City of the Sisterly Shove
This weekend, as most of you know, plantastic and I ended up in Philly. hannahchan, greyplanet, and Dirty Trixie carpooled up for the Philly-Maulers rollerderby bout, which I reffed, and plantastic joined us after rehearsals, bringing some other actors and catching most of the action. We stayed with Damoni and mammascro, in their cute South Philly rowhome, with their super-pug-dog Humph. I'll have a few pictures up from the trip on Flickr later.
greyplanet's report covers much of the action, so I'll only add a few of my own things. Though I didn't have the same negative take as greyplanet and others on most of the action, the bout was a tough one for the Maulers -- I believe they are honestly a good enough team to beat Philadelphia, but their play seemed a bit unfocussed, and off the mark for most of the bout. At the afterparty, I ended up talking with (or rather, listening to) textureslut and Hambone, one of the Gotham refs, and a pretty big deal in the derby-ref world, who was interviewing Justice (ever the sub-rosa celebrity) for Radio Free Derby . Like me, they were both a little surprised at the outcome, and Hambone thought that, with only one exception, the Maulers fielded a team of consistent talent, whereas Philly's team ranged from awesome to not so great. We should have taken them.
I did get interviewed by Gingersnap, a Gotham roller girl for Radio Free Derby because I disagreed with Justice about whether a roller derby team of monkeys could beat a team of robots. Duh. Robots would take it - they have computers for brains and aren't distracted by food.
The Baltimore fans (in both number and spirit) were pretty awesome, though. It was pretty cool, also, to ref somewhere else -- I had never done that before, and I think I did pretty well, even though I spent two periods reffing on the outside of the track, something I had never done before, and was not that jazzed about. Philly played rough, and the Maulers gave it back to them, which meant I was calling a ton of penalties on both sides. All the Philly refs, especially Zombielicious, the head ref, were really nice and accomodating, and everybody worked really well together. The afterparty kinda sucked though -- see greyplanet's account.
We ended up getting out of there reasonably early, which was good, 'cause we had a two car, 40-minute drive (getting lost twice) back to south Philly from the NE Philly Sportsplex. greyplanet drove with me, and he told me a story about an SCS road trip to New York where they thought somebody who had passed out in the car had severe gastro-intestinal problems and they started whaling on him. But when they opened the windows and the smell got worse, they realized it was not him, but Newark.
The next day was one-half relaxing, one-half hell. Philly was great -- we ate at this Southern/Jewish joint and Damoni showed me and hannahchan the coolest bowling alley ever. But plantastic and I drove one of her D.C. acting friends back to BWI to catch a D.C. shuttle, and right when we hit 295, the snow and ice hit. It took forever to drive 10 miles, and we passed some pretty grisly accidents (I never understand why some people refuse to drive differently when shitty weather strikes). But we got home, safe and sound, and I'm already looking forward to practice tonight.
But before that, I've got lots of work to do. My semester starts on Wednesday, and I haven't finished prepping my classes. Vacation over.
~ j.z.
greyplanet's report covers much of the action, so I'll only add a few of my own things. Though I didn't have the same negative take as greyplanet and others on most of the action, the bout was a tough one for the Maulers -- I believe they are honestly a good enough team to beat Philadelphia, but their play seemed a bit unfocussed, and off the mark for most of the bout. At the afterparty, I ended up talking with (or rather, listening to) textureslut and Hambone, one of the Gotham refs, and a pretty big deal in the derby-ref world, who was interviewing Justice (ever the sub-rosa celebrity) for Radio Free Derby . Like me, they were both a little surprised at the outcome, and Hambone thought that, with only one exception, the Maulers fielded a team of consistent talent, whereas Philly's team ranged from awesome to not so great. We should have taken them.
I did get interviewed by Gingersnap, a Gotham roller girl for Radio Free Derby because I disagreed with Justice about whether a roller derby team of monkeys could beat a team of robots. Duh. Robots would take it - they have computers for brains and aren't distracted by food.
The Baltimore fans (in both number and spirit) were pretty awesome, though. It was pretty cool, also, to ref somewhere else -- I had never done that before, and I think I did pretty well, even though I spent two periods reffing on the outside of the track, something I had never done before, and was not that jazzed about. Philly played rough, and the Maulers gave it back to them, which meant I was calling a ton of penalties on both sides. All the Philly refs, especially Zombielicious, the head ref, were really nice and accomodating, and everybody worked really well together. The afterparty kinda sucked though -- see greyplanet's account.
We ended up getting out of there reasonably early, which was good, 'cause we had a two car, 40-minute drive (getting lost twice) back to south Philly from the NE Philly Sportsplex. greyplanet drove with me, and he told me a story about an SCS road trip to New York where they thought somebody who had passed out in the car had severe gastro-intestinal problems and they started whaling on him. But when they opened the windows and the smell got worse, they realized it was not him, but Newark.
The next day was one-half relaxing, one-half hell. Philly was great -- we ate at this Southern/Jewish joint and Damoni showed me and hannahchan the coolest bowling alley ever. But plantastic and I drove one of her D.C. acting friends back to BWI to catch a D.C. shuttle, and right when we hit 295, the snow and ice hit. It took forever to drive 10 miles, and we passed some pretty grisly accidents (I never understand why some people refuse to drive differently when shitty weather strikes). But we got home, safe and sound, and I'm already looking forward to practice tonight.
But before that, I've got lots of work to do. My semester starts on Wednesday, and I haven't finished prepping my classes. Vacation over.
~ j.z.