the Diva Platform

Last Sunday was the Windy City Rollers annual Black & Blue Ball, which celebrates the end of the year’s home and travel team seasons.  I didn’t know what the heck to expect–after all, the dress code was “formal, whatever that means to you.”  So few rules left me hanging, but people came wearing t-shirts, people wore a lot of sequins, Scorey Feldman put on blue face, and one skater even wore her wedding dress (I WILL wear it again!  I’ll show you!).  Thanks to H&M, I got a blue shirt with black sequins, so I felt a little sparkly and appropriate.

At any rate, it was a little food, a little booze, a few awards, and a talent show.  An awesome talent show.  Talents that ranged from a skater standing on her head to show underwear with “shark” written on the butt, another skater who ripped apples apart with her bare hands, some guitar playing, some burlesque, and the officials, who did a little dance to show off all the referee penalty signals.  It was awesome (of course).  I’m down in front with a couple other stats folks, doing my sexy stopwatch twirling.

Check out the video, but prepare to have your mind “officially blown” (or, if you don’t know derby penalty codes, play along at home).

Sigh.  Failed.  Again.  Lousy WFTDA test.

Granted, I fared better this time.  I only got 12 of 50 wrong, as opposed to 19 of 50 wrong, so I guess it means the rules are slowly sinking into my head.

The other three people who took it also didn’t pass–and they have a lot more experience than I do–so I don’t feel so bad, but it still stings to know I’ll have to find a way to make this all sink into my head.  And really, that’s what it takes–sinking in.  A lot of the penalty situations I don’t really understand unless it’s physically shown to me, so trying to imagine them (or scribble them in the margins of the test) doesn’t always help.

At any rate, I can take the test again next month, which means I should start studying now.  It’d be nice to pass this thing before they change the rules again and I have to start all over.

I’d like to say I know what hopeful CPAs, attorneys, and other test-based professions go through when they take their certification exams.  See, today I’m taking the WFTDA referee test. Again.

For every set of rule changes that happen in derby, there’s a test for referees.  I honestly can’t remember right now if all of our referees have to pass this test in order to be refs.  Non-skating officials certainly don’t.  However, if you want to be WFTDA-certified as a ref or Non-skating official, you have to pass this test.  Since I’ve started to officiate at travel bouts and tournaments, I might as well get certified.  I’d like to have the qualifications to back up my amazing statisfying skills (cough, cough).

I took the test in September and failed miserably.  I didn’t even count how many I got wrong.  I just saw a lot of x’s on my answer sheet and knew the result.  It’s only an hour-long test, but it depleted my brainpower.  I shouldn’t have expected to pass, since I didn’t study as well as I should have, so now I have to take it again and hope I do much better.

The test really gets at interpreting the rules.  Most of the questions are situational story problems:  If skater A does x, and skater B does y, and z happens, what’s the call?  Or how many points does the jammer score?  It’s difficult for me because I’m not a ref who’s looking at the action in order to make calls.  I’m looking mostly at refs to see what calls are made.

At practice, one more experienced ref was telling a new ref that learning how to make calls is sort of like The Matrix.  At first it’s just a big mass of code (or skaters), but give it some time, and one day you’ll suddenly see everything clearly.  I get what he’s saying.  Every once in a while I’m able to see through the refs and watch the pack directly.  I saw how a couple of penalties got called and was able to mark them down before the ref told them to me.  That was a cool feeling.  I’d like to get better at doing that.

I’ve been studying a bit–and studying better.  Now that I have an idea of what the test is like, I know how to study.  I’ve never been a great test taker, so this is a frustrating situation for an adult who thought she was through with taking tests.  Now I just want to prove that I can do it–to myself and my teammates.  Even though I haven’t been a part of the league very long, I feel like I’m doing a good job with various NSO roles and that my teammates can count on me to not flake out.  I’d like to get some certification on my record to help bolster our overall qualifications within the sport.  Hopefully tonight I can deliver.

So “Whip It.”  The roller derby movie.  Have you heard about it?  Because I’m in the roller derby world, it’s been EVERYWHERE to me–plus, the Windy City Rollers have gotten some prime press in all the marketing.  They’ve sung the 7th inning stretch with Drew Barrymore, gotten the cover story in the Red Eye, gotten another prime story in the Chicago Tribune, been on various radio shows, and you might’ve seen the bus (or bike taxi) ads around town.

However, the opening weekend box office was merely all right:  6th place, with a $4.85 million gross.

I really hope the movie does better than that because it deserves to.  Have I seen it?  Yes, I saw an early screening.  What did I think?  I was hoping for a solid three-star (out of four), super-watchable, entertaining movie.  I thought it was more like two-and-a-half stars.  Not awful, and I’d like to see it again without a critical eye and see if I like it better (the roller derby is on a banked track–banked is still used today, but it’s not as popular as flat track; a lot of the big plays are illegal–cool on film, but you wouldn’t see them on the track; a couple of scenes/montages that didn’t quite work for me).  Drew Barrymore did a solid job with directing–her explanation of the rules of the sport was well done, and she added a good number of quirky touches that worked nicely.  Ellen Page did a really good job, and to her credit, she did not just replay Juno.  She created a whole different person, and that was great to see.  On the whole, the acting was good, but I’d hoped to see a little more (legal) derby and a little less on the side stories.

Still, if I was in high school or college, I’d probably really dig this movie, and I’d be chomping at the bit to become a skater.  The movie’s tagline “Be your own hero,” would also totally appeal to me and inspire me (heck, it still does).

The Boy and I were talking about the box office returns, and he mentioned that it was pretty bold of the movie studios to even make this movie, because it’s geared to a market that doesn’t traditionally get targeted to.  Hear that, girls?  So ask your moms to take you–make it a mom/daughter date (my mom dragged me to see “Tootsie,” which turned out to be one of the best movie experiences of my life).  College girls?  Make it a dorm/pledge class/sorority outing.  Out of school?  Make it a Girls’ Night Out!  Just get out there and see it–put your money to good use so that the studios will know to make more movies that are what you really want to see.

And by the way, if you’re in the Chicago area on October 17, come see the Windy City Rollers play Portland at UIC.  It’s the last home bout of 2009 and your chance to see Malice With Chains one more time before she retires!

Bryant Mumble: Ready for WCR Action

Let’s see, where were we?  Yesterday was a bit of an intro, so let me dive into the fun stuff.  I got to St. Paul in the early evening–rode the bus with Helsa Wayton and The Shoveler.  The Shoveler turned out to be one of the jam refs on Team Legoland, and honestly, I could watch him ref all day.  So elegant!  His penalty signals were large, fluid movements, and he did this beautiful flip of the hand when displaying the score after a pass.  I feel a little silly swooning over someone’s hand motions, but they were mighty pretty.

Anyway, I shared a room with Dr. Vroom, Scorey Feldman, Tally Savalas (penalty tracker extrordinaire), and Elke Hollic (fab ref alternate).  Since there were five of us, Scorey called ahead for a cot in our room, only to check in and discover our hotel didn’t have cots.  Scorey’s bed?  The floor.  He was thrilled when housekeeping left him an extra comforter halfway through the stay–so excited, in fact, that while relaxing on a bed one evening, he drooled all over Tally’s pillow.  Thank goodness they gave each bed about 50 pillows!

Scorey + comfortable surface = drool

We weren’t that far from our venue, The Legendary Roy Wilkins Auditorium.  What makes a place legendary?  Is it because of Roy Wilkins himself, a civil rights activist and former executive director of the NAACP?  Is it the remarkably cool stage backdrop, complete with funky lighting?

The Roy's legendary lighting

Is it because the massive, yet close balcony made for great derby watching?  Or is it because I haven’t seen roaches that big in a long time?  Yes, we were told the place had roaches, and true to form, I immediately ran into one in the ref bathroom (upon seeing one, I immediately did an “ew, bug!” dance/shiver and got the hell out of there….to never use the ref bathroom again the entire weekend), and I saw a couple of large dead ones on the floor in the back.  Delightful, but really, what are you going to do with an older building?

Sad to say, the tournament started on a somber note.  One of the North Star Roller Girls (but not on the travel team) was out walking with her baby daughter, when she was hit by a car and killed.  Her daughter was unharmed.  [note: the police are trying to reconstruct what happened; a fund's been set up for the daughter]

Team Legoland started off the tourney….and to be honest, for the most part I don’t remember who we reffed or how well anyone did, except places 1-4.  I do know that we did all of Brew City’s matches (including an exciting OT ending to their last game)–and Brew City is fun because they chant, “Brew City Bruisers!  Beer!  Beer!  Beer!”  [and if you think I'm not being impartial, I also like a Madison Dairyland Dolls shirt that says on the front, "MOO Bitch" and on the back, "Get out the Whey!"].  We also got to ref the finals, which was Windy City beating Madison soundly to take the regional crown.

I should talk for a moment about the NS official attire.  WFTDA tournaments have dress codes.  That means, if you’re an official who wears a costume, you don’t wear it.  That also means that I, Intejill, had to put my “pants by number” concept on hold (you’ll see it next home season), because, well, frankly, I don’t have a lot of dark pants and didn’t want to wear a skirt.  We NSO’s were given pink “official” t-shirts, which we can put the WFTDA patch on, if we’d like.  We had to pair them with dark bottoms and–as I could’ve sworn I read in the wee hours of the morning as I printed off the dress code before I packed (since I was scared shitless of messing up)–dark socks.

So yours truly is running around in black capris, black socks, and tennis shoes.  It’s not pretty.  And I noticed that everyone else is wearing white socks with their dark bottoms (unless you’re Rink Floyd, and then you’re wearing tall boots with your utilikilt, and you don’t even see the socks).  On Saturday night we were hanging out in our room, talking about dress, when I blurted out, “Yeah, what gives with everyone wearing white socks? We’re supposed to be wearing black socks!”

To which I see four faces–the head ref of the tournament being one of them–staring at me dumbfounded, wondering what the hell I’m talking about.  Tally Savalas is amazed that I even notice everyone’s socks (I’m a girl, I’m insecure about my attire, I notice).  After I go off on everyone wearing white socks when we’re supposed to be wearing black socks, I say I’ll prove it, and pull out my handy A4 folder that’s got my tourney rules in it.  And it clearly states, “SOCKS:  Black and/or white socks….”  Oops.

Thank goodness I was going with formal dress pants on Sunday.  Nobody would notice my black socks.  They’d just notice my stupid tennis shoes with the pants.

Suffice it to say, I’m now known to a select few as “Socks Jaracz.”

It could’ve been all derby, all the time for me, but it wasn’t so.  Usually when I go to a conference or meeting, I’m dying to get out and see some of the city.  I want to ditch.  This time?  Not so.  But I got out because I needed to find a drug store (someone hasn’t been traveling enough–my travel saline expired on me, and I didn’t notice until I got there), and I wanted to see a little of St. Paul, even if it was only a few blocks.  St. Paul has a bunch of Peanuts-related statues all over, and I enjoyed seeing them, especially outside of different businesses who’d sponsored them.  I wandered down the 7th Place Market (a block-long pedestrian zone) to get to Walgreens, and saw the marquee on the Palace Theater, which said, “Minnesota!  It’s not just for Lutherans anymore!” which I thought was funny, until just now, when I looked it up and saw that it was a comedy show that closed in 2005, which means it’s kind of sad.  And maybe that the state is just for Lutherans.

Sadness aside, I came across an awesome candy shop called Candyland that I would’ve spent a ton of money at, if it weren’t for the “no outside food” rule at The Roy.  I really wanted a big bag of popcorn–and even then it was a tough decision.  Fresh caramel corn/cheese corn mix?  Or buttered–and the butter is squirted on in various intervals as the clerk fills up the bag?).  No way I was getting that into the auditorium.  I did get some candy blocks (not Legos, per se, but close enough to make Team Legoland excited), some choco rocks (like M&M’s on steroids), and a coconut haystack.  That was plenty.

Due to only having one bout to officiate on Saturday, I managed to fit in a quick run along the river.  Honestly, St. Paul has/is building a really nice path along the Mississippi River, that is probably stunning later in fall when the leaves turn.  What I loved about it was that the bike and pedestrian lanes were totally separate–makes for a much better experience for everyone.

That said, that was just about it to downtown.  I mean, it was like Chicago, circa 1995–not much is going on at night, and not that many people live in downtown proper.  Yet.  Sure, I felt safe, but it was also weird talking to the hotel staff about the fact that Walgreens closed early.  Still, it wasn’t a bad city.  We went to The Bulldog a couple of evenings, and they had a good bison burger and a decent beer list.  Also, $1.75 an hour for parking at a meter.  What do you think of that, Chicago?

And although we couldn’t do anything dangerous at night that could possibly take us out of the tournament (sorry, but no mechanical bull riding for me), we still managed to drink a few and have fun.  The bummer part of the weekend was that I had some work to do, due Monday night, which meant I dragged around my laptop and skipped the final afterparty, which apparently had this awesome Guns N’ Roses tribute band.  All in all though, excellent tournament, and I’m looking forward to the next one I get to do!

Me and the awesome Steely Danielle

This Non-Skating Official (NSO) has officially recovered from the Brawl of America!  And what a tournament it was–honestly, everything seemed to go really smoothly, from the venue to the bouts, and it really was a great experience.  This was my first tournament to officiate at, and I hope I haven’t been spoiled.

Our tournament head ref was Windy City’s own Dr. Vroom, and assisting her/wrangling NSO’s was Scorey Feldman, aka Nurse Vroom, who is anal in all the ways you want an organized person to be.  When I worked at McDonald’s in high school, I had a manager who constantly harped on “proper procedure.”  Scorey’s developed his own proper procedure for pretty much everything related to the non-skating officiating side, and dammit, it works pretty well (he’s also open to suggestions though, which does take off some of the anal edge).

A quick explanation for those of you who aren’t schooled in derby speak.  Officiating is made up of two types of referees, skating and non-skating.  Each bout can have up to seven skating referees, so each of the bouts here had a head ref (who also did inside pack reffing), two jammer refs (one for each jammer), an inside pack ref, and three outside pack refs.  The pack refs skate around with the pack and specifically look for penalties there.  For NSO’s there was a scorekeeper, scoreboard op, jam timer, one penalty tracker, one penalty wrangler, one inside whiteboard, two outside whiteboards (used for communicating penalties), one penalty box manager, and two penalty box timers.  We also had two alternate refs.  A lot of people are involved.  Our tourney had three crews to staff it all, and we rotated bouts, each crew officiating five times over the weekend.

I was on Team Legoland, led by the excellent Professor Murder, and my job was operating the scoreboard, which is a pretty harmless position and a good one for someone like me who didn’t have a ton of non-WCR experience and no tournament experience whatsoever (people apply for these jobs months in advance–I got lucky and filled in for a dropout).  Scoreboard’s not as much pressure, as say the scorekeeper, who sat next to me and was responsible for making sure the score was actually correct.  I just had to make sure the tallies were correct, start and stop the scoreboard timer, and keep the jam clock as close to the jam timer’s whistles as possible….which I did fairly well.  I had a glitch we had to take a time out to fix once, and in another game, the teams didn’t sit on the right sides, so the score was reversed for a few minutes.  Still, I did all right, and Steely Danielle, my excellent scorekeeper who hailed from the North Star Roller Girls, and I made Scorey proud.

Yawn….did I say I’d recovered?  Apparently I haven’t, so more tomorrow, including drool, what makes The Roy Wilkins Auditorium legendary, avoiding the mechanical bull, and my very own trading card!

Apparently the Cubs and Sox both went downhill this year and won’t be in the playoffs.  That’s OK.  You’ve still got some post-season action to cheer about:  This weekend the Windy City Rollers are competing in the WFTDA North Central Regional Tournament.  They’re seeded first, which hopefully means they’ll be heating up the floor and taking out the competition.

I’m lucky enough to be heading up to St. Paul to officiate at the tournament.  A stats person who was supposed to go had to drop out, and I was asked if I could step in.  I’m incredibly excited about working at the tournament, meeting other officials from around the country, and am looking forward to operating the scoreboard for several matches and watching a few more.

If you’re in the Twin Cities area, come on down to the tournament.  Otherwise, catch all the action on Derby News Network!

I hope to be sending you a postcard on Monday, but the mail may get delayed, so to speak.

My brain wants to take a little vacation from blogging…mostly because I’m boning up on roller derby.

See, Windy City Rollers’ first home travel team match is tomorrow, and I’m geeked for a number of reasons:

–Philly is coming to town, and they’re good, so it should be a well-matched bout.

–I’m statisfying in a new position, inside the track, collecting penalties from the refs and feeding them to the penalty tracker.  I’ve practiced this at scrimmages, but doing the real thing will be a fun challenge!

–It’ll be my first time working with the new rules (apparently every year or so, the rules get refined a bit, as is the case with many new sports.  It’s kind of like updating software, so I’m getting used to the new tweaks and am curious to see how they work in matches….if you know roller derby, you may/may not know that the new rules eliminate the jammerless jam concept, among other things.  Should be faster game play with some of the changes).  This means a few more penalty codes to remember and that tripping is once again called a low block.

–There’s a slight possibility Intejill will have a costume.  The question is getting it done.  The tease?  Pants by number.

Since my brain is filling up on new rules, new penalty codes, and the like, it’s not too thrilled about coming up with a new post/rant.  It just wants to think about the awesomeness of derby and the possibility of you being there tomorrow.

This weekend’s roller derby match was a lot of fun.  To be honest, I couldn’t tell you who won each bout, nor did I really even get to watch much of the game even though I was right there manning the penalty box.  Whenever skaters were in the box, I was busy watching my little timer (or timers, if a third skater was in the box) and trying to write down when penalties happened.  And they could happen a lot.  Heck, at the start of the second half on the first match-up, my fellow box-timer and I (we had enough stats folk to have two timers per penalty box) had two skaters in the seats and one standing with 4 seconds left on her penalty.  Trying to keep it all in line meant we really didn’t get to watch much action on the track, but the penalty box saw enough action that I still felt that fun intensity of derby–intensified more by being on the floor and closer to the action.

Still, I had a great time.  Stats work may not be really glorious, but it’s fun to keep track of all the numbers.  Our stats crew is pretty large now, so we can keep track of a lot of things–almost in a baseball-like way.  I don’t know how the teams use the stats, but it must be fascinating to look at the match-ups for each jam, see how it works out, and also see how you could position your team to exploit weaknesses of your opponent.  The more stats we can gather, the more this information can be used.

I feel like I’ve found a good little niche.  I’m glad to have found an activity and an organization that I like being a part of and can get really involved with.  I’ve tried a lot of activities over the years and haven’t felt quite that way.  Oh, I enjoy running and doing triathlons/urban adventure races, but I never felt like I wanted to be hard-core about it.  It’s just something I like doing on the side.  In a sense, that’s fine–it’s a hobby.  But it’s also a hobby I can do without ever really getting to know anyone.  Other activities I’ve tried really haven’t meshed well–it’s stuff I did, but not stuff where I invested myself enough.  I’m feeling good about finding something I’m doing because I want to do it, not because I feel obligated or somebody else signed me up for it Having been an over-scheduled child, I am a little wary about extra-curriculars as an adult.  Sometimes it takes me a little while to really figure out whether or not I want to really get into an organization, and even when I’m there, I sometimes feel a sense of “don’t get too involved” because there are so many other activities out there that I could be involved in too.

At some point though, it’s good to find one or two things you like to do and really be a part of them.  Only then can you feel the comaraderie of being a part of something and moving an organization or cause forward.  Only then do you get a chance to build some skills, perhaps even stretching yourself to become a leader, even if you never considered yourself to be one, and really make a difference in the world.

Granted, I don’t know how much of a difference I’ll make here, nor do I know how much of a leader I’ll really become, but I’m glad to have found a group that I want to stick with and move forward with.  That in and of itself is pretty satisfying to me, since I think it’s a good step in overcoming the results of being a part of too many things as a child.

How about you?  What groups are you involved in that you’re happy to be in?  How did you get there?  Did you ever find yourself in something, wondering why the heck you’re doing it?  Are you involved because of your kids?  Are you not involved but want to be?  Are you not involved and content to be so?  Let me know–I’m always curious how people live their lives, how they get to be where they are, and if they’re happy with it.

As I write this, I’m pretty happy.  Yes, I know I wrote about having a glitch yesterday, but I wanted to admit it because I’m trying to work through it, and I thought talking about it a little would help me.  I’ll spare you any further self-refection though because it is quite boring (and makes you want to go, “Dummy!  Get OVER yourself and just write.  GOSH!  How hard can this be?  Even I see what you need to do!”).  I’d rather think about possibilities and that sort of thing.

Luckily, we’ve had some great weather this week, so there’s the possibility of the plastic coming off our bedroom window soon.  There’s also the possibility that I’ll be running outside more, which might help me stick to some exercising routine (somehow, I won’t even make time for a 10-15 minute workout.  Lame excuses abound for this, but I’m working on it).

This weekend I’m doing my first roller derby match as part of the stats crew.  I needed a new activity to get me out and about and meeting new people, and I do love roller derby, and I think this is going to be a great way to be involved.  I also get to make up a fun derby name–I’ll share mine once it’s approved.

The house is getting picked up on a fairly regular basis.  The Boy has taken on the very difficult task of straightening up our bookshelves (which look great when he’s partially finished, and then you turn around and see the stacks of books that don’t fit onto the shelves and for which we either need to make a place or donate).  If we’re consistent on keeping the clutter at bay, our apartment is a much nicer place to be, and I’m glad we’re trying to be good about this.

All of these things mean I’m heading into the weekend feeling positive, and it’s nice to be positive every now and then (if you need more positivity, there’s actually a “good news” site).  I hope you’re feeling the same way–have you been able to accomplish something that means a lot to you?  Big plans for the weekend?  Share away!