The Guns N Rollers expected to spend Saturday night at the Oaks Park Hangar trading off wailing guitar riffs and extended drum solos. What they found, unfortunately, was that they'd crashed a cotillion hosted by the Breakneck Betties. And despite their best rock-and-roll efforts, they couldn't do more than shake up the Betties' party a bit.
The Betties broke out early with thirty-plus unanswered points—nothing gives away points like sitting your jammer in the naughty box. But GNR rallied hard during the middle of the first period, and they came close enough I thought they might bite the Betties on their pretty red-pantied asses.
And then the second period.
No matter how GNR muscled and sweat their way through every jam, not enough points went on the board, often because they were skating without a jammer. And demon-from-hell Rhea DeRange picked up points as easy as buttercups. [Note]Hey. When Rhea skates for the Wheels of Justice, I cheer as loud as anyone for her, but when she skates against GNR, she's a demon from hell. Alright?[Note] It seemed as though they couldn't get a break, that every call was against them, and that their jammer sat in the box simply for not being nice. It was as though cosmic disturbances, unseasonal sunspot activity, and the clandestine efforts of disgruntled hotel managers throughout the United States (fed up with years of humiliation at the hands of head-banging rockers) all conspired to keep GNR from scoring as many points as the Breakneck Betties.
(Maybe it's time now for GNR to review their contract with Satan?)
The Good Stuff:
GNR did bring the Rock.
It's just that "rock" ≠ "points." (I do believe that a petition is being circulated to fix this).
It's no surprise that Blood Clottia brought another Monsters-of-Rock performance jamming as well as blocking.
Aurora Brutalis lit up the Hangar with several of her own brilliant jams.
PunchkinPunchkin,
November Pain, and
Smack Ya Sideways all put points on the board, I think. (If not, recall rock ≠ points.) But, to me, the bright spot jamming was
Guts & Bolts, who took a shot to the nose in the first jam she put on the star; then she kept coming back for more and more abuse and looked like she was
lovin' every minute of it.
Axl Blows, Hard Knox, Smack Ya, and
Napalm Beth all hit hard and hit often, and when things weren't coming together for Pain as jammer, she joined them in the pack. To further show that GNR is willing to mix things up and respond to the other team, Knox put on the star for a jam (and passed it to Smack Ya), and
A.Wrench gave up checking Betties right out of their skates for a jam and scored a few points herself.
And nothing really shows better that the Earth had fallen out of its orbit on Saturday evening and had begun spiralling dangerously toward the sun: Napalm Beth fouled out and Smack Ya Sideways did not. (To be fair, Beth picked up her last penalty as a sort of two-for-one deal when she was "insubordinate" on her way to the penalty box. Always showing her concern for the objectivity of the officials, that Beth is.)
So what did we learn today?
We learned that no matter the fate of the universe, rock-and-roll will go on. We learned that GNR will always be plucky and (mostly) gay. And we learned that sometimes the cheerleaders win.
Anyone else learn something? Comments are open....
Sugar & Vice comes on primarily to add more blocking to the GNR pack.