all soft and stuff, you just put it in your mouth and push the bits up against your teeth and gums, making sure it is a snug fit. Notice that a "snug fit" when the mouthguard material is soft and pliable is VERY different from a "snug fit" when the material hardens; at that point it's like a retainer and becomes actually kind of painful on the teeth. I'd suggest not taking their instructions about making a suction while the material is forming too seriously; the first time I did that it hurt like the dickens to take the mouthguard off or put it on (but once it was on my teeth it was okay).

I usually take about 2-3 goes to get my mouthguard right. I find that sometimes you might get bits at the top near your gums that are a bit scratchy, so you have to redo it when the edges of the plastic start cutting into your gums, or if it's too tight or something these are things you can fix the next time you mold it. All you need to do is pop it back in the hot water and let it unfold (which looks kind of cool) and then do the process again.

Attempt #2.
 And then when you come up with a fit that you like, you're done!

This time I am actually going to try to clean my mouthguard regularly so I don't end up with all disgusting cavities again and having weird stains on my mouthguard.

Don't worry new mouthguard, I'll take better care of you
than I did the old one.

Friday 26 April 2013

Post Tax Smackaroo

So Post Tax was this weekend. There were four womens' teams and three co-ed ones. I just did the women's bout; I think co-ed is something I'll need to work up to.

Psycho, Maluvicen, Caboose and Iron Man get cute little
MVP trophies and also calendars from the SPCA for
being awesome at the co-ed bout finals.
Overall it was fun; I saw some people again that I met at Beatings last year, and met some new skaters too. Anyway, it turned out that most of the people on my team were relatively new. In our first bout, it turned out that only one person said that they jammed regularly, although we had a few "I'll jam if I have to" people. I think I was one of those, but maybe more to the "I'm okay jamming" side. So, as a result of that, I was given the jammer panty for the first jam of the first bout. I was a bit like O_o.

O_o turns to :O very quickly when the jam whistle goes.
(Photo credit: Albert Hartley aka Mr. Whip)


But when the benchie gives you the panty, you take it and you put it on your helmet. So there I was, jamming in the starting lineup. I didn't get lead, and I think I got hit a bit and fell. But I made it through the pack. Yay! I jammed a few more times that bout, although I did get boxed twice. The first was for "taking a knee to avoid a hit" which seriously was a bit of a WTF (okay, so I get that I'm short and if I'm using my toe stop and in derby stance I'm low, but my knee didn't make contact with the ground).

Sweaty head bandana also doubles as a bandage.
The second was for a low block, where I fell over someone on the opposing team who was down, and someone fell on me, and I got boxed. Bleh. But that time when I came out of the box, my shin was really hurting. I thought I had crazy shin splints, and I barely even made it through the pack without getting the crap pummelled out of me. At this point, I also got can opened, and I've never been on the receiving end of a can opener, but my boobs hurt and it felt like an elephant kicked me in the sternum. (Almost a week later, it still hurts, and it feels all crackly.)

After the bout, I looked at my shins and it turned out in the low block sandwich fall I had landed on someone's trucks on my shins and they were doing purple. I had to ice my shins. Then Beth taped it for me so I could do my second bout.

I didn't jam as much in the second one because my shins and ankles were all crying, but I did manage some good hits I think. I like creeping up on opposing blockers and hitting them when they are not looking, hahaha. I also have to work on not throwing myself at the opposing jammer, and leaning more into them with my hips I think. My shoulders are bony, but I think most of the time if I just do that I bounce off them, whereas I might get more power and control in my hits if I am leaning them out. Anyway, we din't win that bout either, and as a result our team was eliminated from the finals. Sadface.

Beer in a bowl, hooray!
There were a total of 7 bouts I think throughout the day, so I had a bit of time to also just hang out and watch some good derby. I learned a bunch just from watching other teams, in terms of working out strategies and that sort of thing. I should have written it down though. :P

And then we had giant bowls of beer at Macados and more shennanigans were had, when our party of 6 people turned into an alternative to the after party when 5 other tables of loud, smelly derby people showed up.

We took up one whole section of the restaurant and probably scared off a bunch of people. Apparently part of the section we were sitting was reserved for a bunch of high school kids going to their prom dinner or whatever, but they ended up reseating them faaaaar away from us. :P Hahahaha. At least we tipped our poor server guy well; I think he was probably traumatized by the whole incident.