taking care of business

There is an LADD game on Saturday. I'm not skating, but I will be your DJ for the evening, and no, I do not take requests. Check out the latest promo video:



What else? The Dolls were recently honored as a Treasure of L.A. and City Council President Eric Garcetti wrote a very nice blog post about us here.

On the personal front, I'm pretty sure my left toenail is going to fall off any day now -- it's a leftover injury from my Kath & Kim stunt work. In the words of one ex-boyfriend, "You have the feet of an Afghan refugee."

As I wait for the toenail to drop, I am concerned that maintaining my to-do list might actually be hindering my productivity. I've even turned to Merlin Mann for guidance, but all I can think when watch his presentations is "Fuck, I should really quit watching this video and do that thing on my to-do list. Or maybe I should process some goddamn email."

I like crossing items off my to-do list. It is deeply satisfying. But for every item I remove, I'll add two more. Last night, for example, I finally knocked out "jewelry box" (this referred to picking up the contents of my overturned jewelry box, which had been twinkling in the crack of floorspace between my dresser and wall for the past week). Basking in this accomplishment was short-lived, however. I crossed it off only to add "change oil" and "press list for Saturday." Poof. The glow was gone.

I don't know how real grown-ups manage their lives -- you know, those people with kids and mortgages and f/t jobs. Sometimes I feel like a professional emailer. Like, writing and responding to emails is my job. I also sometimes feel as if I'm drowning in my personal administrative duties. I skipped skate practice last night to spend hours emailing and filing and shredding and updating my Google calendar (mostly with roller derby obligations).

In far more interesting news, I spent my Easter eating this fruit, and then subsequently drinking tequila, unsweetened coffee, sucking on limes and chowing down on salt & vinegar chips, which tasted candy-coated. I was completely skeptical going in, but the fruit is indeed magical. Thank you, Bryan. I saved a couple of the seeds and will be planting them soon. It's on my to-do list.

falling trees

Consider this: If a Google search yields zero results (and further, does not offer a suggested alternate search/spelling), does the thing exist?

I just had this experience on the reference desk. Google had been my last resort. I plugged the patron's query into the search box, and got nothing. I turned the screen to show her the absent hit list and its little epitaph: "Your search did not match any documents." The placard next to my computer mocked, "I'm here to help you...please ask." Sadness and confusion and disappointment flowed across the desk between us.

All I could come up with was "I''m sorry."

blind leading the blind

i have been shopping for new glasses, which is sort of like buying a new face. my current chrome hearts frames barely stay put these days. when i'm doing push-ups at the gym, they slide from my face and land with a clink on the gymnasium floor. i can feel them bounce when i'm biking, which is potentially disastrous. case in point: back in december, i was in a bike accident (a pothole on Vermont was at fault), and i went over the handlebars. my glasses went soaring too -- across the nighttime sky like a bat in flight. me, bike and spectacles all landed separately on a patch of grass somewhere near the 101 overpass.

i am blind without my glasses, and the darkness didn't help. i crawled around on all fours, my knee oozing blood, dumbly groping the moist grass for my frames. cars zoomed past, their headlights illuminating nothing, but someone who had witnessed the accident pulled over.

"you ok?" he asked.

"yes, but i can't find my glasses," i stared up from the ground, squinting at his blurry face. "i'm blind."

i couldn't discern what happened next, but i detected movement. then, as if conjured from the smog around us, the man produced my glasses. ta-da! the guy was clearly a magician.

"be careful, girl," he said as he handed them over. "and you should really wear a helmet."

i returned my glasses to their nasal perch as his car sped away, finally in focus. it looked fuel-efficient. i remounted my bike in pursuit of beer, which i later guzzled at Pure Luck as blood dribbled down my leg.

conclusion: my glasses are officially dangerous, a liability, a disaster waiting to happen. purchased in 2005, these frames have not aged well, and painful as it is to send a loved one packing, they are broke down, old and maybe a little senile. retirement is overdue. party details TBA.

(an aside for derby folks: the glasses i wear when i skate are customized "stunt glasses" and not the glasses i wear in my everyday life).

the shopping has been slow-going because it's a major life decision as far as i'm concerned. i've enlisted two high-powered consultants for the task - georgia and adriana - women who are both good company and possessors of impeccable taste - the two requirements for this consulting gig. they also accept compensation in beer, which is my preferred method of payment.

in preparation for our first foray into spec shopping, we spent most of sunday afternoon eating eggs and drinking beers at 1739 public house, which boasts 40 varieties on tap.

tip: if you are ever overwhelmed by the vast quantity of unfamiliar beer available at a given bar or restaurant, ask the bartender to recommend her three favorites (or four or five, etc., depending on the size of your group. (this was adriana's idea. do add brilliant to her list of consultant qualifications). next, share the recommended beers. in my experience, each will be top-notch.

follow-up tip: make a point to remember (better yet, write down) the names of the beers! to this end, i failed.

we managed to extract ourselves from our booth at Public House with just enough time to check out a couple of optical shops in the vicinity before they closed. right now, i'm leaning toward a pair of frames from gogosha, which i've visited twice already. both times, i was bowled over by the amazing customer service. in the words of one yelp reviewer, "Julia Gogosha is the greatest thing to happen to eyeballs since the retina . . . [she is] as much a stylist as she is a shop-owner."



i don't want to make any hasty decisions, however, so the optical shop rounds will continue with my consultants in the coming weeks. there's a good chance i'll do the same thing i did the last time i shopped for new frames: unable to decide between two styles, i purchased both, and proceeded to wear only one for the following four years.

on an unrelated note, tell me how you feel about capitalization. in my offline existence, i follow the rules, but in digital communication (blogging, email), my compliance is arbitrary at best. does it actually bother anyone? i can handle the truth. i want to be a better blogger.

skating around the issue

i really hate wearing a mouthguard, and for years, i played derby without inserting one of those chewed-up, saliva-drenched, carcinogen-laden wads of plastic into my maw. yes, i was at the game where iron maiven's tooth was knocked out. the thing is, i've already lost three of my front teeth in two (separate) non-derby accidents, and i've never been totally happy with the dental work. my attitude is that if i wind up taking a bite out of the kickrail, it just means the time has finally come to upgrade my grill.

my former teammate, crystal deth, was my non-mouthguard-wearing comrade in arms (in her case, ostensibly due to gag reflex issues). i think we were the only people in the league skating games without them. however, in 2008, it became a penalty to play sans guard, and i couldn't risk punishing my team for my hard-headedness. begrudgingly, i had to suck it up.

fact: mouthguards do not make for flattering photos.


this monkey is out for blood!


both photos by charlie chu.

ok, ok. all of this mouthguard talk is a flimsy excuse to avoid dishing about the actual game, which we lost. so much for determination and triumph. fight crew doesn't skate on the banked track again until june, so we have a few months to get our heads together and regroup. in the meantime, i will be skating with three other teams: the flat-track Ri-Ettes, the banked track Ri-Ettes (i'm an alternate), and the L.A. Aftershockers (a one-off banked team put together to take on ACDG's Rocket Queens). no rest for the weary.

p.s. if you missed the bout and the amazing opening video, here's your chance to sing along at home:

in a better world

i'm hanging up my signature argyle socks this game. they're getting kind of holey and don't really complement Fight Crew's snazzy new uniforms. speaking of the bout, if you're planning to attend and haven't bought tix, it will probably sell out online tonight. you have been warned.

Fight Crew is playing the San Diego Swarm, and my team is determined to triumph. it's been way too long since we've won a regular season game and we're fed up. i know i speak for everyone on the crew when i say i'm sick of this close-but-just-out-reach bullshit. we lost our previous game to the Cookies (08 champs) by four lousy points. i'd like to win this game by at least 10 and i know we can do it.

i tried to convince my team to do our skateout routine to the Screamers, which I think would be very L.A. of us (while inducing terror in our opponents), but no one went for it.



i guess i'll just listen to the Screamers on my own before the game and get all bloodthirsty and shit.

tonight, i'm headed to pure luck with georgia where i will eat a burrito as big as my head. we jocks call this carb-loading.

weekend on wheels

my skates hardly left my feet this weekend, but i didn't spend much time playing derby.

friday was the Electrical Circuit PSA shoot. sixteen hours on wheels, occasionally rolling through water. And I still can't get that Electric Six song out of my head. Fire in the disco, Fire in the Taco Bell!

On Saturday, several Dolls represented the LADD at the Human Rights Campaign's Gala Dinner. We opened the show on stage inside a giant rotating clam with emcee Wanda Skyes in the center. Need a visual? Watch the clip from CBS news here.

We skated on-stage at a couple of different points during the show, mingled with the crowd before and after the ceremony, and even met Dianne Feinstein.

you can't see it, but sen. feinstein's hand is resting on the small of my back!

notice that sen. feinstein is a tall broad. we're all on roller skates and she's still holding her own next to us. the senator's husband, who took this photo, lamented that he never learned to roller skate because size 16 skates are somewhat elusive. he also warned us that we would be paying the price for our rough-and-tumble lifestyle when we got to be his age.

but here we are: still young, agile and looking generally glamorous:



we were on skates for about five hours at the HRC dinner, oftentimes rolling on carpet, which is actually a pretty good workout. not to mention all of the stairs we climbed on wheels.

then on sunday, shannon and i hosted a well-attended brunch at our apartment, which went into the early evening. many bloody marys and mimosas were consumed, and i only had a couple of hours to sober up before it was time to strap on my skates yet again: 8 p.m. fight crew practice.

tonight i'm giving my feet a rest, sort of. no skates! but i will be hitting bootcamp at the Y.

danger! high voltage

as an LADD skater, i've had opportunities to to appear in TV shows, music videos, documentaries, news programming, etc. but i have never been so excited to be cast in something as my latest gig, which is shooting this friday at the Doll Factory. i'm playing an Electron in an EU public service announcement on the Electrical Circuit.

"The main objective of this spot is to increase awareness among the young about science and the EU's support on Research."

Here's another PSA, Chemical Party, which was produced by the same company. It is awesome:



and this is the song we are skating to -- Electric Six's "Danger! High Voltage." The video is all kinds of amazing:



and when i'm not appearing in the background on your TV set, i can be found playing roller derby. in fact, i have a game in a few weeks.