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Roller Derby!

It seems that Roller Derby is coming back into vogue again.  According to both "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley", Roller Derby once held a prime spot in the hearts of factory girls everywhere, but then it faded.  Well, it now seems to be making a comeback.  And here in Salt Lake, we even have our own Roller Derby league.

So Saturday night, a few of the girls and I decided to go and check it out.  And let's just say it was interesting.  The derby venue is a shipping warehouse in an industrial part of town.  They call it "The Derby Depot".  Despite the seedy location, the place was packed.  And let me tell you, the fans get into it!  They have cowbells, they chant cheers, and they wave their clappers like it's going out of style.  It was all very blue-collar.  Being from the mid-west, I felt mostly in my element.

The roller girls are all pretty interesting, too.  They're all tough - throwing blocks and squeezing through narrow openings in the line. And they can skate!  It's as if they went to the local roller rink in Junior High and never left.  None of them wear roller blades, either. It's strictly 4-wheel skates that look like they're straight out of Xanadu.

One of the fun things is that they each have come up with a tough-sounding pseudonym.  Even the referees had them.  So I decided I should come up with one, too.  The best I could manage was "Masterpiece Terror", but let's face it, unless you're a computer programmer in Atlanta, I'm not that terrifying.  So "Masterpiece Terrier" is probably more apt.  But my friend Karen came up with a good one for me, which I'm planning to trademark or copyright or whatever so that no one else can ever use it.  From now on, I'm "Maria Von Smack"!  Frankly, I think it puts a whole new spin to "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria".

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