Bleh

Yesterday sucked.

Not only did Beavis annoy the living beejeezus out of me, but when I went to the beach to work off some of the aggression, I messed up my knee AGAIN by swerving in sand on the bicycle to avoid pedestrians on the bike path.

Greeeeeeeeeeeat.

Anyway, while I'm in this funk, have a gander at another stupid-@$$ doodle:

SCUMBAG!

Beavis, the Idiocracy-in-action neighbor across the street, pulled another stunt last night.

Read about it here.

If anyone knows how to get back at this scumbag legally, I'd love to hear about it.

I'm Tired

My team did great on Saturday.

We lost the game, but won the fight, as far as I'm concerned.

We started with 12 skaters. We ended with five.

FIVE SKATERS.

And the point spread?

SEVEN POINTS.

The Tough Cookies should've been able to slaughter us, as they started with 13 skaters and only lost two(both were kicked out due to penalties, btw) through the course of the game. But nooooooooooo..they couldn't.

MY TEAM ROCKS.





















My personal highlights in my mind include me hitting just about every damn Tough Cookie in sight except for newest member Krissy Krash. I found out later she was purposely avoiding me. There was also a jam where I knocked down jammer Laguna Beyatch at least 3 times in a single jam.

During the first half of the game I wreaked havoc in the pack, but let their jammers get through too much. Out of Fight Crew's three jammers, we lost two of them due to injury before halftime. We were down by about 15 points by halftime. We had to seriously rework our lineups and strategies.

The second half of the game was crazy. They didn't score AT ALL during the third quarter. By the fourth quarter I was on the verge of getting kicked out of the game...AGAIN. Captain Myna Threat came up to me at the last jam, pointed her finger in my face and bellowed, YOU'RE ABOUT TO BE THROWN OUT OF THE GAME. DO NOT PULL ANY MAJOR PENALTIES ON THE LAST JAM. DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I didn't.

Yay, me!

The Rock of Love 2 episode was HILARIOUS. If you missed it last night, it'll be repeated ad nauseam all week.



Another Famous Dead Dog doodle:





















I came up with this idea early on in my Action Boy dealings, but waited to actually use it until after the asploding-face doodle. His reaction was, Nice vase!

Stroller Derby

A preview of "Rock of Love II", where I do nothing, but the clip is funny:

Can You Spot the Angry Redhead?

Here's a couple of YouTube clips for your enjoyment:

There are a couple of really clear shots of me messing people up:





I'm just skatin' like a moron in this one:




Woohoo!

"You People Know Some Interesting People"

Today I got a rare email from uber-smart and uber-talented Ken Cope. He's an old friend whom the husband and I have known for a long time. Once upon a time he worked for Disney, but he has since found a hot babe, got married, moved to northern California, had a couple of kids, and adopted a much calmer, happier life up there.

Ken also knows interesting people...or so he's told. The guy who runs the blog, PZ Myers, is pretty damn interesting from the skimming I've done this morning. Has relevant science posts, likes squids and has posts about lolcats and evolution? Can you really top that?!

I don't think so!

To add some possible serendippity-do, I was reading one of the very few motorcycle newsgroups that I find worthwhile, to see a post about the same blog entry from a biker friend in Florida. His post went something like this:

I was merrily reading a biology/atheism/cephalopod blog (no, don't think
about that, it'll just hurt your head) when I spied some artwork I
thought I recognized.

The blog entry talked about Roller Derby and toilet seat art and I was
pretty sure I knew who he was talking about. But then, when he
mentioned a trophy for the most penalties in a single season I knew.
Our demure little West Coast redhead, The Red-Haired She Devil is now
famous across the BlogoSphere!

Links from one of the most popular science blogs on the Net to her own
blog. Very cool.

And to think we knew her when...

So I guess I'm finally hanging with the cool kids now!

Now I know why I'm all of the sudden getting more friend requests on MySpace.

Hot Girls allllllll Weekend!

Saturday's gonna be interesting.

Our season opener is happening...both teams playing have some skaters down, and that'll make the game more brutal than usual. Me? I have a hurt knee, but I'm skating anyway. I'll probably get kicked out again, knowing my luck!

Are you in LA? Are you going?

You'd better, if you know what's good for you.

Check out the rad poster art by Jordan Crane:




















If that isn't enough to entice you, we're gonna have the Hotdog on a Stick truck there. That's right, girls in ugly uniforms will be pounding lemons into lemonade for your pleasure. Hopefully they won't have mustaches like this lovely lass:





















OK, so you're not in LA, or you're too chickenshit to go watch hot girls skate or make corndogs. Fine. Just remember to watch Rock of Love II on VH1 this Sunday. Got it? THIS SUNDAY. 'Cos that's the episode that I'm on. Skating and shaking a baby.

Yep. You read that right.

It's Official!

The Derby Dolls had their annual prom/awards ceremony over the weekend. I was originally going to blow it off, since I wasn't nominated for any awards (including being shut out of the Badass Blocker category) this year. Yeah, I was shocked, too!

However, I relented and pulled out my jammies and Tazmanian Devil slippers for the "Pajamarama"-themed event. Our warehouse is freakin' FREEZING this time of year, so I had to scrap the idea of pulling out Halloween's Fembot costume, as I didn't want to freeze certain body parts off.

During the awards ceremony portion of the evening, I was too busy stuffing my face with pizza and drinking an interesting combination of champagne and Sparks to pay much attention to the awards being given out to everyone but me. Yes, I'm a selfish little twerp...didn't you know that?! All of the sudden, I hear, "TARA ARMOV!" and everyone turned to look at me while I was still preoccupied with the aforementioned activities.

Why?

Because I apparently won in a category that wasn't up for a vote, but depended solely on statistics: Most Penalized Player of the 2007 season.

Yep, I'm officially a troublemaker!


Look, here's a photo of Demolicious(league owner), Orlando Doom(with his back to camera), me, MY TROPHY, and teammate Leia Mout:
















A breath-taking shot of MY TROPHY and my ugly mug:




















And yet another charming, demure shot of me and MY TROPHY:





















I wish I had been nominated for Badass Blocker(teammate Broadzilla won that one), but it seems that quite a few people think that Most Penalized is the Award That Matters. I'm beginning to agree with them!

A Reaction Worth Waiting For...

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"Tara! Tara! Tara!"

I'm jealous over Tara again. The below is from a blog that Arizona Roller Derby's Coach Pauly said after coming out to train the Derby Dolls last weekend:

Now to name a few people that I would love to steal and bring back to the desert with me … Broadzilla is an awesome blocker/skater, Iron Maiven, this girl Is a freak of nature, jammer blocker and over all ass kicker, PITA well she is different that's for sure it's been a longtime that someone has made me flinch…but really folks she is an awesome skater, And Tara I can't say enough about this lady she is a leader on and off the track a true competitor.

Wow. Just...WOW. This comes from a guy who has been a part of the "new wave" of roller derby for over 4 years now...Arizona was the first league outside of Texas, and they have some BADASS skaters. Pauly used to play football and rugby, and his coaching skills are top-notch. He put the Good Hurt on us real good over the weekend, and it was exactly what the league needed.

And then there's the blog entry I found from one of the Fresh Meat, Gritty in Pink. She said:

But I still want to prove something to myself. I want to prove that I can do this, finish what I start and make something of myself physically--leave the “brain in the jar” life behind. Does that mean skating till I drop every day? Will I not be satisfied until I have Tara Armov’s muscles and Mila Minute’s speed?

The husband read that and said, "I never noticed that you had muscles."

Harrumph!

Where Do I Go?

Lately I'm sitting in a puddle of mental mud. I know that I gotta get my crap together art-wise, but so far I've failed to do so.

I think it's because art is so subjective. With skating, I know where I stand skills-wise. Art-wise...uh...well, some people like my art, some don't. If I were to go by the number of comments I get on this blog, I'd say that most don't.

It's a little disheartening.

However, I've been trying to channel the badass Tara Armov side into action to "coach" the wussy artistic side of me to get off my ass and do something.

We'll see how that goes.


In the meantime, here's another Dead Famous Dog doodle:

I Still Don't Like Backgrounds

I finally got ol' Puss n' Boots out of Illustrator and into Photoshop:





















I knew I did better on the foreground foliage when I asked my sister what she thought of it and she said, "There's foreground foliage? I didn't even notice." SCORE!

I think I'll have to scrap the background trees and try again. Or use more "blur".

TakeTwo...

Back to the Dead Famous Dog doodles:





















I was going for a stinky mummified effect with this one. Kinda stupid, now that I look at it. The yellowing teeth is a nice touch, however. Action Boy's reaction to this was similiar to his reaction to the first one, mainly a non-reaction. Yeesh, what the hell do I have to do to get something of a horrified reaction around here?!

Well, will ya look at that!

Do yourself a favor and read my buddy Kenny's blog entry on Martha Raye.

I don't know much about her except that she did Polident commercials and married some scumbag young guy not long before she died. That last bit was always played up on the Howard Stern show.

Anyway, I was talking with Kenny on the phone Monday night and he told me of the above blog entry, and mentioned that even though she was mainly a vaudeville/comedic actress, she had a hot bod that was, uh, underutilized in her roles. I think the clip he posted vouches for that.

I love seeing clips like that...it changes the way one views a particular actor/actress, and in this case it's for the better.

Here We Go Again...

Alright, let's try posting some drawings on this-here blog, yes?

This is actually a re-post:





















Yes, it's a dead Famous Dog holding a dead flower with flies buzzing around his stinking, rotting corpse. This is actually part of a series of doodles I did last summer. The story behind it goes something like this:

One of the other sequence directors...um, we'll call him "Action Boy" since storyboarding and directing action-adventure shows is his forte...would bring flowers in from his backyard to give to all the wimminfolk in the office a few days each week. I don't think the idea was to hit on any of us, it was just something he did. Anyway, we wimminsfolk were a little confused and perplexed at first, but most of them got over it.

I decided to get weird in reciprocation by leaving a doodle for Action Boy whenever the gifted flower died and I would return the vase/bottle/water receptacle that it was living in to him. Why a dead dog with dead flowers? Why the hell not? It was fun to work with a theme, which is something I rarely do.

The intent of the doodles was to make Action Boy just a leetle bit uneasy around me. It didn't work with the first doodle. Stay tuned to see what I do to up the ante.

FASCINATING, Captain...

Here's a fun little clip from the Championship game. It's a jam near the end of the game where Fight Crew's Fighty and Tawdry Tempest, get slammed down in a HIGHLY illegal move by the Siren's PITA as she cuts across the track to hit 'em at around the 13 second mark of the clip:





Now, the result of this jam SHOULD'VE been a major penalty on the Sirens. But nooooo, the refs TOTALLY MISSED THE BLOCK. Neither Fighty or Tawdry could skate due to PITA's block, the Sirens put in a fresh jammer with a full pack(including the offending PITA), and in the next jam, the Sirens won the game.

Needless to say, this is causing some derby drama amongst the ref crew.

Good times!

Dejected Rejected Ejected

Wanna know how to get ejected from a Derby Doll Championship game? Watch this:

I Can't Draw Foliage!

Puss n' Boots update:






















That plant-like thing in the lower righthand corner is gonna get overhauled. Spiky is not the direction it should go in.

I have other tweaks to do while this is still in Illustrator. The majority of the background stuff will happen in Photoshop, where the handy-dandy "blur" feature will be used to cover up my ineptitude with backgrounds.

Thank goodness the deadline for this project has been extended to February. I'm gonna need it!

Ahahahahahahha!!!!!!

Today one of the roller girl Yahoo! groups got a little snarkey over this:





Yes, Rock of Love II with Bret Michaels. Oh, did you notice a banked track in there amongst all the boobage? Yeah, go look again. I'll wait.

That was the SOOPER SECRET shoot I did with Myna Threat and Mila Minute back in November. The one where I threw out my back for a freakin' MONTH just by sitting wrong. Funny, but I don't remember the contestants looking as stripper-ish as they do in the promo clip. I guess they were toned down for our shoot due to the nature of the activity.

Sad thing is, it was a pretty fun shoot to do. The crew was funny, Bret Michaels was personable, they put makeup on our sweaty little faces, we got fed, and we got to hit chicks that have never done derby before. Not too shabby!

Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! I ate a lot of queso, drank a lot of vodka and Red Bull, and danced like the drunk white girl that I am for NYE. I also got to beat the bejeezus out of a pinata. That was a lot of fun!

Look! I dressed like a real gurl!





















Partay:

















Everyone might have been a little intoxicated: