Not sure What To Call This

Tuesday - something of a Friday for any normal person, though I must admit I gave up any pretense of being a normal person some time ago.

So now I'll talk about roller derby.

Saturday was an expressive evening, starting with mayhem and finishing with Deering's Oaks and quiet contemplation.

... oh, and lasgana.

Maine Roller Derby has two teams - the Port Authority and the Calamity Janes, the latter being on the court Saturday. Its members are athletic, aggressive women of all sizes and conditions. I had one friend on the team last year, a person doing her psychiatric residency at McGeachy Hall at Maine Medical - she was a graceful tango dancer and a formidable blocker on the Janes.

I can draw a shaky line between this group and the burlesque revival in town. You have to accept them on their own terms, which is rather fun.

So here they were in their skates and temporary tats, the team giving a lot of promotional consideration to the Hallowed Ground Tattoo Parlor.

The Expo, home to the Portland Red Claws semi-pro basketball team, was filled with a raring, roaring crowd; families, yuppies, moon-eyed poets, everyone shouting, cheering and stomping for "their girls".

Come to think of it their were a lot of pre-teen girls watching and screeeeaaammming their heads off.

God, it was magnificent.

The game was flat-track roller derby, contested inside an oval marked in tape on the wooden Expo floor.

Each team had five blockers, one jammer wearing a star on her helmet. The two sets of blockers started as a pack, the jammers following two seconds later.

Jammers had to skate through the entire pack. The one who got through first controlled the jam, having to then lap the entire pack again. After that she got one point for each member of the opposing team she passed. Followed by a mass of eagle-eyed judges she kept passing until two minutes elapsed.

And that, sports fans, was that.

Blockers impede the opposing jammer, help their own. It can get a little hectic, it can get a little personal. Pretty much any kind of limited mayhem is tolerated, except anything that might cause a push in the back. There were a lot of falls, some spectacular, but none face-first into the floor, which could have been potentially deadly.

Medical support was standing by. Fortunately it wasn't needed.

A sin bin was against the wall. That WAS needed.

There was a wonderful energy in the joint. The team members all had amazing personas, bad-girl identities stolen in whole cloth from a 50's women's prison movie. They seemed to be letting their hair down by putting it up in their helmets.

Perhaps it was an act - guys can act badass and you believe them and they seem like jerks.

Women can pull it off, you just accept that their personalities can encompass both behaviors.

Or, maybe more accurately my view of women can allow it. No, on second thought I think I'd do better to give them full credit for it - I'm happy to stand and watch the whole thing, my jaw hanging slacker than the udder of a Guernsey cow.

... and then go walk in the park and look at the light.

Sue me.


-- Post From My iPad