Skip to main content

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".

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tracie's Food Philosophy

I don't know that I've ever talked about it, but for the last 3 or 4 years, I've followed a diet all my own that I call "Mostly Vegetarian" or "Flexitarian". The idea is that for the most part, I follow a vegetarian lifestyle, with the occasional serving or two of meat when I feel like I need it. A few years ago, I was going through a rough patch. I had gained a few pounds, and my only vegetable intake was in the form of salsa or V8. So one January as I was trying to identify some goals for the year, I decided to eat 2-3 servings of vegetables a day, and I would start strength training. I started working on those two things, and an unanticipated result was that weight started to come off. I ended up losing about 15 pounds, and I found that I enjoyed vegetables so much (who knew?) that I started eating more of them. And the more vegetables I ate, the less meat I ate. Over the years, I've felt so good for the most part that I've stuck with it.
Post a Comment
Read more

Tidying Up

If you've been watching Netflix much lately, you've probably seen the new series "Tidying Up", with Marie Kondo. She's an expert in cleaning, tidying, and storing stuff, and her method is quite inspiring. I enjoyed the show so much that I ordered her book "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up", and spent several days trying to get my house more in order. Not that I'm a hoarder - I have a basically tidy home. But the Kon-mari method teaches you to look at your belongings and ask yourself if each particular belonging brings you joy. If it doesn't, it's time for it to move on. I went through all my clothes first, followed by my books and DVD's, followed by the office, followed by the kitchen and laundry room. Whatever didn't bring me joy or a happy memory went into the pile. And when all was said and done, I ended up taking an entire car full of stuff to the local Deseret Industries, to hopefully be re-purposed for someone else to find
Post a Comment
Read more

The Heart and a Willing Mind

There's been a new show on PBS recently called "Equus: The Story of the Horse". In it, the host takes us through the history of the Horse in many different cultures and locations. One of which was a visit to a "Horse Whisperer" fellow, who specializes in breaking and training horses. He describes his method as less about breaking the horse's spirit, and more about making a connection with the horse's mind. It's a much gentler method, that helps the horse get to the point that it chooses to do the thing it is being asked to do, because of its connection with the trainer. This got me to thinking about the concept of "having a broken heart and a contrite spirit". I guess previously, I'd thought of this concept mostly as the breaking of a spirit. Say if you're watching an old movie western, and the cowboys jump on the back of the horse, and ride it until gives in and just stops bucking. But this comment had me thinking about it differ
Post a Comment
Read more