Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Another weekend of derby silliness:









































Yes, I'm wearing pink.

Yes, I still hate pink.

But in the end I don't care, as long as I have fun. This bout was fun. And sparkly.

The LA City Council has been giving grief to the Derby Dolls. Specifically one woman named Jan Perry. She doesn't like us, we don't really know why. So we've been having to fight an incredible amount of red tape that keeps changing shape so that we can keep rolling. We had a regular season bout scheduled for last Saturday, but it had to be postponed because of Jan Perry's insistence that we're not greasing the palms of the right people uh...doing things legally.

Um, yeah.

There are rumors that she doesn't like anyone who isn't big money trying to start up business in her district. She doesn't like poor artists who help pave the way to the monied gentrification that she seems to want, either.

Despite the bout postponement, we had a perfectly-legal friends-and-family-only event since there were quite a few out-of-towners who were coming in to see their beloveds skate. It was a free-for-all skater-wise. All a skater had to do was show up on game day with a black shirt and a pink shirt with name and number on the back. We lined up by skill and divided into teams about a half hour before the game started.

No pressure, no extra practices, no worrying about promotion, making bank, or whether the fire marshall would shut us down.

It was the most fun I've had skating in front of people in a looooooooooong time.














On Sunday I had to help lead Fresh Meat practice. I'm Team Manager for one of the temporary Fresh Meat teams called The Mean Machines. It's a take-off from The A-Team. The other team is called The Mr. T-Stops. After practice the Mean Machines did some bonding by going to have sushi. The place I took them to has an amazing Spicy Tuna Tower, and they got hooked. They kept ordering more Towers, and then turning to me to ask if I'd squish it up so that all the ingredients were mixed up correctly and then serve it to them. So they started calling me "Momma *T*". It's very cute!

Freelance schedules are still fluctuating. The current stuff I'm on is going fine (well, other than the designer who died last week). The other job I was supposed to start April 1, then April 4, is now scheduled for April 18. Argh. Whatever.

I keep threatening to talk about the mysterious industry person known as "Anibator". They had a venom-filled blog called, "Anibation Fantasy" that just blew the doors off the industry in saying how screwy everything is right now. He had some points. Good points. Great points. Unfortunately, he wouldn't keep the blog going. It got deleted and gay porn was what you saw if you went to the old blog address.

Now there's another Anibation Fantasy blog. Most of it is reposts from the first blog(cached from Google, no doubt), with a few newer posts thrown in.

A blog like that needs to be around. To say what needs to be said. Unfortunately, Anibator isn't sparking a movement as of yet. Everyone's still in the bitching stage. If Anibator keeps the new blog going(no new posts for almost two weeks...not a good sign), there's a chance that the meek little animators in the industry will start to think for not just their little corner of the world but for the industry in general. And then make some action accordingly.

But Anibator has to do that work for now. Because it's going to take a lot to get animators out of their cubbyholes and into the mindset that change is up to they themselves, not the union(though the union is made up of artists too), not the studios, not the government, and not just Anibator.

I have a lot more to say on the subject. But not right now. I gotta go do stuff.

3 comments:

Uccellina said...

I generally appreciate what Anibator is doing, but this post pissed me off. (I'm sure you're shocked.)

TotalD said...

I like the pink myself =) It looks like a lot of fun and I love the tattoo's ! Jan Perry should smarten up though, what's her problem ? It's total fun and not like it attracts drug dealers or anything. Should invite her to a match so she can lighten up. Hard to believe a woman is causing trouble for a womans sport.

I have no thoughts on the Anibator except at least somebodys talking freely. I don't know of it can do much but at least things get said.

MisterZoobadoo said...

pink vampires on the roller rink ... Pitch it and give me 1 percent of the gross.