Providence’s new all-girl roller derby league

Meet the Mob Squad

A GROUP OF WOMEN gathers in a huddle. They wear matching pinstripe skirts and serious expressions. One of them holds a clipboard and gives instructions to the others. "They’re a little worried about violence," she warns. "So I mean if you’re falling and stuff that’s fine, but no pushing each other just yet. ’Cause it’s the beginning of the night and they’ll shut us down."

These women also happen to be on roller skates.

This is the Mob Squad, the first team in Providence’s all-new, all-girl roller derby league. The speaker is the team’s manager, Madame Donna Fukwitme, a.k.a. 27-year-old Marcella A. Kroll. The Mob Squad is gathered in East Providence at the United Skates of America, an indoor roller rink and entertainment park, complete with a ring of video games and a black light laser tag space station. A dozen little kids with skates slung over their shoulders empty out of the rink as strange eerie music wafts from loudspeakers in the laser tag area, and the Mob Squad prepares for speed trials. Tonight, team members will race one another in heats, competing for the title of Providence’s fastest roller girl. The event is a fundraiser, and a crowd of about 100 people — mostly art punks and hipster types — has amassed to watch them race.

The Mob Squad name is a nod to Providence’s mafioso heritage, and as is customary in derby, each girl has taken an alias. The racers tonight include the Godmother, Maria Goomatta, Cementa Boots, Tammy Guns, DaSilva Bullet, Amanda Hugandkill, and Rhoda Perdition. With the team’s tough name and bad-girl attitude, maybe the rink officials are right to be worried.

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tags:
rollergirls
roller derby
providence

Gotham Girls Roller Derby Logo Design Contest

The Gotham Girls Roller Derby are looking for a new logo. The logo will used on everything from posters and flyers to t-shirts and other merchandise.

Guidelines:

• Logo should work easily in any scale.
• All designs should have no more than four colors.
• If your design contains color, you must submit two versions: one in full color and one in black and white.
• All submissions should include a distinctive typeface (of your own design or a particular font) that we can use with or without the logo.
• Submissions should be e-mailed to annephetamean AT gothamgirlsrollerderby DOT com or mailed to Anne, 344 Grove St. Box 124, Jersey City, NJ 07302
• Include all contact information (full name, phone and/or e-mail) with submissions
• Deadline for all submissions is January 31, 2005

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Crowd Favorite Award Nominations

The Texas Rollergirls are accepting nominations for the Crowd Favorite Award to be presented at the Second Annual Whammy Awards. Last year I was proud to present this award to Anna Mosity.

To nominate a Texas Rollergirl for this award email :
devilgrrl AT txrollergirls Dot com by Saturday, January 8th.

The Awards cermony will be held on Saturday, February 12th.

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first bout of the new year

friday elfgirl blogging

elfgirl

friday random 10

From Roxanne
Instructions for newbies:

* Fire up that IPOD, MP3 or other digital media player
* Set it to random play
* List the first 10 songs

"Bury You In A Paper Sack" - Snooky Pryor
"Splash 1 (Now I'm Home)" - 13th Floor Elevators
"Deanna" - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
"Kite" - Kate Bush
"Sam" - Boss Hog
"I Want To Do Everything For You" - Toni Price
"Restraining Order" - TunaHelpers
"I Don't Care" - Ramones
"I'm Not Araid of Life" - Ramones
"Sedate Me" - Sincola

SXSW 2005

Some of the bands that will be playing this year at SXSW:

Alabama Thunderpussy, the Album Leaf, Ambulance LTD, American Music Club, Amplified Heat, Apocalyptica, Apostle of Hustle, the Arm, Nic Armstrong, Ash, Athlete, Austin Theremonic Orchestra, Awesome Cool Dudes, the Black Halos, Black Moses, Bleach, the Bloody Hollies, Bonk, John Butler Trio, By Divine Right, Laura Cantrell, Cephalic Carnage, Charanga Cakewalk, Chingo Bling, Chingon, Meg Lee Chin, the City Lights, the Coolies, the Crimea, Crooked Fingers, Kacy Crowley, the Crystal Method, Crystal Skulls, the Cuban Cowboys, Cut Copy, the Czars, Daaraj, Walter Daniels/Wade Driver, Darediablo, Jesse Dayton, the Dears, DJ Jester the Filipino Fist and QuadRod, the Donnas, Johnny Dowd, Edith Frost, Kathleen Edwards, Endochine, Experimental Aircraft, Faceless Werewolves, Jason Falkner, Fatal Flying Guilloteens, the Fighting Brothers McCarthy, Ruthie Foster, the George W. Bush Singers, Eliza Gilkyson, Gnappy, Gorch Fock, Grady, the Greencards, Grupo Fantasma, Guitar Wolf, Caroline Herring, Robyn Hitchcock, Hobble, Hot Hot Heat, Billy Idol, Jetscreamer, Daniel Johnston, Laika & the Cosmonauts, Jon Langford & the Sexy, Ben Lee, Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters, Aimee Mann, Marlowe, the Meat Purveyors, Metal Urbain, Midlake, Milton Mapes, the Mobius Band, Mono, Ronnie Montrose, Moonlight Towers, M. Ward, Nashville Pussy, the Octopus Project, Of Montreal, Anders Parker, Piccola Orchestra Avion, Pig Destroyer, the Pink Swords, Plastilina Mosh, Pong, the Pretty Please, Radar Bros., the Raveonettes, the Real Heroes, Gruff Rhys, Stan Ridgway, Rockland Eagles, Scott H. Biram, Charlie Sexton, Michelle Shocked, the Silent League, Sleater-Kinney, Son Volt, the Soundtrack of Our Lives, Mavis Staples, This Microwave World, Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers, the Six Parts Seven, Trashcan Sinatras, Patricia Vonne, the Waco Brothers, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Whitey Houston, Zykos

tags: sxsw, austin

TRD Second Season

eeka
Photo by Liam Frederick  

Tucson Roller Derby announces their second season:

February 19 - VICE Squad vs. Furious Truckstop Waitresses
March 5 - Iron Curtain vs. VICE
April 16 - FTW vs. VICE
April 23 - Iron Curtain vs. AZRD in Phoenix
May 21 - AZRD vs. VICE in Tucson
June 18 - FTW vs. Iron Curtain
July 16 - VICE vs. Iron Curtain
August 20 - Iron Curtain vs. FTW
September 17 - Season Two Championship game

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Renegade Rollergirls first bout of 2005

The Renegade Rollergirls announce their first bout of the 2005 season.

Sunday, January 23RD, 2005
French Kiss Army vs. Mothertruckers

Surfside Skateland, 1625 E Weber, Tempe, AZ.

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L.A. Derby Dolls first bouts of 2005

The L.A. Derby Dolls announce the dates of thier first two bouts of the season.

Saturday, January 29th
Sirens vs the Tough Cookies

Saturday, February 12th
Trust Fund Terrors vs the Fight Crew.

The Derby Dolls NEED volunteers:
-Projectionist
-Lighting (Hot Carl needs assistants)
-DJ, sound equipment, microphones, bands
-Extension cords
-Videographers and photographers
-Announcers
-Refs
-Water boys or girls
-Stats keepers – 2
-Scorekeepers - 4
-Timekeepers - 3
-Digital Scoreboard *
-Medics and First Aid
-Security guys – 10

If you can really help out with any of the above, please email Thora Zeen at: girlgore AT yahoo DOT com

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tank girls:

frontline feminists

As the coalition bombs hit the flat salt plains on the north-eastern border of Iraq, members of a little known, female-led Iranian army huddled in a bunker. While the earth shook, showering dust on their neatly pressed khaki headscarves, 25-year old Laleh Tarighi and her fellow combatants tried to protect themselves.

Eighteen months later, recalling the terror of being attacked by British and US bombers during the invasion of Iraq last year, Tarighi, a former pupil of Parkside and Hill Road School in Cambridge, says: "We were puzzled more than afraid. We knew our officers had sent messages to the Pentagon insisting that we were neutral and shouldn't be attacked. We were only in Iraq to overthrow the Islamic fundamentalist regime across the border in Iran."

It is hard to imagine that Tarighi was once a typical British teenager who loved going to the cinema and socialising in cafés. Few of her friends knew that when she was a child in Iran, her father had been executed for being a member of the Iranian resistance, and that her mother was a high-ranking commander in the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA). After A-levels, Tarighi had planned to study media at university, but then, aged 18, she decided to leave the comfort of the home she shared with her aunt to join her mother in the NLA in a military camp on the Iran-Iraq border.

The NLA is the military wing of the National Council of the Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a female-dominated, Iranian parliament-in-exile whose aim is to topple the Islamic fundamentalist regime and replace it with a secular, democratic government. The NCRI is led by a charismatic Iranian, Maryam Rajavi, 53. Security around her is tight for fear of assassination attempts, and she very rarely appears in public. Her organisation has kept a low profile until it recently started sharing intelligence reports on Iran's nuclear programme with America and Europe.

But, in spite of this co-operation, the NLA is still considered a terrorist organisation by the West. The coalition forces in Iraq have restricted its 3,800 combatants to their camps, and their weapons have been confiscated. Women make up 30 per cent of the NLA, but 70 per cent of the officers are female. The British Army has just one female brigadier, while in the Navy there are four female captains.

Rajavi has long encouraged female participation in the army. She argues that, as misogyny is the mainstay of the Iranian government, who better to strike at it than women? Her female recruits, many of whom had been tortured and imprisoned in Iran, train alongside men in all aspects of frontline battle, including hand-to-hand combat and armoured vehicle operation. With the backing of wealthy Iranian exiles, they are preparing for the day when the order comes to march east over the frontier to liberate their land from the mullahs.

Atlanta Rollergirls

The Atlanta Rollergirls website is up.

If you are interested in joining, email them at:
join AT atlantarollergirls DOT com.
The Atlanta Rollergirls are also looking for sponsors. If you are interested in helping out,
email: sponsors AT atlantarollergirls DOT com.

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war pigs

The Center for Corporate Policy's Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004

1. AEGIS
2. BearingPoint
3. Bechtel
4. BKSH & Associates
5. CACI and Titan
6. Custer Battles
7. Halliburton
8. Lockheed Martin
9. Loral Satellite
10. Qualcomm

1924 - 2005

Shirley Chisholm, R.I.P.

"Crowd Favorite" nominations end Saturday, January 8th

The Texas Rollergirls are accepting nominations for the Crowd Favorite Award to be presented at the Second Annual Whammy Awards. Last year I was proud to present this award to Anna Mosity.

To nominate a Texas Rollergirl for this award email :
devilgrrl AT txrollergirls Dot com by Saturday, January 8th.

The Awards cermony will be held on Saturday, February 12th.

support your local rollergirl

Bozo approved

For the entire 2005 year, Basic Hip Digital Oddio will be featuring weekly stories and songs from the golden age of children's records, a period which ran from the mid 1940s into the early 1950s. This era produced a wealth of classics, headed by Capitol's Record-Readers and the RCA Victor Little Nipper series. Each one of these recordings has been carefully transferred from the original 78s (plus a few 45s) and encoded to 192kbps MP3s for you to download and enjoy.

(via Boing Boing)