Roanoke Roller Derby affordable fun

It's official: I'm into roller derby. Okay, so today's match between Star City Rollers and the Bruisin' Burgs at the Lee-Hi Skate Center is only my third, but each time has proved tons of fun.
You're probably like me: all you remember of roller derby is a bunch of girls you wouldn't take home to Mom in the '70s going around a banked ring throwing elbows. Well, the difference is, now the rink isn't banked anymore, but the rest is still pretty accurate.

I'd sure derby has enjoyed a slight upsurge because of the recent film Whip it, which is about a young girl out-of-place in the pageant circuit who discovers roller derby (played by Ellen Page of Juno).

What I enjoy other than the action, which is fast-paced and constant, is that the venues keep things pretty economical and fun. You can sit pretty much anywhere. The concession is very reasonably priced (no $6 hamburgers here), and even the fanboy swag is affordable. It's as if - in remaining small - they haven't forgotten what entertaining fans is about in favor of profits.

So if you haven't been to a roller derby since Carter was president, hop on over to Lee-Hi Skate Center tonight (or some other night) and have a blast watching girls named "Kitten Vicious" and "Duchess Von Bruisin". Just be aware that you'll be dreaming up cool names that night, at least I do.

Punchy Bruister...
Britney Fears...

Snowed in, and that's alright with me

I guess we all expected a bit of snow this season, since it’s been such a wet year. I have to admit, when the reports of a winter storm warning came in Thursday, I was skeptical. The sky was clear and it felt relatively warm. Around mid-morning on Friday, when the warning had grown from a few inches to close to a foot of snow (all still by word of mouth on my part, mind you), I still had my doubts.

And then, once it started, it didn’t stop ‘til my wife and I were snowed in for the weekend. We didn’t make the typical, frantic, last-minute grocery store trip for supplies to last all winter, but figured some soup and bread from the neighborhood co-op would suffice.

Sure, we had made all sorts of weekend plans that had to be broken. A brunch, dirty Santa party, and coffee with a friend will have to wait ‘til later. However, being stuck at home certainly has a silver lining. I can catch up my blogs, for one, and spend lots of time getting into the Christmas spirit watching holiday flicks with my family. Hopefully everyone else in the Valley is so fortunate.

Besides, on our midday walk with Trisha and Maddy we saw the difficulty some were having trying to get buried cars back on the road. Still there at 1pm. Still there at 130pm. I’m sure they have somewhere to be, like the other sporadic cars we saw cruising in the court, but I’d just as soon forgo errands and familial and friendly visitations for at least one weekend. We can always get right back to our busy lives once the snow has melted.

Is there anybody out there?

Note: The following may have been published in the "letters to the editor" section of The Roanoke Times prior to publication here.

I now have a clear understanding of where Senator Jim Webb stands on the issue of pirates in Somalia. The only problem being, I never asked him about Somali pirates.

When the issue of net neutrality was again before congress back in August, I felt inclined to write both Senator Webb and Senator Warner and express my fervent opposition to ending net neutrality, which would constrict bandwidth usage and tier Internet pricing under the guise of fighting digital piracy.

It seems that just as there are few books on digital piracy compared to piracy on the high seas, Senator Webb's keyword program used to reply with pre-fab statements about popular issues must have thought I was expressing concern over swashbucklers thousands of miles away and not profiteering by Internet service providers here at home.

We are led to believe that - if we have a problem with the state of the union - that we should write our congressmen. As voting, tax-paying citizens, this is the most efficacious act toward getting our voices heard. Indeed, I am not the only one who has bought this idea, since - in the automated response just after sending my email to Senator Webb - he writes: "[M]ore than 100,000 Virginians will send their ideas directly to me this year." Apparently claiming popular high ground, the auto-response from Senator Warner read that: "Since we opened our doors on January 6, we have been contacted more than 400,000 times by individuals from across the Commonwealth."

So while it's clear that computer technology has allowed for more responses from citizens, receiving an email months after my inquiry that has nothing at all to do with my subject does little to convince me that our voices are being heard. Indeed, I received nothing from Senator Warner after the auto-response, but I think I'd prefer silence to a response that makes it quite clear that nothing I said mattered. Silence could at least convince me that the time and thought I put into voicing my very valid points didn't queue up in some auto-response generator that made a best guess at what I wrote.

But I'm the last person to rail against technology, given its wonderful outcomes in communication and education. Even now, it lets me know that my concerns remain unheeded by my congressmen. At least I can save myself the time of bothering in the future.

I see...A Women's Expo!

Trying to act as a supportive husband, I was one of only a few men at the Women's Lifestyle Expo at the Salem Civic Center last weekend. The boon was that some of the talbes set up featuring everything from vitamin juice to support bras had fun-size candy bars or - at the least - mints and pens.

Sure, there wasn't much there that was supposed to appeal to me, and - sure enough - nothing did. Luckily, we got in free thanks to some compt tickets from my mother, who was working one of the booths.

All were overshadowed, however, by the psychic offering free "private" readings, though there were a solid twenty people hovering about her divination podium. The line for her readings was at least 50 people long, and while I don't know how long Madam Whatshername was devoting to each person, waiting in that line must have been a 90-minute commitment if it was a second.
I'm not sure how the center measures success: whether it's based on how well the vendors do, too.

But if based on attendance alone, they must have been happy with the expo, because it was rather full. Filled enough to make anything worth looking at require queuing and waiting your turn (save for the aforementioned psychic, whose service has a worth measured in relative naivete).

It was actually done up rather well - hardly comparable to when there's a gun show or the horse show, but feeling rather appropriate for the occasion. I just hope that amid all the tea leaf reading, attendants made time to check out some of the health booths, which seemed fairly in earnest if a little trendy.

All in all, if the same event took place for men, I'd very likely pay the $5 entry fee. Though I'd certainly expect the fun-size candy bars as compensation just in case.

Banning books? We're still doing that?

While I normally stay away from politics, I'm still a little disappointed at all of the drama over The Perks of Being a Wallflower being pulled from school shelves in the Valley.

The most recent story (Thurs) involved a local teacher who stopped teaching Hawthorne for fear of backlash. Umm...yeah.

I didn't dig school until college. I was the student teachers claimed: "is an A student" who "just doesn't apply himself." In reality, I was the student who would have rather read something like Wallflower rather than The Canterbury Tales. Don't get me wrong, Chaucer is amazing...for an adult. For youth, he's about as engaging as a church sermon.

The books I did read in youth were ones I'd smuggled from my parents' books: King, Sheldon, and other masters of pulp fiction. Inappropriate? Maybe. But it was the allure of reading something I shouldn't have been that made me devour such books with haste. It could just as easily have been Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, or William Burroughs.

At least The Roanoke Times acknowledged that banning books ALWAYS has the opposite effect: kids and adults alike clamor for and seek out the banned books to see what the excitement is about. In that way, maybe banning is key to getting youth fired up about books.

Just so the local library still carries them, that is.