Some Pix from Last Saturday

Fight Crew lost by 10 points last Saturday.

It's not our proudest team moment.

However, after watching the game footage from the webcast, I can say that I played one of my personal best games EVAR.

I think it was the face-slapping that did it.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa...?! you may be asking yourself...

See, the San Diego Derby Dolls have a pre-game ritual where the team lines up and the team manager swiftly slaps the face of each skater down the line juuuuust before the game starts. It's an instant adrenaline rush and gets one's head in the game. I had our bench manager for the game, PITA from the Sirens, slap the living bejeezus out of me before my first jam. HOLY CRAP it worked! I still made mistakes, but I also blocked a lot harder and a lot smarter than in previous games.

FC captains are trying to figure out how to approach our last game of the season, which will be against the Sirens in October. I suggest a lot of face-slapping.


Anyway, here are some fun fotos from the game.

A two-fer...I had just hit Long Island Lolita, taking both her and myself down. FC co-captain Haught Wheels got caught in my cross-fire by falling over me:


























I remember when I saw Lolita go down with her face so close to the kickrail, I thought, OH SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but she was uninjured.


Tough Soles and I in the penalty box:














I wasn't ejected from this game. Nor have I been ejected from any game this season. I came close, though. Especially at the end, where the refs gave me a penalty in a jam that I wasn't even skating in. That penalty that someone else committed would've gotten me kicked out of the last jam had it not been noticed that I wasn't in the jam that the refs were talking about.



Behind the Varsity Brawlers in the foreground is me flying over Vulvarine, who fell in front of me while going full speed. I landed sprawled in such a way that I hit my chin on the track(THANK GAWD we wear mouthguards...my parents would've been pissed beyond belief if I messed up my teeth!), and my ribs and hips got bruised. The ribs especially got hit HARD when I landed. Owch.

















Aaaaaaaaand a team photo with Fight Crew superfan Little Kenny(though I hear he's thinking of switching loyalties to VB...if that's true, I have something to say about that!), who has always been super-supportive of not only Fight Crew, but the Derby Dolls in general. He gave copious amounts of cash to the Ri-Ettes to help them go to Battle on the Bank in Austin in June, and he also helped out the Jr. Derby Dolls with their camp in July:














And here's a rare little treat. ARTWORK! That I did! This is the new logo that the flat track league in town, the Angel City Derby Girls, are using for their all-star team, the Scarlets. They have a "Pegasus of Power" theme going on...I don't know where it came from, but it gave me an excuse to build a goofy-looking logo in Illustrator:

Last Saturday

If you missed the Fight Crew/Varsity Brawlers game last Saturday, you missed seeing this AMAZING game intro. Flagellate yourselves appropriately:

Did you miss the game last Saturday? Did you also miss the webcast?

Check it out here for the next week or so.

It's Not the Heat...

...well, OK, maybe it is.

Fuck, it's hot.

Of course half the state of California is burning as a result. WTF?!?!?!?!?!


I'm busy with the usual freelance and skating. All I can say is that the best thing about working from home is that pants are optional.


Enjoy some random photos while I prep for tomorrow's game. Which will be webcast live:

Promo for Aug. 29 FIGHT CREW/Varsity Brawlers game

This Saturday's game promises to be good:

Hey look! Another interview with/about the LA Derby Dolls! ANNNNNND, I'm in it!




What's funny about this interview(besides me sounding like a transvestite as I talk with my hands CONSTANTLY)is that I thought I didn't say a whole lot during my portion of the interview with Killo Kitty. Apparently I don't have a good memory, and I'm living up to the LOUDMOUTH reputation quite well.

Enjoy!

Weird Day

This week I started new freelance with a biblical theme, and it's stressing me out. Last night I had tumultuous, anxiety-ridden dreams about missing deadlines and EPICALLY FAILING. I woke up feeling like I got ran over by a giant herd of 16-legged horses with spikes in their hooves.


After a groggy morning ab routine, I shuffled to go get the bicycle and wander on over to the Santa Monica Farmers Market when I got a call telling me that my most favoritist riding partner was in a motorcycle accident up in Oregon last week. He wasn't killed...in fact, considering that a big rig tried to take him out, he escaped with a lot less than one would expect. The Angel of Death brushed by but didn't make a stop.

THANK GOODNESS.

What really shakes me up about the news is that he and I ride in a very similar style. We're both fast, cranky bastards on our bikes, and generally take the same types of risks. So this is a "There but by the Grace of God" type of deal.


So that news had me all freaked out as I ran my errands.



I get back home, put the bicycle away, and as I'm walking back to the house, I see this tasty little tidbit on the back porch:





















A goddam dead bird. I'm assuming Kitty is the culprit, as he's the most regular of the backyard cats that hangs out. That, and I've been feeding him sporadically, and I think the bird is a commentary on my lack of regularity. I suspect this is NOT a suicide on the bird's part.


















I think Kitty looks rather pleased with himself in this photo:






















I'm ready for this day to be over already.

Why I'm Not on TV...or Anywhere Else...

Saturday night was derby-licious.

A double-header game in El Segundo featuring Angel City Derby Girls(home team) vs. Oly Rollers(Olympia, WA), and BAD Girls(Bay Area) vs. San Diego. It was the must-see games of the season so far in SoCal, and so the Dear Husband and I packed up computers and a brand-spanking-new video camera to record the events as much as possible for those who weren't there or who just wanted to study the footage later.

I did blogcasting for Derby News Network. Which basically means as the action unfolded before me, I and two other knowledgable derby peeps would type one to two sentences for the internetz. When I announce, I try to keep my language clean for the kids. For the internetz? Well, uh, fuck that.

Here's a sampling of my foul fingers from both boutcasts I did, courtesy of DNN's Justice Feelgood Marshall. Which he posted on my Facebook page:

TARA ARMOV: Punk got taken the fuck DOWN by riot girl
TARA ARMOV: Heffer got taken teh FUCK down and finally calls it from teh floor
TARA ARMOV: Cherry's saying, "Fuck this shit" and isn't fighting.
TARA ARMOV: Fast as fuck pack
TARA ARMOV: Oly's lateral blocking is fucking tits
TARA ARMOV: ACDG NEEDS TO SPEED THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TARA ARMOV: Sioux faces Vavava Gina at the front of the pack, says FUCK THAT and calls it off.
TARA ARMOV: TOnight's DJ is fucking awesome.
TARA ARMOV: Enstephalitis is the fucking RAD for typing up the rosters for everyone.
TARA ARMOV: BO TOXIC FUCKING ROCKS. She just brought me a beer.
TARA ARMOV: fast fucking pack
TARA ARMOV: Holy fuckballs.
TARA ARMOV: THE FUCK.
TARA ARMOV: Kiki knocked the fuck down
TARA ARMOV: Good time for Kiki to rack up some fucking points
TARA ARMOV: SD down 2 blockers and jammer in the pack, they're fucked.

My mom is probably so proud!


Here's a photo from Saturday night. It's of the DNN News Center(as I kept calling it on the blogcasts)featuring Ivana Clobber(derby gypsy right now, though she's been with Kansas City Roller Warriors and Boston, amongst other leagues), me, and BAD ref Enstephalitis.
















You can see that we were a surly, yet good-natured-in-our-surliness bunch.


And why the hell can't I spell "the"?!?!?!

Termite Terrace

The house had termites, and we had to tent the place to get rid of them:

















So where does one stay if they have a tented termite terrace? The cheepest hotel in Marina del Rey:

















The Dear Husband stumbled upon this place online while we frantically tried to find a motel that would take pets. Let me tell you, IT AIN'T EASY. Luckily we found this place.

Here's the view just from the parking lot:

























The yellowish icky haze is from the Santa Barbara fires.


The DH loved staying here. The food at the hotel restaurant was good, the rooms were serviceable, the location was prime, and stores were within walking or biking distance(we did both...though not at the same time).


The part I liked the most was that there weren't many Americans there. A bunch of French and Australians seemed to have found this little gem of a place, and that made breakfast conversation eavesdropping fun. DH's favorite conversation was of a French dude wanting to take the bus to some tourist destination. Tourist, welcome to the most inefficient public transportation system EVAR! Good luck with that!

Out front, there was an office building that looked to be an old restaurant:




















































For some reason it brought up a strong case of deja vu for me, as I would fly down to LAX from Sacramento with my mom when I was but a wee lass and visit my grandparents, who at the time lived in Inglewood. I swear I remember this place from when I was but a wee lass, but who knows?

Anyway, our stay-cation was nice, but it felt fantastic to be back home. I cleaned away for most of the day, and the place is still looking like a disaster area. But it's my disaster area!

P.S: some anonymous doofus left a silly comment that I didn't approve. Why? Because, a) it's anonymous, and I don't accept chickenshit morons to comment here, and, b)if you accuse me of making an anti-gay remark, please proofread to make sure I did indeed make such a remark. OKTHNXBAI.

Better Now...

Thanks to the Santa Monica post office, I was FINALLY able to send off my passport crap today. *whew!*


Here's a smallsmallsmall sampling of Rollercon photos:

Me and Smackya Sideways warming up for the Team Loudmouth/Silent But Deadly scrimmage on Fremont St. We both look scary for very different reasons!
















Me in action during the game:





















Hey look! I hit people while skating!!!!!


















Me doing...uh, something during the Strictly Dickly/Vagine Regime game:

















Meeting Charm City's Justice Feelgood Marshall for the first time...again:
















I think he weighs around 10 lbs. soaking wet. Thank goodness he wasn't soaking wet in this photo.



The Dear Husband's tattoo that I had to redraw every day in Vega$:






















Krissy Krash's improved tramp stamp:


















Rat City's photographer, Axle Adams:






















San Diego's Bo Toxic:


















Tramp stamp on TXRD's announcer WundaMike. ACDG's Holly Caust is shocked. So am I:

My Rage Knows No Bounds...

It seemed so simple, to want a passport.

But no, I can not has.

Why?

The fucking assholes at the post office are the worst group of people anyone has to deal with to get anything done.

First, their schedules suck. 10am-3pm for passport stuff? Really?

Second, half the time their cameras are broken. Which isn't a problem if one has AAA, one can just go there and get photos.

Until...

One gets to the ONE person in the ENTIRE goddam post office who's authorized to handle passports. She stares at photos and says rudely, Oh, this won't work. Your bangs cover your eyes.

THAT WOULD'VE BEEN GOOD INFORMATION TO HAVE WHEN I TOOK THE FUCKING PHOTO TO BEGIN WITH.

Dear Husband is able to complete his application.

Walk back to car.

Curse wildly.

Drive home to change crappy shirt and slap on makeup.

Note there's only two more hours to get new photos and get back to post office.

Drive to AAA.

Get new photos. Doesn't get charged, so no one dies.

Drive to post office.

Stand in line.

Find out that the rude "lady" is off in the back somewhere, talking on the phone to a "supervisor". No one else can handle passports, of course.

After 20 minutes, another worker comes out and suggests going to another nearby post office, as one allegedly has a half hour of time left to complete everything.

Stomp back to the car, drive like a crazy person to the other post office.

Park with a half hour left to do the job.

Go in, and notice the big fucking sign that has CHANGED THE DAMN HOURS THAT PASSPORTS CAN BE DONE.

Am now a half hour LATE to accomplish the seemingly simple fucking goal of handing over money for a fucking passport.


I now understand why shootings in post offices happen.


The DH doesn't help by talking about how long it took him to get his initial passport years ago driving to Hawthorne and other such crap. Right, OK.

I get it.

Everything you do is harder than what I do.

FINE.

YOU FUCKING WIN.

I THINK I'M HAVING A BREAKDOWN.

Rollercon '09: Day Three

Saturday, August 1:

My general ramblings have resulted in long posts that are apparently boring as fuck to read, so I'll try for shorter bullet points for the attentionally-challenged:

• Teaching Tarametrics: yeah, I'm gonna gonna torture as many skaters as I possibly can. It's going international, since I had a London Rollergirl in the class. MWAHAHAHAHAHHA. I also got to taunt a couple of Sac City Rollergirls, since LA's Tough Cookies are going up to play them later this month...and I hope to be subbing with them for that game!

• Sitting with sisters Miss E. Vil(Duke City)and Demanda Riot(B.A.D. girl & Team Awesome)talking derby terms. Do you know what the difference between a "sit and hit" and an "ass to puss" is? Nothing but the names.

• Getting potential offers to train on an international realm. Now if that's not a good excuse to finally get a passport, I don't know what is.

• Pick-up scrimmages. Nothing boils down the essence of DIY derby more than packing a black shirt, a white shirt, and heading on down to skate with and against strangers just to see what happens. No big production, just skating and hitting. I had a blast, even while skating on the Floor of Death at the LV Sports Center.

• Smackya Sideways from Rose City. I love this girl. She's a tank. A very agile tank. Almost every time I went up to skate, there she was on the other team. Taunting me. I told her after the first four jams that if we're going to continue meeting like this, she needs to buy me a drink. I remember each of us getting only one decent hit on each other on the track. We're that good, apparently. Or that wary of each other's potentially painful capabilities, I dunno.

• Taking the crapola double-decker shuttle bus at night. Boy, what a difference night and day makes. The bus is almost tolerable, and getting to talk about the potential impact Whip It! will have on DIY derby, the awesomeness of the name "Rack Attack!" for a team, stories of people missing flights due to missing passports, more tattoo talk, rules differences between flat track, banked track, and Old School, and just how much can a skater drink in Vegas and still function the next day?

• A quiet dinner. This can't be underestimated in a loud city like Vegas. Getting stuffed stoopid on bacon-cheese fries and steak salad is fun. Epic fun. Good thing we don't do that too often.

• More Tara tattoos. I had no idea so many mai tais could be made in one evening. So many tattoos done, so many photos taken. There's a distinct thrill in giving a guy a "tramp stamp" in front of hundreds of girl skaters. However, the 2am dooshbag rush from the bar across the hotel driveway was not fun. I wanted to poke their eyes out with a boar's tusk.

• Staying up til 7am. This is not for the weak. We stayed up through Closing Time for the Dooshbags, many Dealertainers(Michael Jackson was of course everyone's favorite...the Fight Crew folk who were there couldn't remember the Thriller choreography, much to our horror), many mai tais, a severe lack of pants, buttons traded, derby discussed, and a lot of talk about bacon. By 7am there was a very small but very hardy group who wanted to go to breakfast. I called it off...I had to get some sleep before going to the airport in 3 hours.

• Getting to the airport on schedule, only to have everything else go silly. The Southwest terminal had improved their wait times in the security line. However, they seem to think that carrying on roller skates is a potential security risk, and they scanned my skate bag a couple of times before I was allowed to go through. Got on the plane all right. Departed the gate, and then...stop. What the..?! We sat on the tarmac for a good half hour-45 minutes. At first they said it was for "emergency vehicles on the runway", but there are windows on the plane and we saw nothing. Then it was announced we were sitting due to the winds shifting so much that the airport had to change the landing patterns of the planes. That made more sense. I surreptitiously texted my sister to let her know we were late, which was a good thing since the airline website did not reflect the delay at all.

• Los Angeles. People talk a lot of smack about LA...I myself have been known to scream, THIS CITY IS A SHITHOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! while sitting in traffic. However, this place definitely beats the living bejeezus out of Vegas. To come out of the airport to air that's cool and breathable was delicious.

• The cat(s). Lou C really missed us. So did Kitty, and Kitty isn't even our cat. Taking a much-needed nap with Lou C was a grand thing.

So that's the basic rundown of Rollercon. I know I'm forgetting stuff, and of course I need to post pics. But there you have it.

Rollercon '09: Day Two-Oh

Friday, July 31.

Woke up early after a night of sleeping badly. Am freaking out because I thought I had another class to teach 1:30pm-3:30pm. What's the problem with that? Don't you like teaching?! you may be asking yourself. Yes, I do, but the problem was that I had not one, not two, but THREE Fremont St. Challenge Scrimmages to skate in starting at 4pm.

Fremont St. and the Las Vegas Sports Center aren't right next to each other, Vegas traffic sucked ASS(especially with all the road construction going on), we didn't rent a car, and the shuttle buses were horrible: double-decker affairs with no air conditioning and seemed to be powered by engines more appropriate for golf carts. One had broken down in the middle of Las Vegas Blvd. leaving the skaters on board to walk the rest of the way to the Sports Center. Zoiks! How the hell was I going to get from the Sports Center to Fremont St. in time for my first scrimmage?!

So I was figuring out how I was going to make all this work. I was so nervous about it! The Dear Husband had his own worries in trying to find the right Derby News Network people to work on a little project that they're doing, so we were both frazzled and cranky.

We stopped by the Enforcers main room to pick up my uniform for the Gramercy Refs, the team I was skating with in game #2 on Fremont St. It's a team that requires its members to have been in a ref position at any point, so fellow skaters from LA Iron Maiven, Razorslut, Janis Choplin, Viktimizer, Marina del RAGE and myself qualified. We joined Enforcers Gia de los Muertos, Roger Assaultrey, Thomas Refferson, Oliver Clothesoff, D-Mann, Ophelia Melons, Al Capwned, and Julius Pleasar. We were taking on the Co-Ed Cripplers, who were a group of refs from the Pacific Northwest. Go refs! We then made our way to the Sports Center to do our skatin' thang.

While there, two beautiful things happened. I found out that I had misread the schedule and so I didn't have a class to teach, and the taxis had figured out that skaters liked air conditioning, so we were out of the time crunch.

I was able to sit back and enjoy a noontime WFTDA-sanctioned bout between #11-ranked Boston and #14-ranked Bay Area Derby Girls. The game was slowwwww because of the Sports Center slippery floor, but it was great for watching team strategy. Boston killed BAD, 129-58. Both teams looked pretty good, but Boston held to their plays better, while BAD developed ADD in too many jams.

At one point, a Boston skater got smacked in the face by a large BAD blocker. She went down, got up, stumbled a few feet, and sank to her knees again in the infield. Refs call the jam off, look at the skater. Skater goes back to her bench. Game resumes. Those of us with a wide view of the team benches see the same skater puking into a trashcan. Uhm, that could be the sign of a concussion. We start yelling for a medic to check her out more thoroughly. OK, I mean I start yelling. Game stops. Medic slowwwwwwwwly and casually walks over to puking skater. Doesn't check her out, just asks how she is and leaves. Game resumes. WHATEVARRRR. I guess she's OK. Even though the score was lopsided, I enjoyed watching the game.


I had second thoughts about what to do about skate wheels for my challenge bouts. I've heard varying reports on how slippery Fremont St. was, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy new wheels that were reported to help with the "drifting" on the LVSC floor, which I figured would be great for Fremont St. which is less slippery.

So I bought the new "Sugar" wheels(they had design input from Sin City Skaters and all-around derby gurus Ivanna S. Pankin and Trish the Dish) and had them put on my skates while I waited in the loooooong credit card line to pay for them. Everything went well and we were perfectly timed to catch a cab to Fremont St. by the time I got done.

Fremont St. is Old Las Vegas. REALLY old. And hot. REALLY hot. 103 degrees, to be precise. What the hell had I gotten myself into?! I skated some warmup laps and discovered that I sure as hell wasn't going to be "drifting" anywhere I didn't want to go with the Sugar wheels, but I still didn't have enough time to properly break them in. I was more worried about the dry heat...everyone's throats were sore from the hot wind.

First game: Team Loudmouth vs. Team Silent But Deadly. Can you guess which team I was on? Most of the teams in these challenge scrimmages have minimal planning and generally don't know each other all that well, and that applied to Team Loudmouth. We dressed in bright neon and were actually pretty quiet during warmups, again that damn Vegas wind dried us out. BUT, during the half-hour game, we were loud enough and bright enough to definitively WIN. I learned that louder is better in derby, and that when one stays near their teammates, wonderful, brutal things happen to the other team.

Our team cheer was, SMALL BOX, BIG MOUTH!!! due to the incredibly tiny "bench" area we had in the infield that we had to stay inside during the jams. We cracked ourselves up.


Second game: Gramercy Refs vs. Co-Ed Cripplers. Again, teamwork was the word of the day. We were up against a pretty damn good crew, one of whom is infamous as Quadzilla. He has mad skate skills and used to skate on Rollerjam and now coaches and skates in Washington state. We managed to actually keep him in the pack several times due to aggressive teamwork on our part, and I'm pretty damned stoked about that.

The advantage to the Gramercy Ref's teamwork was that it was made up of all LA Derby Dolls people, so we already knew each other and were able to get some practice in. And we also had the most coordinated uniforms. We still lost, but DAMN we looked good doing it!

By the end of the second game I didn't know if I was going to make it through the third game, as I hadn't eaten much more than some french fries and a candy bar all day and the heat was really getting to me. However, I had to rally...


Third game: Vagine Regime vs. Strictly Dickly(aka the Caulksuckers, but that name couldn't be announced on the street). This was a Big Deal. Last year Strickly Dickly lost by a considerable margin to the Vagines. Oh, and before I get too far, I'll say that yes, Vagine Regime is a team of lesbians while the Caulksuckers are all hetero. It was a close game, but I made it all the way through without fainting, puking, or dying. Go, me! In a snafu between the ref crew and the announcers, the Caulksuckers thought we lost the game when time was called. The Dear Husband kept telling me that we had won, but I said that that's not what we were told! Turns out he was right...Caulksuckers avenged the previous year's loss!

Again, I had skated with only a fraction of the skaters on the team, but we managed to keep it together. That whole "teamwork" thing actually does work!

I was DYING by the end of that last game, and while I was taking off my gear, I told the DH, I need something cold, slushy and alcoholic NOW!!! and he promptly got out of my face. He came back five minutes later with a HUGE mug of strawberry daiquiri. I instantly got brain freeze, but it was the bestest brain freeze EVAR!

We caught a ride back to the hotel with D-Mann, showered(not with D-Mann) and walked over to the Flamingo for dinner and the annual Rollercon Black and Blue ball.

DH wanted a buffet, so off we went. Our timing was great...we got there about an hour before closing, so the lines were practically nonexistent. Afterwards, we stepped outside to find the lagoon pool where the B&B Ball was being held, and immediately were struck with the disgusting smell of bird crap. It smelled like Florida. Not a pleasant thing to encounter right after eating!

The Ball itself was alright...security was apparently tipped off to how wild and crazy rollergirls could be, but since the bar prices were kinda prohibitive, no one got too crazy. We didn't have time to come up with clever outfits this year...in fact, I wore my Gramercy Refs skort the entire evening, so we kinda blended into the background of everyone else's fun outfits.

There was a costume contest, and LA's Roger Assaultrey was in the running with his "Casual Skeletor" costume. The LA skaters gave him mucho support during the audience judging portion of the night, but shenanigans ensued and he lost. I also lost my voice. Oh, joy!

Things wrapped up early at the Ball, so we all wandered back to the Imperial Palace, got snubbed at the Vagine Regime's Dance Off Pants Off party(too crowded, nothing personal), and ended up at the IP's karaoke bar. It was fun for awhile, but the shitty selection of music made us run away after awhile and we ended up watching the "Dealertainers" by the Geisha Bar for most of the night.

We had a hunkerin' for french fries so we found some at one of the crappy diners in the hotel and found training god Coach Pauly already there eating dinner. So we ordered some grub and sat with him and talked for...hours. People we knew came by, the most hilarious one being Suzy Snakeyes because she was wearing a Viking helmet.

At around 4am we called it a day and stumbled back to the hotel room.

to be continued...

Rollercon '09: Day One

I hate Vegas. With a passion. I don't go there unless there's a reason to be there. Like going to weddings...my own or friends. Or conventions. Namely Rollercon.

This year's trip to Sin City started out great in LA. Woke up obscenely early, got to the airport in plenty of time, checked in our luggage with no problems, the carry-on case fit great into the overhead bin, and the flight wasn't sold out so we were comfy.

Then we landed in Vegas.

And promptly got stuck in the tram that transports plane passengers from the gates to the main terminal. Ugh. Had to wait for a dude to come by and release the brakes before we could go to the dump that is the Imperial Palace. At least the tram was air conditioned while we waited, or else we probably would've been cooked in the 100+ degree heat.

Check in to the dump. Wait forever for the elevator to take us up to the room. Wander over to Rollercon registration.

And promptly went from annoyed to outright pissed.

The registration line was long. And slow. And I had to check in before I could go teach the class I had in about 2 hours. So I stood.

And waited.

Impatiently.

The Dear Husband got a Press Pass, so he didn't have to wait. So he wandered off and made phone calls and texted a bunch of people. He'd wander back to give me some trivial piece of information periodically, and when I'd try to ask him to either check with the other line I'd have to stand in once I got done with the registration line or ask someone if I had to stand in both lines before going to teach, he'd cut me off with another statement about what he needed to do and wander off again.

Grrrr.

Finally, I get registered and rush back up to the room to change into teaching-skate-stuff clothes, grab the skates, and find a way to the off-site sports facility that actually has the skating for Rollercon. Luckily we were able to grab a ride from Mercy Less from Derby News Network, so off we went.

Get to the Sports Center and got ready to teach. I step on to the classroom floor, and discovered that everyone is doing a Bambi-on-ice impersonation because the floor is sooper-slick polished concrete. No one was getting good traction...they'd drift in the turns, sliding off the track and trying to scramble back into play.

I taught my class as best as possible considering the slippery non-slope, and made it through alright. Hung out for awhile then caught another ride back to the hotel to shower, have dinner, and cause mayhem.

Mayhem was delayed because by the time we got ourselves together, it was at a mid-evening hour when everyone was either out watching semi-informal Challenge bouts at Fremont Street, back at the Sports Center to do pick-up scrimmages, lounging by the petrie dish known as the pool, or...uh...I don't know where. In the past, this "dead hour" wasn't so noticeable because everything was at the Imperial Palace except for the Fremont St. Challenges. But since the actual skating stuff was off-site, the Imperial Palace was comparitively deserted.

And as an added insult, our usual hangout at Imperial Palace wasn't open, so we had to sit at an inferior bar. BORRRRRRING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Husband kept wandering back to our usual mai tai spot, and they eventually opened up around 10pm, so we skedaddled over and promptly set up shop: sat down in comfy chairs, pulled out Sharpies, and ordered mai tais.

Rollercon was ON!

Things were still calm and slow for another hour, but eventually skaters from all over the world came in from wherever they had been hanging out and walked by the mai tai bar on their way to the elevators. Sharpie tattoo business got very brisk, and we easily got plastered on the mai tais I got stacked up as payment for the drawings. I also handed out quite a few of my buttons, and word spread of the Return of the Tara Tatts quickly.

For the first night, I did Tara Tatts mostly on people who were already "in-the-know" about the tatts to begin with. One of the best comments came from fellow LA Derby Doll Krissy Krash when she came by while I was drawing on someone else and yelled, "WILL YOU DO ME, TARA ARMOV?!"

Pretty hilarious!

I think we went back up to our room around 2am. By Rollercon standards, that's early, but I thought I had a class to teach the next day, so I figured I'd better be en pointe for that.

The elevators weren't too busy, so we got back up to the room fairly quickly and collapsed into a deep, dark sleep.

to be continued...

Vega$

Early tomorrow morning we're in for convention #2 by flying to Vegas for Rollercon.

I'll be taking my skates, Sharpies, and these lil' babies:

















Woohoo!

Photoz

Here's a quick and by no means complete sampling of Comic Con photos:


Sonambulo creator Rafael Navarro and I getting all excited about the Whip It! movie:

















O HAI:





















Nerd Rage from Slaughter County Derby up in Washington state. True story: I was working the GirlsDrawinGirls booth and happened to look up and saw Nerd Rage in the crowd. Our eyes locked and we each instantly thought to ourselves: ROLLER DERBY!

So she came over and said hello:





















U CAN HAZ TARA TATT:






















Maude Lebowski has a new husband:






















Mrs. Mia Wallace and amazing artist Danni Luo:





















The look on the masked woman's face is a little creepy:






















U CAN HAZ MIRMAYDE TATTOOO:






















Rafael has a warped idea of who makes a good Booth Babe at his Sonambulo booth:

Sooprised...

Am back from Comic Con.

Am getting ready for Rollercon.

Am overwhelmed.

Am tired.

Am not getting enough sleep due to the noisy world.

Am surprised that out of my merchandise for sale at Comic Con, this little lady was by far the best-seller of my offerings:





















I may have to resurrect her for more fun in the next year.

In other surprising Comic Con news...

I'm either out of touch or the average Comic Con attendee is a fucking moron. Friday I dressed as post-adrenaline shot Mrs. Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction. A classic, right? Um, apparently not. Most people were baffled.

Saturday I debuted a re-made Big Lebowski Maude-from-Gutterballs outfit. Most folk thought I was a valkyrie. A valkyrie with bowling balls on her torso!?!??!

WTF?!?!?!?!

And I thought Comic Con was supposed to be full of nerds who knew about such things?!

Ah well.

When do I get a vacation? Oh right, I don't.

Dammit.

COMIC CON!!

This will probably be the last chance I get to post before wandering down to San Diego Thursday morning, so here's my shill for what I'll be doing there:

GIRLSDRAWINGIRLS BOOTH #5428

That's against the back wall, next to our buddies ACME Filmworks. I'll be at the booth Thursday thru Saturday in the afternoons. Friday and Saturday will be my Booth Babe work shifts, so come on by to point and laugh in my general direction.

After you've done that, BUY SOME OF OUR RAD STUFF. I'm in the art pin-up calendar and I'll have magnets and buttons for sale. BUY THEM ALLLLLLL, I need spending money for Vega$ the following weekend!!!!!

Easily Amused

Last night the Art Department was supposed to have a meeting. But then it didn't. So some of us got together anyway to discuss everything BUT art. We succeeded mightily. One of the things that got brought up were these internet "commercials". They funny!












PS: I DO win at yelling.


PPS: on a vaguely related note, do NOT fall asleep and start snoring loudly when I'm present. Things will happen to you. Things that will be photographed. And posted online. Just sayin'.

Just So You Know...

See this? It's the trailer for the movie, Whip It! which is based on a book called, Derby Girl, written by a former Derby Doll skater:




I HAVE to say this: THIS IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT ROLLER DERBY!! Not even close! Derby chicks all over the place are alread commenting about the inaccuracies game-wise in the trailer. SO WHAT?! That's what Hollywood does...it takes a subject and warps it to its own uses. It's OK, derby will survive this. Really.

And skaters? Bitching about the punches thrown when it was just a couple of short years ago when ALMOST EVERY SINGLE DAMN LEAGUE had fights, penalty wheels, and a more exploitative overall feel to the proceedings is stupid and shows ignorance from where this crazy sport came from. Stop it. Now.

I don't know why I'm so annoyed by the comments, but I am. So take that. This is an opportunity for leagues to capitalize on the attention. So stop snarking and get planning, bitches!

GDG Calendar Girl Process Thread

As promised, I'm going to do a process thread on the Miss June I did for the GirlsDrawinGirls calendar that's gonna be for sale at this year's Comic Con. I've never done a process thread before, and heaven-fucking-forbid I do any research on what other people write up, so bear with me. If you have any questions on how or why I do things the way I do, please ask. I'll make up some artsy-fartsy bullshit answer. I promise.


So when first told about the calendar, I had no idea what I was going to do for it. Of course. After choosing my month(I basically chose one of the few months that didn't have a major holiday in it to theme around), I sat and pondered. A garden babe? Alice Cooper's School's Out? Something beach-themed?

Ahhh, a girl in a bikini. Summery and fun and hey! I might actually be able to draw that! So...now a pose. Damn! More pondering. Work gets in the way. Derby distracts me. Then I realize that I had a rad drawing that I could use...or re-use, as it was originally a birthday card:






















Originally she was a redhead, as you can probably tell by the freckles. Initially I was going to repeat the ginger motif, but decided against it since I did Puss n' Boots as a redhead last year. Since I didn't want to be BORRRRRRRRINNNNNNG, I decided that it would be more fun to give her a deep '70's mega-tan, damn the skin cancer.


So I scan the drawing into the computer and import it into Illustrator.

First thing I do in Illustrator is use the Brush tool to do a quick and dirty outline of the line art:























As you can see, neatness doesn't necessarily count. I'm just throwing a line down, as I'm going to go back in and finesse the hell out of it later. I can't draw in Illustrator to save my ass. I always follow something that I've scanned in.

• Sidebar: I've never taken a class in Illustrator. And it shows. The only instruction I've ever gotten was from my friend Troy, who gave me the most useful way of approaching Illustrator. He told me it was less like drawing and more like learning how to build things using Colorforms. That mental approach has made dealing with Illustrator ten thousand times easier, even though I use maybe ten percent of its capabilities.

ANYWAY, so I have my basic line art. Now I go back in and turn all of the lines into objects. That way I can go back in and put the thick and thin on all the linework. I know I could make a brush to do that to a certain extent, but usually when I'm doing crap like this I'm under the gun too much to play with brushes and widths and pressures, etc. It's easier for me to get the approximate thickness I want in the line and then go back in.

Then I add more layers and start in on the color. I do separate layers for the hair, skin, shadows, highlights, eye color, lip outline, etc. I also throw in a quickie background layer just to add any color so that the white doesn't bore me to tears.





















See how I've gone in on most of her outline and started making the linework much more pretty. Her feet and face are still in a rough, ugly stage.


For skin, hair, shadows, highlights, etc. I use the pen tool and directly make objects for them from the get-go. I can control how many points each objects has better doing it this way. The more points an object has, the larger the file. I can cut the crap and keep it reasonable to begin with.


She's awfully white for a tan girl, isn't she? Obviously, my color sense is about as acute as Ray Charles'. But her hair is fun. I think it was throwing down the basic shape for that when I decided to go outside the lines for the hair and skin. I originally was going to go back in with Photoshop and throw in a few fun filters to make it look more like it was done with pastels, but didn't.


Just for chuckles, here's the same work as above, just minus the linework layer:





















Since I wanted tan lines on her, I decided to give some indication that she had a bathing suit on at some point. I also switched the background color to green, as the yellow was bugging my eyeballs.





















Skin shadows, highlights, and bathing suit top added. Everything was built with the pen tool except for the hair highlights, which was done with the brush tool then converted to objects then finessed further.


Closer look on the hair:















By this time I was getting really frustrated with the color. I liked the original drawing, and felt I wasn't doing it justice when it was put in color. I even blogged about it. Now you can see why I was so pissy:




















WTF? You're probably asking yourself. Why is her face a different color from the rest of her body?! Just trying to come up with a reasonable color palette. Obviously, I wasn't getting it.


Closer inspection of the damage:


















GOOD LOURD.

Then I dug out some of my color theory books and got my head out of my ass. I found a vintage Mickey Rooney film ad that was almost exactly what I was looking for, so I managed to borrow heavily from that to get what I wanted. Btw, I was using too much red in almost everything. Once I took it out and added more yellow, things went mucho betterer.

Thank jeebus!

So the color got tweaked for the better, I added a gradient to the background, and I added the bikini bottom and polka dots to the bathing suit.





















A reasonable person would've built a pattern in Illustrator, added it on a layer, trimmed it, then to tweak it for the cloth effect would've used the "warp with mesh" option.

Not this dumbass.

I went in and added all those damned polka dots myself. Yeah, I'm that stupid.













THIS IS WHY I NEED TO TAKE A DAMNED CLASS IN ILLUSTRATOR.


Finished product:





















The final size of the piece is 11"x17", so I didn't think that importing it into Photoshop to do fun stuff like blending, blurring, etc. would've worked because generally Photoshop doesn't like going beyond legal-sized stuff. Kind of a pisser, but I played with the opaque-ness of some of the layers, especially the skin shadow one, so that it doesn't look too hard and "clean".

And that's my first process thread. Make sense? No? Don't worry, I'm still confused. Just go buy a damned calendar and admire it, will ya?!

More Bullet Points

• Fourth of July was fun. Hung out with Myna Threat and Bong Jovi at his place known as Rancho Relaxo. Had bacon-wrapped hot links topped with queso followed by Jack Daniels shots. Then a lovely bicycle ride to Venice where we crashed a lesbian party on a hotel rooftop on the Boardwalk. Saw allllll the fireworks in LA. It rocked.

• Beavis was uncharacteristically seen wandering around over the weekend, but when darkness fell, so did his activity level. Thank goodness.

• Had to work the rest of the weekend. FUCK. THAT. NOISE.

• As a result of overeating this weekend, my Food Baby is becoming a permanent part of my physique. No bueno. Damn Comic Con and its Booth Babe responsibilities.

• Btw, you going to Comic Con? The GirlsDrawinGirls booth will be in the same place it was last year. Next to the ACME booth. Just look for the tall Maude Lebowski or post-OD Mrs. Mia Wallace booth babes.

• My cat is very jealous of the cat hanging out in our backyard. Every time I even say hi to Kitty, Lou C comes strutting up, puts his nose against the door screen, and glares at Kitty lounging on the cement. A few times I've opened the screen and held one of the two cats while the other performs a cat scan on him. Get it? Cat scan? Shutup. Predictions that Kitty will move in have been more forthcoming.

• Even though the Derby Dolls is supposedly on hiatus, I'm getting ready for Rollercon in Vegas at the end of the month. So far I'm on 3 challenge teams and am teaching 2 classes. WOW, I'm getting some skating in this year!

• I also put a tentative date on my active-team-skating retirement.

Bullet Points

• Last Saturday the LA Derby Dolls team the Aftershockers won. Big. 165-63. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

• I'm in Freelance Hell for the holiday week. Kill me.

• Tuesday morning I was on my way to the beach on my skates. I passed a HUGE fuzzy German Shepherd who was dragging his human on a skateboard. The dog, who I found out was named Gus, decided that he wanted to outrun me. He caught up, and ran juuuuuuuust ahead of me. I tried to pet him, but he was too busy concentrating on staying juuuuuuuuust ahead of me for me to be successful.

• I've been trying to buy all my produce at local farmer's markets. And am mostly winning. Right now peaches are in season. I have never been a big fan of peaches. I remember when I was a kid my mom would make me eat canned peaches in that horrible heavy sugar syrup. Why the hell they ever packed them in that syrup, I don't know, because they sure as hell don't need it. I went a-samplin' at the farmers market and discovered that I do indeed like them after all. Yummmm.

• For the first time I was invited to hang out with the Derby Dolls refs, The Enforcers, at one of their dinners. They like to eat dinner a lot together. I think it's because they're very entertaining. In this case, it certainly wasn't because the place where we ate had the best service in the world. In fact, it had the worst service and I was so annoyed I didn't even drink. THAT'S SERIOUS, Y'ALL. Anyway, I got cheered for being BORRRRRRRINGG!!!!!!! due to my being with the Dear Husband for 20 fucking years. People who were late showing up got cheered for...being late. A couple of douchey Hollywood twerps tried to sit in our general camp and got pushed away. And we all cheered ourselves after that. I think the Enforcers are one of the more fun groups within the Derby Dolls organization, if not the most vocal.

• On my way to the Enforcers dinner I walked by Kathy Griffin as she was waiting for a restaurant valet to fetch her car in front of a Hollywood eatery. It took everything I had to not yell, "KATHY GRIFFIN IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!!" But I do regret not saying something.

• I have no idea what's going on for the 4th of July weekend. Well, other than the whole being in Freelance Hell thing. Beavis has been lurking around lately, so I don't know how far from home I'll want to stray. Ugh.

• I should probably stay close to home because I have a 6 lb. food baby to lose by Comic Con. Booth babe, here I come.

• The one good thing that's come out of Michael Jackson's death is that people have rediscovered his album Off The Wall. It's better than Thriller. Yes, I have an opinion about such things.

Alright, back to work.

Mind=really blown

Another way for me to feel old...

Today is the 20th anniversary of me meeting the Dear Husband.

At a science fiction convention.

In Anaheim.

GOOD LOURD.


Yeah, I know.