"Dominatoration" Fail

Ok, I accept that I'm not going to make "dominatoration" happen. Fine. I'm over it.

Still, I don't think that "domination" suits the 2010 GnR tour. It's just not big enough. And while I thought that maybe what it needed was a few more letters—in this case, "t-o-r-a," y'know, to make it bigger—I might have been mistaken about that.

But see, this 2010 tour is going to be something of biblical, apocalyptic magnitude. As the Holy Scriptures say: "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and her name that sat on him was Beth, and Mel followed with her."

And now that I hear other teams talking about "total domination" or whatever—I love the High Rollers as much as the next guy, but let's face it, they don't ROCK—I think it's time to take this to another level. It's time to put the eyeliner on a little thicker, to spray on an extra coat of ozone-destroying Aqua Net, to tug our leather pants a little tighter into the crotch. It's time to throw our heads back, sling our air guitars down by our knees, drive into one of those chuggaduh chuggaduh chuggaduh chuggaduh rhythms, and scream ... just what exactly?

Who's got a name for the GnR 2010 tour? A name that's big enough, powerful enough, devastatingly rocking enough to fit the destruction that will be visited on the hotel rooms, livestock, and rollergirls who are too slow to get out of the way as GnR wails through the twenty-ten season all the way to eleven: twenty-eleven, that is!

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GnR World Tour Begins

Blood Clottia and Sully Skullkicker line up.

I don't know that I can offer much insightful analysis on the two bouts that opened GnR's 2010 world tour, but I'll try.

GnR's obvious strength this season is blocking.

High Roller Hurricane Skatrina is one of the smartest blockers in the league, and her team mate Heidi Go Seek isn't far behind her, but I think GnR blockers Smack Ya Sideways, Napalm Beth, and Mercyful Kate stood right up to them in the night's first bout.

Cadillac in black = Black Cadillac?

Plus there's the always solid Axl Blows, all healed up Hard Knox, and Maui transplant Suki Hana.

Smack Ya and Beth are two of the skaters who, I think, improved most over last season, and I'm excited to see what they'll bring this year.

As far as jammers go, that's where losses like Aurora Brutalis, Wrench, and Guts & Bolts have left GnR a little short (no, that's not a Punchkin joke).

Hard Knox jams? Yes, Hard Knox jams.

It's why Cadillac was shamelessly poached from the Betties (no doubt with promises of many tawdry animal print underpants, hooker-red lipsticks, and doting boys muscular, dim-witted, and young—but legal!) and why skaters like Cher The Pain and Hard Knox, who had until now been almost exclusively blockers, were also wearing the jammer cap.

But while Cadi does look so much better in black (doesn't she?), I'm most excited by Fist O' Fury who didn't see much play after she was drafted during last season, but has clearly worked herself hard since then and showed up big during the opening bouts.

Fist O' Fury at the jammer line.

Add in Mel Mangles (another skater moved from Rainy City, which is starting to look like the GnR farm league) alongside veterans Punchkin and Blood Clottia, and Mullet, November Pain, and GnR will have lots of options at the jammer line this season.

Speaking of Blood Clottia, it's been reported that Way To Blood's Heart #3 is to try on clothes at Forever 21. Just a bit of advice here: remember to send her the pictures. Otherwise you'll just end up in a dressing room in some mall wearing this while some seventeen-year-old is asking you through the door if you need any help. And if you're like me at all, that's just uncomfortable.

Even I can't make Blood look bad.

Also, I love seeing Itzo EZ back on skates as a ref, but her lack of loyalty disappoints me. Sure I expect a ref like Sephra So to be hot fair, but I expect GnR-4-Life EZ to be more than hot fair—I expect her to be just.

And for the twenty bucks I slipped her before the bout, I expect that justice to be tightly focused on GnR's opponents. Is that too much to ask?

The Betties have announced themselves as the team to beat this season, but all four league teams look pretty well balanced against each other to me, and that should make for excellent derby this season.

Secret GnR Video Released

As part of our ongoing efforts to dig up more salacious info and to maybe even verify some of the gossip we've heard about GnR, we snuck a camera into their secret strategy session they held last week at an undisclosed location.

Unfortunately, we did not find out if GnR has really made a pact with Satan or if Santa brought Napalm Beth any cake.

In fact, it looks like our camera may have been discovered. [Note](It was in Mullet's phone. I thought it was genius. Who would look in their telephone for a camera?)[Note] And here is the footage we were able to recover:

I'm a bit skeptical about all this. I for one do not believe that they have been to Mongolia. Not all of them anyway.

What do you think? Is there a GnR deal with the devil? Has Napalm Beth gotten the cake she wants? Have the GnRs trained in Mongolia?

Speculate away!

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White Flight All Right

Things I don't want to see on the derby track again: backboard.

Things I do want to see on the derby track again: White Flight.

You can leave comments and get updates on White Flight's status at the Rose City Rollers page here.

Some Things That ROCK!

Are you ready?

Brutalitarian dominatoration begins Saturday 6pm @ Portland Expo Center.

Tickets here.

Brutal Beauty premieres this Saturday

Saturday 9 January 7pm

@ Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy, Portland)

Git yer tickets while you can!

The documentary is an embedded look at the 2009 Rose City Rollers season, including the hard rockers of GnR!

"The goal of Brutal Beauty was to examine the culture and sensation that roller derby has become in Portland and to attempt to discover what is at the core of this movement.”- Chip Mabry, Producer/Creator/Director

Brutal Beauty - Tales of the Rose City Rollers (Trailer) from Benjamin Meader on Vimeo.

Well, capture THIS, Chip! The cast features over a dozen characters from derby including athletes, managers, fans and retired players. The fifteen-person Portland crew shot all aspects of Rose City derby from January to November, compiling nearly one hundred hours of raw HD footage of both the home RCR season and the WoJ travel season.

“This was a massive effort, much bigger than we anticipated. We set a lofty goal of independently producing a feature sports documentary that reaches the quality of HBO Sports, ESPN and network television sports,” said Mabry.

Mabry served as the Executive Producer / Producer of Rip City, a 2009 feature documentary that explored Portland skateboarding culture. Rip City is currently airing on Fuel TV and was nominated for best cinematography, editing, original music and director at the 2009 X-Dance Action Sports Film Fest in Salt Lake City, Utah. Brutal Beauty is Mabry’s second Portland-based documentary since moving to the city in 2007. A major goal of the production was to create Brutal Beauty one hundred percent within the local Portland creative community.