Recipe

Here's a GREAT way to spend a Saturday. Take one event, such as the West Coast Choppers 10th Annual No Love Ride. Add Lucha Libre, a bunch of mostly cool bands, some vintage cars. Then add a banked track and the LA Derby Dolls:




Briskly scoop in two hot scorecard girls:




Gently fold in a huge crowd:



And have yourself a roller derby match. Sorry, no pix of the actual game, as all of these photos were taken by the husbitch, and he was too busy being referee during the game to actually pull out the camera. I know there are other pix out there, I just haven't seen them yet. Early estimates say we had about 500 people watching us skate. Dayum!

My team, the Pink Tuscaderos, went up against the Rolling Blackouts. The original idea was that one team wear pink shirts while the other team wears black, hence the color references in the team names. However, the black shirts were changed to white, so the Rolling Blackouts were more like the Rolling Whiteouts. At least everyone was miserable with the shirt color choices.

Anyway, the Tuscaderos started out immediately by falling behind point-wise for about 3-4 jams. Rut-roh! The coach was worried, the crowd didn't care, and I had to repeatedly tell my team what we all were doing wrong. Suddenly, we clicked together and came back from a 19-point deficit(or something like that)and slowly but surely kept skating on until we came within 3 points of tying the score by the end of the bout. Frankly, it should've been a tie, as there was a jam where the Blackouts didn't have a jammer helmet on their jammer, hence my team had a really hard time keeping track of whom they were supposed to block out, so they ended up with 3 more points. Grrr.

My team was amazing. The other team was strong. I had fun and I'm really proud of the girls I skated with. I'm bruised as all get-out and sore as hell. I'm happy!

The crowd wasn't the typical biker bunch, though bikers were certainly in attendance. It was really a gearhead crowd, with a huge emphasis on cars instead of motorcycles. A fantastic target audience for roller derby, as we're combining two favorite things for gearheads: wheels and girls! The organizer for No Love said that we were the biggest attraction of the day!


After the bout we got to wander around for the rest of the day and hang out in the VIP area. Some girls saw Jesse James signing autographs and wanted him to sign their skate shirts, but alas, the line was too long. He didn't see all of our bout, but it was said that he watched our warm-ups from the top of a neighboring warehouse. His wife, Sandra Bullock, came by our merch booth while we were still setting everything up before the event opened to the public and bought a Rolling Blackouts shirt. Not to be confused with the Rolling Blackouts team that played that day, btw.

The bands that started the day SUCKED. Speed-metal type crap that no one there liked. As the day went on, the bands got better. The Adolescents played(in fact, they refused to play while our game was going on; they played about a half hour after we finished), as did Manic Hispanic. I definitely want to see Manic Hispanic again...they went on just before our bout, so I was busy gearing up while they played. Ah, someday...

There was a big special-secret-musical guest that was supposed to play. The rumors were flying. Who was it? Danzig. But not just the little man, it's the little man and Doyle from the Misfits. No, not those Misfits, these Misfits.

To be honest, I was never a huge Misfits fan and never understood the fanatical following the band has. However, seeing some Misfits songs belted out live sure made me realize that hey, they didn't really suck so bad.


This is Doyle. For an old guy, he was fookin' amazing!


Danzig trying to make Doyle smell his sweaty armpit. Ewwww.

They played classic Misfits tracks such as 20 Eyes, Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight? and Die Die My Darling. Good schtuff that I now realize that all those songs were definitely part of the background in the soundtrack of my life in high school. As soon as Doyle left the stage and it was back to just Danzig, we left.

We topped off the day with a small birthday celebration for Tough Cookies captain and Rolling Blackouts co-captain Suzy Snakeyes. We all ate ice cream in a bar in Los Feliz. Yum!

Today I need a hot bath and a little bit of quiet.