Wednesday already?!

Here's a hilarious photo that I insisted that the husband take before we went to last Saturday's bout:




















And here is one of the toilet seats that I'm shipping off to be shown in the Rollercon art show. That's right, they're having an art show this year! So I did a skater-themed seat for the occasion:



















If it sells, I'm donating the proceeds to a Sin City skater named Pirate who got jumped in a parking lot recently. She got the living bejeezus beat out of her and is uninsured and facing thousands of dollars of hospital bills. Yikes!

I thought I'd be able to take a week off from derby bidness and concentrate on art crap, but that ain't the case. Of course. I wish the derby stuff paid something...anything! It'd make the headaches more worthwhile.

The heat is still turning me into a sweat-pig from hell. Damn my overactive sweat glands! I hate running errands on the bicycle because I get comments from people who think I'm about to keel over from heat exhaustion. Jeez, like my being a sweaty Betty isn't bad enough.

Today's goal: to have lunch with Cute Friend Becca.

If You Didn't Go Downtown on Saturday...

You missed some fun!

The Tru$t Fund Terrors went up against the Sirens in a helluva game Saturday night. I got to be a team manager which turned out to be the perfect job for me. I'm almost looking forward to retiring from skating if I can still be a team manager. Seriously.

I decided to get into character and glam myself up:













In case you think you're seeing hallucinations, yes I'm wearing makeup and false eyelashes with rhinestones along the base.

I got to carry around a clipboard and yell my lungs out at my skaters. I went so far as to run on the infield beside them while they skated on the track, yelling all the while. I totally got into it, and I'd like to think that it helped. The audience was amused, to be sure.

Oh, and before you think you're hallucinating again...yes, I was wearing white. All white. With gold hot pants. See? This is what you freakin' miss when you don't see a Derby Dolls bout!













The TFT's didn't win, but goddam they have a lot of fans. Those girls didn't give up. They gave the Sirens hell. The capacity crowd loved it. Three skaters ended up with injuries, including my own co-cappie, Myna Threat. We're now like demented bookends, since she now has a shoulder injury very similiar to mine, but on the opposite shoulder from me. Feh!

Why am I about to spank TFT captain Broadzilla in the below photo? Because she got herself thrown out of the game! This chick is tough, and got fouled out of the game at the end of the second half. Again, the crowd went ape.













The afterparty consisted of me getting groped by other women a lot. If I were gay, it'd be totally hot. I think the husband thought it was hot. I was merely amused. If this is what looking girly is about, maybe I'm better off with my slovenly standard.

Sunday morning found the husband and I blearily driving to Hollyweird to check out the Ant Bully. It's a good flick! Even with my work in it! I was pleasantly surprised by that. I also found out that some of the people I worked with in Tejas have been reading my blog, as I heard them mention lurkers under their breath when talking to me. I'm rather amused by that. Anyway, GO SEE THE MOVIE!!!! IT'S GOOD!!!!

This week I get to catch up on art crap and go to a lot of meetings. Oh joy.

F*** yeah!

I'm done with my f***ing board. F*** yeah!

I'm psyched for the f***ing bout this weekend. Are you going?! If not, YOU F***ING SHOULD!

Sunday I'll be seeing the f***ing film that I went to Tejas for three years ago. I can't f***ing wait!

I have to ship the f***ing painted toilet seats I did for Rollercon. That'll be f***ing cool!

It's been humid as f*** lately. I'm sweating like a f***ing pig.

Why the f*** am I posting f*** so much? Because I was sent this piece of brilliance.

I f***ing love that movie.

The Pain is Worth the Fun

Yesterday I managed to be out of the house most of the day.

It started with an emergency email from the Derby Dolls' own Mr. Wolf, Iron Maiven saying that she has a boot on her car, her cellphone is at work in Santa Ana, and she needs a ride from Glendale to Santa Ana. So I sleepily responded to her through email that I'll pile on some clothes and go to Glendale to give her a ride to work.

Two hours and an entertaining conversation later, I was back on the Westside and changed clothes to get on the bicycle to meet up with the husband for lunch. It was a farewell lunch for one of his coworkers and they were all at El Cholo. The food there isn't worth writing home about, but the margaritas are totally kickass.

Two hours and a large, potent margarita and a semi-decent quesadilla later, I shakily ride the bike home and prepare to go to TFT practice.

I get to the track. I'm the first one there. So I put on work gloves and start rolling up the tarp that covers the track on the rooftop. A ghetto bird starts circling overhead...which is unusual, since they only tend to circle the track and beep their siren at us when we're skating. Anyway, I look up and wave. They keep circling. Must be a slow news day. They eventually leave.

Two and a half hours and a good workout later, I drive back to the Westside to meet up with some girls from the other roller derby league in town for an art party. I brought the skate deck that I'm painting for an art auction in Montana, paint, sandpaper, snacks, and a bottle of wine.

Seven hours, a bottle of wine ingested, snacks devoured, spankings delivered, skatedeck sanded and scribbled upon, waxing experiences told and retold, comparing notes on league meetings, and a box of cocks later, I stumble home safely. Goddam, I'm LOVIN' the art parties!

Today I wake up, very bleary-eyed but happy. I completely blew off work yesterday, so I shuffle down the hall to start work and look out the window. Another sign of the apocalypse is seen. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, but I don't expect it to last very long.

I have a lot of work to do between now and next Friday. I'm trying to keep myself locked up for most of the weekend, except for that whole going-to-see-the-Renegades-skate thing tomorrow. So far, so good.

Non-sequitir...I'm finding some people to be very amusing right now.

lurking

One of the great new pasttimes these days is lurking on the internet.

I know people lurk here but don't post comments. It's kinda weird when I'll be talking to someone whom I haven't talked to in awhile and they'll ask about a recent event/artwork/injury/rant. Huh? I'll think to myself, and then they'll notice the confused look on my face and they'll quickly say, "Yeah, I saw it on your blog."

What I'm beginning to wonder is how many people are actually lurking and reading this who hate my guts? Before I disabled the feature that allowed lurkers to make anonymous comments I started getting some snarky anonymously-left stuff. Did I know them? Did I work with them? Or were they just using the "Next Blog" button at the top of the page?

I've started finding blogs and MySpace comments from people whom I don't like. No one from the world of work(ha! Like I get a lot of that these days anyway!), but a couple of self-imposed exilers from my roller derby league and a random other person here and there who have managed to alienate most of the internet. Yes, it's possible!

It's fascinating to me to kinda-sorta get a portal into someone else's mind whom I don't agree with for whatever reason. Sometimes I'm surprised at how much I'll agree with them on a particular point, and then a sentence or two later there will be a 180-degree shift. Ah, human nature! Sometimes I have to restrain myself from posting a comment.

I don't want them to know I'm lurking.

Maybe that's why so few people leave comments here. Maybe most of my readers think I'm a depressed whiner and just watch this blog for the chimp-at-the-zoo-throwing-feces aspect of it all.

It's just us, the internet, and all those wonderful people out there in the dark!

Workity workworkwork and other random stuff

Despite the freelance I'm working on being less complicated than the previous script, I'm still steadily falling behind on it due to the bout preparation below:
















I didn't do this flyer, which is why it looks so good. One of my teammates did, though.

I need to get a union gig. There are folks who are anti-union, but animators need all the help they can get. Reading the union blog has been entertaining for the different viewpoints from different artists.

My shoulder doesn't like giving whips at practice. It'll happily hit people just fine. In fact, it feels great after I smack someone around a bit. It doesn't like to help others. Weird. So I definitely won't be skating in the bout on the 22nd, but I'll be the team manager for the TFT's.

Yesterday Mudsock told me that he and Starfish are expecting a baby in January. WOW. Apparently it was a surprise to them, but they're happy about it so it's all good. My first reaction was, Well, they didn't f*** around, did they? but then I realized that actually, they did. Um, wow.

This coming Sunday we're driving down to San Diego to check this out:


























We saw the Arizona Renegades skate against the Texas banked track league last year. It was amazing. Easily one of the most talented bunch of skaters out there. My favorite is Mayhemily.

I just got a skateboard deck in the mail. I get to paint it up for an art auction for a skatepark in Montana. Yep, Montana. I bet my art will be HUGE in Montana. Just you wait!

I'm Officially Old

I tried to sit through Donnie Darko over the weekend, since it was on cable and easily accessable as a result. It's one of those cult favorites that all the kids love, so I figured I should check it out and find out what the big whoop was about.

I don't know what the big whoop is about.

Is it a generational thing?

Probably.

Which makes me officially old, as far as I'm concerned.

Not like that should be big news, since I've felt old since the age of 23 or so.

But still.

Apocalyptic bunnies just don't do it for me.

In other news, The Big Lebowski still cracks me up even though I've seen it about a hundred zillion times.

I counted.


Here's a couple more photos from the Fight Crew shoot. This calendar is gonna rawk!




















The thing about the top photo is that I got hypnotized by the size of my quadrocep muscles. It's bad enough that I have a major case of cankles, but jeezus! my legs are going beyond the range of tree trunks altogether!














Lookit this bunch of party animals. What a bunch of goofballs!

I'm back to freelancing on the Korean kid show stuff. The script isn't as nasty as the last one, so I might not have to freak out to get it done. Which is good.

Stuck in the Middle with You

Today my team had a photo shoot.

I hate planning stuff like this, because most of the details are left to me, as captain(or "craptain", as ACDG skater Vida Loca likes to call it) to deal with.

I had to suggest themes.

I had to find locations.

I had to set the date.

I had to lineup a makeup artist(thank god one of the girls in the league, Jenna Tailya, was available).

I had to make a list of props.

I had to supply over half the props on that list.

I had to wake up early on a Saturday morning and drive downtown.

I had to sweat profusely.

I had to deal with some minor crankiness.

I had to get dirty.

I had to literally hose out my suitcase afterwards due to fake blood spillage.

And one last thing:
I had to contain myself once I saw the results.


We did this shoot because the Derby Dolls are putting together a calendar. Oh hell yeah, it's gonna be cool. Our team was the first shoot for the calendar. We had two months that we had to do. One month had to be of the team in their uniforms. The other was free-form fun. Since one of our months is October, we decided that Reservoir Dogs would be a great influence for that. So we got out our guns, blazers and ties and found ourselves a cop to mess with:














As you can see, the results are quite pretty! The Sirens' Emma Geddon was our "victim". At least she got her ear back when we were done with her. We also did a setup mimicking the Buscemi/Keitel face-off. It's hawt!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is our uniform shoot. We had originally wanted to do this in a jet plane. One of my girls is friends with someone who works for a large airline. We asked the airline if we could sneak onto a plane. They said no. We couldn't go anywhere near a plane, even if it was outside of the plane. Jeez, like we're scumbags or something. Well, based on the photo below, I guess I can't blame 'em:



















Think there's enough RED in that photo?!?!

The photographer for all this fun is Roger Snider. I haven't seen anything outside of the Derby Doll stuff that he's done(he's shot several of our bouts since last November), but I like what he does for us!

The bar we shot this at is owned by a Derby Doll: Pocket Rock-it. She's awesome. She's also responsible for getting us a space to set up our banked track for July 22. If you're ever in downtown LA and need a drink, go to Bar 107 on 4th St. @ Main. Seriously.


My shoulder is feeling significantly better. I find that if I put a heating pad on it at night, it's less cranky in the morning. It's still sore, but it's not ohmyfuxxinggawdIneedtogotothehospital sore.

I may be able to skate in all white yet!

OWCH!

Not a good day today.

Last night at practice one of my teamates and I were sent flying into the infield. When I landed, my right arm was outstretched and possibly twisted. My right shoulder is in a lot of pain right now as a result. Why don't you go to the doctor? you're probably wisely asking. Because I don't have insurance right now due to not having enough union hours to keep it going.

Oh yeah, I'm loving life.

I can't do anything with my arm where my elbow sticks out. I can lift my arm in front of me, but not to the side. I can't swing my arm out to the side. Letting it just hang is painful. It's really amazing how much range of motion one takes for granted until they lose said range of motion.

The husband is amazingly sympathetic. He says, "We don't have insurance?! Great, now I can't ride the motorcycle to work!" Nevermind that I'm in a lot of fuxxing pain right now. Well, he did suggest that I eat the cost of an office visit and try to get x-rays. Unfortunately, being unemployed doesn't make that option too fantastic.

I really don't know what to do about it, besides take ibuprofin and alternate ice and heat on it. Oh, and of course be grumpy.

I was supposed to skate in a little mini-bout for potential sponsors on Friday. Not now. I was supposed to sub for the Tru$t Fund Terrors in two weeks wearing all white(something that everyone was really looking forward to giving me sh!t about). Probably not now. Hell, I can't go buy the 50 lb. bag of kitty litter that I ordinarily can casually throw over my shoulder with ease anymore. Jeez! Stoopid skating!

Weekend Siege

The annual July 4 weekend BBQ at Eva Destruction's Mansion went off with an interesting hitch this year.

Usually there's the standard drinking, eating of veggies and cooked flesh, dressing in whatever theme Eva's husband comes up with, and a few loud motorcycles in the driveway. This year there was most of that...well, except for adherence to the BBQ theme("America, F*** Yeah!").

A side note...usually people go all out on these Mansion party themes. As in, whatever I come up with, I look like a total amateur compared to everyone else. But for "America, F*** Yeah!", people seemed to not care. Or be stumped, I'm not sure. The husband and I were the only ones who bothered. We went to the local Salvation Army and got ourselves some damn ugly patriotic clothing. Between the two of us we spent around $10. It was awesome.

ANYWAY, back to the BBQ. Below is a photo of Pocket Rock-it's shoulder, me in my hideous Salvation Army outfit, and Eva's husband Hot Carl waiting in anticipation for the corn-on-the-cob eating contest to get underway.















I won't show you the hideous photos of the six of us during the contest(Jihad and Janis Choplin also participated). It's ugly. As in, time to vomit ugly. Like, seeing Martha Stewart in the nude ugly.

Last year's winner, Jihad, didn't mess around, and managed to eat seven freakin' cobs in two minutes. How the hell she did it, I don't really know. I managed only four, and it was a struggle. Here she is with the corn-eating crown:



















Not long after the victory photo was taken, we all noticed a police helicopter swarming about:















It didn't go away. In fact, it kept getting closer until it was right overhead. We had been making jokes about it tracking us, but stopped when the copter didn't go away.

Pocket Rock-it's boyfriend, Red, waltzed up and said, "Some guy just popped over the yard fence and asked for a bandage. When I said 'no', he left." Apparently the cops were looking for that guy, and blocked off the street soon after Red's encounter with the fugitive.

The police came and talked to Red, along with Razorslut's husband, Mr. Slut. Mr. Slut saw the fugitive as well. When he was done talking with the cops, he told the rest of the party that the fugitive was wanted for stealing a car. Wow, getting a whole street blocked off for stealing a car?! In LA?!?! That's pretty damn impressive!

Red finished talking with the cops and reported that the fugitive robbed a liquor store. Hmmmm. Robbed a liquor store and then stole a car, or stole a car and robbed a liquor store?

During all of this the helicopter kept swarming directly overhead.

After 2o minutes we were told by the cops to get inside, as the fugitive was suspected to be still lurking about. We grabbed the beer and whatever meat was on the BBQ and headed indoors.

We ended up having to stay indoors for the next two hours. On a hot summer night. With no air conditioning. Um, yeah. Good times!

While we sat inside, the cops came onto the property with their police dogs and searched the side and back yards. It was kinda surreal to see flashlights cut through the night with the shadowy figures of the dogs flitting through occasionally. They seemed strangely hyper, those dogs. We dared to break protocol and stepped out onto the front porch, where I took a photo of the cops. They didn't like it when I did that.















The party people got restless. And cranky.

So did the cops. They kept coming up and asking to talk to Red Rock-it and Mr. Slut about what they saw of the fugitive. Added to the car-stealing and liquor-store-robbing was a count of climbing over a 2o-foot fence topped with razorwire(hence his asking for a bandage from Red) as the siege wore on. For some reason the cops thought we weren't cooperating enough, so they said that the guy also shot a baby. This last count was a total fabrication. The party people were not amused:















After two hours and the constant drone of the police copter overhead, we finally heard that the fugitive was caught the next block over. Finally!

So we promptly left.

Well, after catching this charming moment of one of the party people passed out on the floor. How he got his head under the endtable, I'm not too sure.