Beer Fest!

Beerfest. Where people drink beer and listen to bands play. A straight-forward and simple plan of action one would be compelled to believe. And they would be right. That's all a beerfest really is. Founders seems to draw two types in particular. The Bros – as there is beer, add that to the fact that there are other Bros to rape, and you get a feeding frenzy. Group two is the Hipsters. Since the festival seemed to be infested with non-hipsters(the Bros as well as others) I'm wondering if the Hipsters are only showing up out of a sense of irony.

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I don't drink. No reason why, I just don't. And I don't have a passion for music. I like music, even love it at times. But there's no burning desire to ensconce myself in front of a stage and press my head against the loudspeaker until my ears bleed. I'm perfectly content with canned music since, unless I'm dumb it doesn't damage what little I still have left of my hearing.

The bands ranged from OK to interesting, what I could hear. Eventually the music was droned out by the noise of conversation. There's that buzz that it becomes when hundreds of people are talking at once and the sounds cease to be meaningless and become noise. Often background noise. When I notice the buzz, it begins to freak me out. The hum is unescapable and wears at my fragile mind.

The noise makes even brief attempts at conversations rather self-defeating, which kills the mental stimulation that I need. Something to think about please. So, I begin to daydream about seeing epic Street Fighter style battles between the Bros and Hipsters. It's great. Just imagine seeing a Hipster yell Haduken! And throwing a ball of energy at a Bro. Fun times.

So, the concept on most levels is rather dull for a non-drinking hermit like myself. The only real draw? People watching. And a truer definition: Oggling Girls in their summer clothes. As I recall, scantily clad members of the female sex is a regular theme here on this blog. Comic con? Girls cosplaying. Rennfest? Girls cosplaying. I am a broken record. But as a creepy old shut-in, girls in revealing outfits are rare indeed in my usual domain. I'm forced to head out into the world to see them in their natural habitat.

This is worth the venture.

Note: Leering and drooling, are not socially acceptable behavior. Just passing on the hard won wisdom.

What else is there to say? The attention whores show up in droves to these events. Much like the cosplayers at nerdier events. Actually, exactly like cosplayers. The most notable was the Ent. See pic below. But others were the hula-hoopers. Dunno how they fit in, but there was a booth renting/selling hula hoops, so it can't be a new phenomenon. Founders Fest was a strange sight, and I am on the fence whether or not I enjoyed it fully.

Even Further adventures in bad Cinema. shoot me please.

I find it confounding how often I see the hyperbole 'wurst m0vie evar!' tossed about the internets in articles at various sites. The most recent stake that has been brought to my attention being a cracked post about the only martial arts movie ever made in Ireland, a flick titled Final Deviation. So he wanted to write a funny article about a poorly conceived and executed film. Unfortunately, I couldn't laugh along. Worst move ever? Not remotely. It doesn't even approach the title of worst Martial Arts movie ever(Man, have you seen Steven Seagal's recent work?).

Final Deviation, just in brief, is about an Irish martial artists(He resembles an angry primordial Alex Winter) who returns home from Asia to try and rebuild his life. Before he left home in the first place his father was murdered. It involves a powerful magnate and his thugs. A reasonably pretty girl with large breasts who is coveted by the Magnate's son/nephew/whatever. The town they live in features a martial arts tournament, for which the locals are die-hard fans. Don't get me going on the Monk. I don't know which order he was from, but he's clearly Irish Catholic. White beard, long brown robes and all. But he still becomes the Kung Fu Bill's mentor.

Basically, it's like the director took a script written in Hong Kong for a movie set in China, and then just nominally replaced everything with an Irish veneer and called it good. The acting is bad. The dialogue is extremely lame. The entire set up is absurd. Really, a Catholic sect of Kung Fu monks? The movie is pretty damned bad all around and is well worth a write-up on Cracked. I was actually rather pissed off that my source of self-inflicted pain, Netflix, didn't carry this monstrosity. Oh well, it is available for the moment on Youtube. In 9 parts. Look it up.

Now, Final Deviation is a sad sight to see. That people spent so much time on such a poor quality product is depressing. This being said, it doesn't remotely compare with the likes of say TNT Jackson. A 70s Blaxploitation-ChopSocky movie that seems to have been cast on the basis of 'she was a Playboy playmate! She has tits! She's gorgeous!' The rest of the details would take care of themselves.

Detail number 1: TNT, like every other Blaxploitation star of the era(with the exception of Foxy Brown who studied Bar Stool), knows Karate. According to the script. The luscious Jeannie Bell didn't know karate from kumquats. Did I mention that she was a Playboy Playmate and sported an awesome rack? This is important, they have a topless fight scene(in which between cuts her panties magically change color and cut several times). But that's OK, the light skinned dude that they got to be her stunt double had a decent grasp. In Final Deviation, the star was a capable physical performer, his poor acting aside. They didn't need to put a Chinese dude into Brogue Shoes and a Grandfather shirt to cover for him.

The rest of TNT Jackson is over the top and ridiculous, as one should expect from a low budget 70s Blaxploitation flick. It is thoroughly enjoyable for what it is and makes a good movie night feature if you have the right crowd in the proper mindset.

TNT Jackson, the failure pile in a sadness bowl that it is, still stands head, shoulders and balls over the movie that I rate the all time worst. Dark Havest 2: The Maize. I at one point got it into my head to watch the bottom 100 in the IMDB's worst movies list. Dark Harvest 2 was both the beginning and the end of that experiment. I was done, game over, to hell with this idea. I even watched two packs of the Mill Creek 50 movie box sets. You know, the ones where they slap 50 public domain movies onto 12 dvds and say 'here ya go, that'll be $15!' Yeah. I did THAT to myself. I'm like an EMO kid with my constant cutting, only the scars run far deeper. Dark Harvest 2 broke me of that habit. Mostly.

Watch the trailer.

Did you see that? That should have been the director's cut of the movie. At 2.5 minutes long they managed to use up all of the dialogue and action from the script, and they still had to pad the fucking thing out by another 97.5 minutes. 97.5 minutes of corn. And people running through corn. With a 10 minutes interlude dedicated to the protagonist digging in dirt, while the implied villain sneaks up on him. 10 minutes! Did they use every single frame of footage that they captured?

As of 6.16.2011, Dark Harvest 2 as 1928 votes on the good ole IMDB. 322 of of the people who voted gave the movie 10 stars. All I can think of is wow, that cast and crew has a lot of family members. Because nobody else, who has seen this movie, would honestly give it more than a 1. And the 1 rating only because negative numbers aren't possible. A handful of kind hearted folks rated it a 2. The rest of the people to voice their opinion must have been voting 'ironically'. Or just hitting random numbers. This is proof that Democracy doesn't work.

Or maybe they were responding to the trailer. The trailer is a solid 4. Perhaps even a 5.

Why did I pay money for that? It still pisses me off.c

My half-assed adventure in Agriculture.

An update! How exciting!

The problem with writing an adventure blog, even ones that are rather lame, is that you need to actually go on adventures for material. Obviously, my definition of 'adventure' is rather broad in that I write about any experience that is new or at least unusual for me. Which is why I've been holding off on my half-assed adventure in going to the super-market, as that would sink into the realm of no-assed. If you've been reading along and paying any attention, it is likely that you've come to the conclusion that I am an exceedingly boring person.

Congratulations Captain Obvious.

Well, back to the adventures, and the general lack there of. Back in January of 2010, I quit a job that I hated and proceeded to delve into the ranks of the unemployed. I did this during a recession, with no other prospects lined up. Dumb, I know. I usually don't leap like that, and my reasons were stupid. But I still feel it was one of my best decisions.

August of 2010 saw me re-employed but worrying about the age of my car and replenishing some of my spent savings. March 2011 saw my job disappear once more. Yep, no more driving to Ann Arbor to drug mule for the ungrateful crazies, or the patients. Amid a steep incline in gas prices(currently up over $4.00 a gallon) All in all, it's been a light year for traveling and adventures.

So, I've not done much and I've traveled less. Not too much different from when times are good!

In short, to summarize my motives in a couple sentences: The apocalypse is coming. When it does I'm pretty sure that grocery stores will have long lines. I hate waiting in line.

I am fascinated by the self-sustained and self-reliant lifestyle. I would like to experiment with growing my own food and generally living off the land. Ideally, I would set up a studio to work making pottery. I'd like to take up black-smithing. And then sell my creations. All with my beautiful wives Rosario Dawson, Emma Watson and Cristina Hendricks. I'd like. I'd like. I'd like. Problem here is that I don't see a way to make this sustainable. Unless I went the hot robot wife route.

I call this Kicking it Thoreau Style. (The hooking up with three exceedingly hot movie stars aspect of the Walden Experiment was in one of the lost appendixes).

Anyhow, all of that rambling is to set up this simple statement. I planted a garden. This combines steps 1 through 3 in my mind. Step three isn't big profit. Actually, 'big profit' and 'farming' seem to be mutually exclusive. 'Bankruptcy and despair' seem to fall in line more with 'Farming' these days.

I've never grown vegetables before on my own initiative. My folks have put in a couple gardens when I was growing up(Between ten and fifteen years ago). My grand-parents grow their own vegetables. And supposedly I come from farming roots on my Mother's side. So, I've been exposed. But sitting back and watching is different than setting off on your own.

The first problem is of course, my lack of experience. Secondly, we live on the second floor of our house and don't have any land. That means the garden has gone into planters(buckets that came full of cat litter) and hiding behind windows. Great, we don't have to worry about wild birds and animals ganking our bounty. We just have the tame cats instead.
I've been contemplating this for a few months now actually. So hopefully it works out. If not? Well, then I've learned something along the way.

Step 1: Getting the supplies.



We went to Home Depot and spent at least an hour wandering around as I only had a rather fuzzy idea of what I wanted to 'accomplish' with this entire mess. Thus the Underpant Gnome reference. First there are the basics: Pots, soil and the like. The common denominator that every gardener needs to grow plants. We grabbed a 2.5 cubic foot bag of potting soil, which is a lot of dirt. We already had some containers that would work as pots.

All this leaves was deciding what kinds of food we wanted to attempt and grow. First on the list was a handful of herbs. Basil, Oregano, Thyme, Sage and Rosemary. Just a bit of Parsley short of a grand day at Scarborough Faire. For the actual veggies, we rocked with pole beans, snap peas, tomatoes, peppers, and finally lettuce. Yep, we're rocking for salad. Might make us healthier in the end. Or we'll have a lot of dead plants on our hands.

Step 2: Bringing all that shit home and hauling it upstairs. This is a step by itself.

Step 3: Plant garden. We opted for a mix of seeds and seedlings. Seedlings when we could get them, and pure seeds when we couldn't. I spent the morning transferring soil to the 'pots' and trying to recall what I remembered about transferring seedlings and planting seeds. It doesn't help that the instructions on the seed-packets were less than helpful. Or I TLDRed it before I got to the helpful part. What? The packets are bright and colorful and very distracting. And I got to play in the dirt, something I've been missing since graduating.

since we're indoors, and we have cats, we've needed to devise a way to keep the plants off the floor and get them closer to what little sunlight gets through the windows(eves really kill direct sunlight). This is my biggest worry, killing the plants with shade. Right now I've opted for an old bookshelf. Will need to modify it later. Good thing I have tools and little sense.

So ends part 1. According to the packets, There should be some movement on part of the sedds within two weeks.

The hardcore life of a drug mule.

I got to do some drug-muling this week. Boy was it fun.

Wait, that sounds like an actual adventure, and not a twisted half-mirror image of one. I work for a pharmacy that specializes In supplying long term care facilities. Most facilities are on a 30 day cycle for their medications, meaning that they generally get one large shipment every 30 days. With exceptions being made for emergencies and new prescriptions. But all in all days are spent packing tens of thousands of dollars of medication for one delivery. All your eggs in one basket indeed.

Let me explain something about the facility in question. First, it is a depressing place to visit as they take care of and house car accident victims. I don't mean people who broke an arm in a car crash, I mean the folks who have come away permanently changed. Or just aren't there any more. One of the most depressing set of instructions ever seen on a script is probably "Apply to stumps." Really, when it comes to a place like this, those what die are the lucky ones. The rest are just vegetables and shells. Which is why, that if I get into an accident, I hope to buy the farm immediately.

I think that 16 year old kids, and people on DUI charges should be forced to visit... no, work at a place like the Facility. Videos and brochures and slogans are all nice, but you need to be able to experience in all visceral sensual detail what their decisions could lead to, either for themselves or for others. Let them apply ointments to the stumps of a vegetable for a few weeks. Let them interact with the brain-scrambled denizens that poke and prod and generally go on crazy.

And if they fail to learn the lesson, shoot them, as anyone that thick shouldn't be allowed to breed.

In seven months, this is the third time I've taken cycle to the Facility. The first time was because our driver decided to take a day off right as cycle was due. This was about two weeks after I started. I got to drive across the state and deliver the cycle. Which is for our little company a very big deal. Almost like, oh I don't know, some asshole captain of an oil tanker in say Alaska skiving off to get drunk and handing the job over to the peon who washes dishes. Except that I avoided grounding on any reefs.

This is all just to say, muling isn't my usual job, I just step in when needed.

Our driver promoted himself to the head of the delivery department. This happened when one of our competitors imploded and our business quadrupled in like a week. So they brought in a ton of new people and a half-dozen new drivers. Here's where my confusion begins, they have a load of drivers who are fully capable of taking an object from point a and leaving it at point b and then returning home. They have one woman who is dedicated to this route. Plus the self-styled manager of the delivery department carried cycle to this very Facility at least ten times in the past year, plus near daily visits in between.

When he stepped up, he gave his job to an older woman. One who has yet to win the confidence of some of management in her ability to take an object from point a and point b and then return. She's pissed off the goblin that works at the Facility, who just happens unpleasant creature who doesn't seem to like anyone or anything. So I was asked to go along to make things smoother.

Which brings me back...

It turns out that I wasn't just along as extra muscle, I was the actual driver and delivery monkey. This is a one person job, and I would have preferred to do it alone. Or better have our main driver take over.

If one of his hand picked followers is incapable of doing the job, shouldn't the head of the shipping department be the one who steps in? It's not like the man is busy, his days are spent chatting on the phone and taking two hour lunch breaks at Hooters. Yeah, this is great. I'm doing his job. I hope I get paid extra for it. I would like to be the head driver for a day. Hang out at Hooters. Wreck the company bathroom. Take an hour to fill one car up with gas. Creep out the female members of the staff and get away with it.

The drive over went quietly and smooth. How I like it.

There was yelling when we arrived, or so I heard tell of later. The warthog wasn't too pleased to see my copilot. She came out of the South Building and yelled "Don't you know where South is?" I pointed at the building and responded "Yeah, It's right there!" Had I wanted to see a real explosion, I could have said "Do you need directions?" But I like having my testicles whole and attached to my person, so I kept my mouth shut.

Beyond this, the delivery went rather smoothly. Dropped off meds, saw pretty girls. That's the one reason for a Facility visit for me, they have a lot of pretty girls working there. My company is sadly lacking on that front. Gotta go out and visit other companies to see natural beauties in their wild habitats. With luck, maybe I'll bring one home one day.

During the second to the last stop, one of the more mobile patients approached my copilot and asked a simple question "Did it hurt?" Now there are two possible reasons that I can think of for this question, and sadly he didn't opt for the first and instead finished with one of the classic pick-up lines. Only to immediately dive into a second, followed by a third. My copilot giggled the whole time. We don't think she usually gets that sort of attention.

A second high-point, if it can be considered so, involved an idiot man-child. Now, when you stand in the center of a group of angry women, and then make what can be considered sexist statements to them, you should expect to get a beating. He didn't seem to make that connection as they slapped him. He even asked why I didn't man up and help him. I called him a moron. That got a laugh.

Then the return trip. The trip out was quiet, the one back not so much so. I got to hear about the yelling, and autistic grand children and about a dozen other topics of less interest. I thought about the pretty girls.

My favorite quote from the entire experience was "Animals are alive." This wasn't from a head-paitent or a random crazy hobo, but my copilot just after we narrowly missed turning a living breathing turkey into something that could be squeezed through a feeding tube. I don't know what she meant by it - I think that this was my "If it weren't for my horse" moment. I've tried to dissect the statement, and the best I can come up with was that it was a philosophical observation about the changing of the weather and how animals seem to just re-appear again.

Or maybe she's just dumb.

Hercules Two: Clamation Boogaloo.

Adventures of Hercules
Lou Ferrigino

They made a sequel? Sweet Zombie Jesus, you have to be
kidding? Did they even watch the first movie before they slammed
down their cash to make the second? I thought not. Well
It's been two whole months, and then some, since I finished the Lou
Ferrigno Hercules movie. It took that long for the effects to
wear off and for me to recover from the shock. Unlike the first
movie, I managed to watch the entire thing without using the fast
forward button once. Like the first one, I had to turn the beast
off for a day and come back to it. It made my brain hurt.

Where to start. Well this movie seems to have been made by the
exact same people in the exact same style as the last. Same
cheesy 'special effects', same crap-tastic costuming, hell it even had
the same actors and the same freaking villain! I kid thee not,
the same actor playing the same villain. They resurrected the bad
guy, because he was oh so tough, you know with all the dieing he
managed to do in the end, and they used him again. Yeah, be
afraid Herc, be very afraid.

That's right. They resurrected King Minos, the evil user of
science, to fight against the power of the vaguely benevolent Gods and
the natural order of the universe. Was this movie funded by the
Roman Catholic church? I mean really, evil science? Science
the cause of chaos? In the end Minos didn't get any wicked ass
gizmos in which to battle the other bad guys with, he gets magic eye
beams, and a magic flaming sword. Make up your minds damn
it. is he supposed to be using a kick ass orbital death-ray
launched by the evil United States, or is he using the evil black
magic, invented by the United States? One or the other please.

Well the second movie actually seems to follow a plot that is at times
nearly makes sense. Well the story goes that Zeus' six magic
thunderbolts of something or other were stolen by some rebellious
goddesses led by Hera. These disaffected Hippies, thought to
gain, I'm not quite sure why they did it, but they did it anyway.
Well, yeah that's great, the thunderbolts are missing, the world is in
danger, send the Hercster to the rescue!

Well first of all, before all that started, some evil priests were
sacrificing a scantily clad babe to some god or demon of fire.
Two other scantily clad babes watch the goings on, and decide that they
don't like what they see, so they go for help. They consult a
pair psychedelic butterfly women, who tell them they need the help of
Hercules, and they'll find him in the forbidden valley. Just a
note, there's always a forbidden valley it seems in fantasy movies, and
the valley is forbidden for a very good reason. People in these
movies never seem to remember this fact.

Well The Herc gets to earth. The first thing he runs into is a
creature that I suppose is a werewolf, only it looks more like a
Greying cousin It from the Adams family, who happens to be wearing a
cheap baboon mask, with some dog-like sound effects added on top.
I'm not making this up, nor do I wish I were capable of making
something like this up. Brain Damage! Sadly the rest of the
movie doesn't get any better.

Once again to the so called special effects. The costumes are
cheap, both for the main human characters and for the monsters that
they fight. Some of the monsters use animation techniques.
Not that fancy-schmancy computer stuff, but the old fashioned
way. So old fashioned it seems, that they felt that they were
making it up as they went along. The stop-motion claymation that
they made use of, was out-done by such 1950s and 1960s fare as the
Sinbad films and Jason and the Argonots, not to mention Clash of the
Titians. No, it seemed more like a bad Gumby short at
times. The rest of the animation was just simplistic color,
bright primary hues mostly. Flat and boring.

Oh, I can't forget my favorite part of the movie, the Amazons fight
scene. Chicks with guns kick ass. It is a proven
fact. Much ass is kicked by chicks with guns. I cannot
reiterate this enough. Imagine my surprise and delight when the
Amazons were about to attack. And then disappointment when I
discovered it was just a bunch of men in drag. That's right kids,
rather than getting real amazon like women, they just dressed men up in
drag, gave them fake breasts and everything, and then dubbed it all
over with womens voices. No wonder the Amazons lost, not only
were they poseurs, they were also a group of confused young men.

Then there were the absolutely confusing aspects of the movie.
Zeus, at one point, confronts his arch nemesis chaos. I shall now
recreate the scene for you...

Chaos-chick: We're a lot alike you know, we balance things
between us?

Zeus: Oh yeah? Well poopy head, I gots me the time on my
side baby!

*A giant animated skull comes down and zaps her with a death-ray*

Zeus: Eat it clown!

I don't get it either. It seemed random, like it was added simply
for the chance to let their effects crew draw a giant skull and then
have it attack someone. The entire movie was like that. It
also went along with the first flick in it's blatant attempts to
butcher the original classical mythology. Though at least this time
there weren't any giant robots to fight against. The movie did
make a fair attempt at destroying my sanity and giving me epileptic
seizures. Why did I pay money for this crap?

The worst part is, I have failed to learn my lesson and keep watching crappy movies.

Adventures in Bad 80s Cinema 1

Hercules - Lou Ferrigino

Well I found myself in Shopko as I was in need of toothpaste. All the
colors and flavors, I did have myself a good time all the way to at the
checkout line at the end. Well there lo and behold stood the usual
selection of $9.99 dvds. Having nothing else to do during my wait for
the old ladies in line ahead of me I decided to peruse their selection.


You've probably guessed that Hercules caught my eye. It wasn't even old
school Herc. It was the new(ish) Lou Friggno(aka the hulk) from the
early 80s. I should probably say it wasn't an it, it was a they. Yes,
two movies for 9.99 and they're Herc movies! I've seen a lot of Herc
movies, as a fairly avid fan of the MST3K, so on impulse I dropped my
$10 for this dvd. I could have asked myself "What's the worse that can
happen," But as I've said, I've watched a lot of MST3K, I already knew
the worst.

I know what you're thinkin, Lou Friggno as the Hercster? Who could turn
that down? Not me. Not me.

I will say right now, impulse items suck.

First of all there's the Mythology aspect. Now for an analogy. Imagine
a little midget dressed in Greek attire, this little one is Greek
Mythology. Now imagine three large men who are built like Lou Friggno,
and hung like mr ed, they're the director and the producers and whoever
else was involved in the making of this piece of work.

Lou 1 - Hey, look at that, I've always wanted to have sex with a midget.
Lou 2 - Me too.
Lou 3 - I like shiny things!

The midget - Hey guys...Eeep.

Well to make a long story short, no lubrication was involved and the
midget couldn't walk right for a month. You can fill in the rest
yourself and store it in your wank tank for as long as you need.


It really wasn't good. It was like potluck of Herc, Herc Cliff Notes.
If the notes were concocted by a autistic stoner child who kept on
getting suduced away by the wonderful, tasty chips that come off the
wall under the kitchen window. Thank god for this kid, because
otherwise I would have never known that Alantis was the capital city of
Thebes. Guess my grasp of history and Geography was a bit off.

Well then onto special effects. What can I say? It was the early 80s
and Disco was in it's final death throes, but sadly it wasn't dead yet,
at least not in this movie. Think the Bionic Man sound effect, but for
the deaf. They would add random flashes and shapes of color to signify
that the Hercenheimer was doing something noteworthy beyond flexing his
pecs and being all oily and confused.

Some of the idea's were fairly cool, just poorly executed. Jason and
the Argonots from how ever many decades earlier was more believable. As
was the stop motion claymation from those terrible Sinbad movies from
the 60s.

Herc ends up fighting three, count them, three different robots. I
shall repeat that last word since it bears repeating. Robots. Now to
repeat the statement one more time, Herc fights robots. I must have
fallen asleep in in my Myth classes, because I don't recall this
chapter of the stories. I know that Godzilla once fought a robot. Steve
Urkel too had a android nemesis. But Herc? They must have lost this
technology with the burning of the Library at Alexandria. To think of
all that we lost! Makes me wonder if the Egyptians had a Deathstar
floating around the Nile.

The swords and armor were made from what looked like shiny plastic.
They were of the vein of what one would expect from that era of movie
making. Gaudy and poorly thought out.

Once again, this is a movie from the early 80s, and a Herc movie to
boot. It leaves one last question. Where are the breasts? You have a
movie that had so much potential to be the fodder for late night
Cinemax addicts, and they threw it all away. The only exposed breasts
belonged to Lou, and though they were rather large, they also lacked
the soft allure of the female bosom. The entire movie is full of
fairly attractive women, and all of them scantily clad, would it been
so difficult to have them wrestle in mud? It's not like there's any
integrity left to the film anyhow.

Round and round they go.

The general theme to this blog, at least in the beginning was that I would visit a place with my camera and take pictures along the way. Pretty damn simple. Except that I've been writing about adventures that don't really require photos, and I've not been bringing my camera since most of the events have arrived on short notice. It doesn't help that I went from having a lot of free time but no money to some extra money but little free-time. Paradoxes are a bitch. Growing up sucks. Here we are. Thus, I don't update too often. Only when something new and vaguely interesting comes into my life.

I live a dull life, as these pages will attest.

We kicked off the evening with BBQ at Sandmanns. If you ever visit town, be sure to give them a whirl. The food is inexpensive, plentiful and delicious. To the point that I feel the need to pimp them here to people who live across the far corners of the world.

I really don't enjoy spectator sports. Before I got lazy, I used to love playing games like soccer (football for the rest of the world) and badminton. I was reasonably decent at baseball, I even liked to run. Then, I graduated high school and drifted more towards geek culture and the computer gaming and general nerdiness. Yeah, I've played Dungeons and Dragons, and despite that I do one day entertain hopes that I will actually get to kiss a girl. It'll happen. Maybe. If I'm really lucky.

Anyhow, I just don't excited about watching other people play games. I don't gamble, and I'm not playing. I have nothing invested in whether or not a team wins are loses. I've lived in too many places to be attached to a club just by the fact that they 'represent' my home school/city/state. I've always been like that. I just take no pride in something that arbitrary and lame. Somebody else won a game that I wasn't playing. Meh.

But then, I watched Blood on the Flat Track: Rat City Roller Girls over that wonderful service that is Netflix. I found a new sport to appreciate.

Roller Derby has been around in one form or another since the 1930s. It's popularity waxes and wanes over the years and has been experiencing a resurgence over the last decade or so as leagues pop up all over the country. I hear it's really quite popular over on the west coast. But here in the midwest we have managed to cobble together a few teams. Which is cool, since It means that I didn't have to go far to experience this new delight.

Let me describe Roller Derby. Imagine one of those ancient Roman Chariot races where the chariots try to speed around the course and pass each other while beating the crap out of their . Roller Derby is kind of the same, in the fact that wheeled competitors are going around in circles around a track while inflicting harm. That's about where the comparison ends. Derby is a team sport where the opposing teams wear roller skates. The basic gist is as follows, there are about six players from each team on the floor. They're broken into two groups. The pack is made up of the majority of the players. They skate around in circles together as a big group, elbowing one another and generally carrying on in good fun.

Now for the scoring of points. Each team has a player called a Jammer. They start well behind the pack a moment or so after each round begins. The Jammer's job is to try and pass as many of the opposing players as possible. For each player they pass, they are awarded one point. There's some strategy here. The first Jammer to pass the entire pack is given the title of lead Jammer. It is in their power to call off the round whenever they please. Thus the strategic element to the game.

Then you have the coach, whose job it is to stand on the sidelines and yell “Skate faster!” and “Keep Skating.” The dude must be somebody's retarded brother. The special guy that wears a bike helmet and swim floaties wherever he goes, and he was just given the job to shut him up and make him feel special. Really, a coach on the sidelines is nearly completely useless in this sport. But hey, I love how the absurdity adds to the color. Don't change a thing.

Honestly, the spectacle gets repetitive quick for people like me. Roller Derby is rather linear and simple in nature. The players always go in the same direction. They always have the same goals. It's about like NASCAR, but with more intentional violence and far less deadly crashes. Yeah, they're really not allowed to get too physical out on the floor.

Where does it get interesting then? Well, here abouts anyway, the Roller Derby teams are almost entirely made up of female members. That's right. Girls on skates. Wait, it gets better. Girls in skimpy outfits on skates. Glee! Sex and violence. All the aspects that make for good entertainment. Women in hotpants and stockings bouncing off one-another.

That's about it. But what more does anyone need?

So, I had several weeks heads-up with the derby. I knew it was coming. I could have brought my camera. But I didn't. Why? Well, for the same reasons I don't often get pics at conventions of girls. I just feel like an utter perv. I am a perv. I know this. Known it for a while. But I don't like to draw attention to the fact.

But, should you ever get a chance, take in a match and make sure you experience this great sport live. Girls in skimpy outfits grinding and colliding with one another. Life is good.

The local league has two teams, and they import other teams to play against from such places as Chicago, Kalamazoo and Stepford CT. After watching Blood on the Flat Track, I looked up Roller Derby on my old friend Google and found our local league. I mentioned it to the Fat Man, who had also seen the documentary, and we made plans to hit it for my birthday celebration this year. Last year it was the Art Institute in Chicago. God, I'm a dork.

I'm waiting for the day that Derby gets the international attention that it disturbs. When it replaces soccer/football as the world's sport. Not likely to happen, since flat tracks and rollerskates are a lot more expensive than a ball and a field. But hey, it can at least make a showing in the Olympics. If Synchronized Swimming is recognized, Roller Derby is desperately under represented.