God Hates Freds

Alamo City Rollergirls

friday random ten

dotty
Lauren has the instructions.

53rd & 3rd - Ramones
Terry - James McMurtry
Angels at Night - Giant Sand
Sparky - Kristin Hersh
Milkshake N'Honey - Sleater-Kinney
Track 3 - Aero Wave
La Conga Blicoti - Josephine Baker
Gravity - Alejandro Escovedo
Old Drunk Punk on Junk - Punkeroos
Kicking the Dog - Glass Eye

friday elfgirl blogging

kadie edition 

No Pants Day

It's rather obvious, but it needed to be said. The best way to join in on a holiday celebrating a lack of pants is to NOT... WEAR... PANTS...

Austin Events for No Pants Day - Friday, May 6th.

7-9 am. Capital Rally
Hanging out at the Capital, for the early-rising, hardcore celebrants. We're gonna promote No Pants Day to people early in the morning downtown. It'll be a blast to be out in no pants when those not in the know are milling about doing their work. Meet on 11th, in front of the gates, just south of the Capital.

9am-5pm. West Mall
The main event. No Pants Day Rally on the West Mall on the UT campus. Shirts, music, games, songs, handing out fliers, and just plain celebrating.

7pm- Miniature Golf
Mini Golf at Peter Pan Mini Golf. 1207 Barton Springs.

So, here's some things we need for The West Mall-
*musical instruments
*frisbees
*snacks
*handmade signs.

Oh, and don't wear pants on Friday.

Mad Rollin' Dolls - Semifinals Bout

The flat track Mad Rollin' Dolls are having their Semifinals this Sunday, May 8th.

The Reservoir Dolls take on the Psycho Kitties in the first match.

Then its the Unholy Rollers scrapping with the Quad Squad.

Sunday, May 8.

Fast Forward Skate Center

Tickets ar $8 in advance, $10 at the door.

Doors open at 6:30pm, bout at 7pm.

Visit the Mad Rollin' Dolls website for more info.

tags: roller derby, rollergirls, Mad Rollin' Dolls, Madison

Fight Crew vs. Sirens

The banked track L.A. Derby Dolls will skate their last bout at the Dollhouse this Saturday, May 7th.

The Fight Crew will take on the Sirens.

Saturday, May 7.

At the Dollhouse, 182 Sotello Street in Chinatown.

Advance tickets are still available.

Visit the L.A. Derby Dolls website for more info.

tags: roller derby, rollergirls, L.A. Derby Dolls

Roller Derby Returns to Philly

The cover story of the new Philadelphia Weekly features the two new all-girl roller derby leagues in Philly, the Penn Jersey She Devils and the Philly Rollergirls and interviews Judy "the Polish Ace" Sowinski.

tags: roller derby, rollergirls, Penn Jersey She Devils, Philly Rollergirls

Yeti Detector - "Three Broken Thumbs"

illustrations by Ashley Holt
story by Troy England Evitt

The great lord of 40's/ early 50's comics was Morty Goldburg, who, along with his accountant and favorite illustrator, Bernie Meyerfarb, wrote Scarbone and Teabiscuit from issue #1 - #42 at Hamless Lunch Comics.

Scarbone and Teabiscuit raised not a few eyebrows with scenes of Scarbone getting snapped with a towel in a Greek bathhouse and Teabiscuit's infamous 3-martini breakfasts. But, at the end of each issue, the bad guy was either in jail or really a robot and the kiddies lapped it up like highchair pabulum.

When Hamless Lunch was bought out by mob boss, Joey "the Chin" Pamperdampoli, Goldburg and Meyerfarb were forced to write boxing comics like "Glove-Fisted Tales" and "A Round for the House", which featured, badly, a boxing match between Scarbone and Teabiscuit on a parallel Earth ruled by giant bugs.

After three broken thumbs and a barrel-roll from a moving car, Meyerfarb accepted $21,000 and a bus ticket to LA, where he resurfaced as a hack illustrator for ZAPTHUDPOW Comics, working on such epics as "Nuclear Skidoo and Megaboy" and "The Adventures of Captian Gorilla".

Goldburg ended up writing pulp sci-fi novels like "Green Men from Mars" and the "Robot Dragon" series.

Meyerfarb would live to be 89 and died in his sleep.

Goldburg left a fortune as well, but went insane. When Meyerfarb last visited him, he reported that Goldburg had been lobotomized and knew only that he liked pie very much.

A copy of Scarbone and Teabiscuit #11, with the elusive blue staples, sold for $2,441 at Comtrek '02 and was later bartered for a Polaroid of Will Shatner with his dogs.

1984 - The Opera

Lorin Maazel to premiere Orwell's 1984 at London's Royal Opera on Tuesday, May 3rd.

In particular, there are three choruses - including a "hate chorus" reflecting the "hate rallies" of the book.

"They are shown at these rallies a picture of the enemy - whoever the enemy happens to be that week - and they scream 'death to the enemy, kill, kill, hate, hate, blood, blood' - that sort of thing."

The other two choruses are a religious chant, reflecting the "cult of Big Brother," and a patriotic chorus, reflecting "our need to believe in our country, so that our eyes fill with tears when we hear the national anthem... unbridled, unquestioning patriotism, in the name of which people are exploited".

Maazel said that he felt that 1984 had a great contemporary resonance with governments around the world.

"That is the theme of today - a creeping 1984-ism, the invasion of one's private life," he added.

Photos

from the Rat City Rollergirls April 30th bout.

Photos by Henry Hurley

Photos by David Schneider

Photos by Artana

The University of Washington-Seattle Daily has a story on student Valerie Morris AKA VALTRON 3000.

tags: rollergirls, Rat City Rollergirls

Winning Hearts and Minds

Bob Herbert: From 'Gook' to 'Raghead'

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

and

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.

and

Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.

Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "

Smithsonian Institution please take note

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - Three years after staging the largest debt default in modern history, Argentina Thursday opened what may be the first Museum of Foreign Debt to teach people the perils of borrowing abroad.

The subject is heavy, but the museum's creators have tried to make the mood light and the displays accessible to everyone, especially schoolchildren.

In one corner, a pink, doll-size play kitchen represents the recipes of the International Monetary Fund, which Argentines blame for encouraging the heavy borrowing in the 1990s that led to the catastrophic economic collapse in late 2001.

"We chose a play kitchen because we are always so innocent and believe in magic recipes from abroad," said museum designer Eduardo Lopez. "Look, we open the freezer and the oven and there is no food."

But the museum in the University of Buenos Aires economics department doesn't dwell only on this latest debt crisis: It goes back to Argentina's first default in the early 1800s and gives a detailed account of the last 30 years when the country's foreign debt woes snowballed.

Visitors can delve into a spongy "black hole" -- the place where all that borrowed money ended up.

"I liked best the black hole with everything the debt swallowed -- education, families, jobs," said Fabian Jader, 34, an opening night visitor. "I feel anger and pity for the people, but above all helplessness.

A Tribute to the Rat City Rollergirls:

The Rat City Rollergirls is Seattle's first and only all female roller derby league. And, given their DIY, tough as nails, Rock n’ Roll attitude, it’s only appropriate that a compilation of rock and punk from their favorite bands be released in their name. The Down & Derby Vol. I compilation explodes in the same way the Rat City Rollergirls have exploded on the Seattle scene.

The compilation also features live interviews with the Rollergirls from the rink, never before released tracks from all of the bands, and exclusive artwork and photos of the Rollergirls.

Song List

1. Rat City
The Black Nasty (featuring members of The Accused and Beat Senseless)
2. Leave Early
Ball with Tail
3. Girls Can't Rock
Cookie
4. Ready to Wait
American School of Warsaw
5. Dangerous
Chronic Disorder
6. Madeline L'Engle
Bloodhag
7. Morse Code Love Song
Batum Schrag
8. Teen Dream
Betty X
9. Dickau
moc moc
10. Super Demolition Derby
Chuck Yeager
11. Black and Blue
The Hot Rollers
12. I Saw Something
Audio Infidels
13. Shitty Band
TWINK the Wonderkid
14. Derby Queen
Rot13

Down & Derby Vol. I: A tribute to the Rat City Rollergirls
tags: rollergirls, Rat City Roller Girls, Seattle

It was a gangland-style hit straight out of "Goodfellas."

By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 1, 2005; Page A01

A man in a BMW was driving down a quiet side street after an evening meeting at his Fort Lauderdale office when a car slowed to a stop in front of him. A second car boxed the BMW in from behind, then a dark Mustang appeared from the opposite direction. The Mustang's driver pulled alongside and pumped three hollow-point bullets into the BMW driver's chest.

The dead man was Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, a volatile 51-year-old self-made millionaire, a Greek immigrant who had started as a dishwasher in Canada and ended up in Florida, where he built an empire of restaurants, hotels and cruise ships used for offshore casino gambling. Boulis's slaying, still unsolved four years later, reverberated all the way to Washington. Months earlier he had sold his fleet of casino ships to a partnership that included Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff is best known as a target of a federal investigation in Washington into the tens of millions in fees he and a partner collected from casino-owning Indian tribes. But the wreckage from his brief and tumultuous time as owner of the gambling fleet threatens to overtake his Washington legal troubles.

Not long after Abramoff and his partners bought SunCruz Casinos in September 2000, the venture ran aground after a fistfight between two of the owners, allegations of mob influence, dueling lawsuits and, finally, Boulis's death on Feb. 6, 2001. Now, Abramoff is the target of a federal investigation into whether the casino ship deal involved bank fraud. According to court records, the SunCruz purchase hinged on a fake wire transfer for $23 million intended to persuade lenders to provide financing to Abramoff's group.

Although the outlines of the tale have become part of South Florida lore, what has not been disclosed are the full details of the alleged fraud at the heart of the transaction and the extent of Abramoff's role -- including his use of contacts with Republican Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and members of their staffs as he worked to land the deal.
***************
Abramoff provided Foothill Capital a financial statement stating his net worth as $13 million. He valued his lobbying practice at $7.5 million and family business interests at nearly $3 million, including a $1.4 million investment with his father in a company that owns parking lots in Atlantic City. The lobbyist also sent Foothill Capital a list of loan references that included Rudy and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).

"I don't remember it, but I would certainly have been happy to give him a good recommendation," Rohrabacher said. "He's a very honest man."
***************
On Jan. 19, 2001, Boulis went to court, seeking an injunction to prevent Kidan from operating the boats and to force him to make his payments to Boulis.

The next day, Kidan and Scanlon were guests at a reception in DeLay's Capitol Hill office celebrating the inauguration of George W. Bush, according to two people who were at the reception.

A week later, Abramoff and his partners leased a corporate jet to ferry congressional staffers down to Tampa for the Super Bowl game and a night of gambling aboard a SunCruz ship. Among those aboard were DeLay aide Tim Berry, who is now DeLay's chief of staff, and two staffers to Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, by then a newly minted lobbyist working for Abramoff, was there, too.

Berry failed to report the trip on his disclosure forms. A DeLay spokesman said Berry had no idea SunCruz paid for the trip. He thought it was a Republican fundraising trip allowable under House rules.

On Jan. 31, the Kidan-Boulis brawl hit the front page of the Sun-Sentinel. Kidan told the newspaper that Boulis said: "I'm not going to sue you, I'm going to kill you. . . . This guy is violent -- he's sleazy."

Back in Washington, Abramoff was moving his lobby business and many of his clients, including his tribal accounts, from Preston Gates to Greenberg Traurig LLP. He also took at least 10 employees with him from Preston Gates. At Greenberg, Abramoff made Tony Rudy his first hire from Capitol Hill.

Abramoff's departure had been coming for months. His style had clashed with others at Preston Gates, who believed he was moving too fast and being careless. Earlier in the year, Manuel Rouvelas, the firm's founding partner in Washington, had warned Abramoff, according to people familiar with the exchange.

"If you're not careful," Rouvelas told Abramoff, "you will end up dead, disgraced or in jail."

In February 2001, less than two months after Abramoff had settled in at Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff and Kidan were abroad prospecting for new business. They were in England preparing to fly to Hong Kong, when Kidan's bodyguard got a call. Boulis was dead.

Kidan rushed home. He told police he knew nothing about the slaying.

Fort Lauderdale police detectives say they know who committed the crime. All they need, they say, is one cooperating witness.

After Boulis's slaying, Kidan and Abramoff conducted business as usual at SunCruz....

via Richard Cranium at All Spin Zone