Sarah "toofless" Jean

Help a Rollergirl Out

From Elise:

Our good pal and Varla model Sarah Jean (aka Mad Maxine) lost her two front teeth while skating her little heart out for the Bay Area Derby Girls earlier this week. The dentist is holding her new teeth hostage, and we're assisting her in collecting ransom money so that she can regain her beautiful smile. Any donation you can make would be highly regarded, and will earn you an extra star in that cloudy place. To see the actual damage, go to www.bayareaderbygirls.com, or check out Varla.com to see the "before" images. Donations will be accepted in increments of $5.00 (just multiply by the quantity) and you will NOT be charged any taxes or shipping fees, NO MATTER WHAT THE SHOPPING CART SAYS!

****BUT****- in order to get to the payment page, you have to CHECK the "ship to billing address" box. Sorry, it's part of the script! Again, nothing's being shipped, and you're not being charged for shipping..... :-)

To make a donation by credit card or via PayPal, please use this URL:

donate here

friday elfgirl blogging

rosie cheeks 

It's All Newsweek's Fault!

Cartoon by Mark Fiore

friday random ten

Lauren has the instructions.

Cash America - The Motards
Doudou - Josephine Baker
Listen - The Big Boys
That's When I Reach for My Revolver - Mission of Burma
Drive - Sincola
Swallow My Pride - Ramones
Slip Inside This House - 13th Floor Elevators
Don't Push Your Foot On the Heartbrake - Kate Bush
Sugarcube - Yo La Tengo
Mi Son - Rick Trevino

say hello to

Ohio Roller Girls  

elfgirl in new york
kadie traipsing overseas
sharp objects hidden

One small slice of media pie

An Open Letter to Journalism School Grads by Greg Lindsay

You thought you were buying a set of skills, credentials, and quality time with the placement office. And you did. But your professors also sold you a mindset, a worldview, an ideology--one in which newspapers are God's work, bloggers are pagans, and your career trajectory is a long, steep, but ultimately meritocratic climb to a heavenly desk at The New York Times or 60 Minutes. Accepting any of this as gospel truth will almost certainly cause permanent damage to your budding careers.

To have made it this far, you've had to inhale the usual bromides like "the reporter's job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"--a noble sentiment that overlooks the fact that anyone who can spend $30,000 on j-school should be considered "comfortable." You've been trained to be skeptical of every truth and every detail ("If your mother says she loves you, check it out") but you've been steered away from skepticism about j-school itself. So think of the following as a quick adult education course.

via Bookslut

Reservoir Dolls

Congratulations to the Reservoir Dolls - First Season Champions

Mott Haven Meatheads Butcher Long Island Lunch Ladies

The flat track Gotham Girls Roller Derby skated a charity bout for Meals on Wheels this past Friday, May 20th.

The Meatheads defeated the Lunch Ladies 56-47 in a bout that came down to the last jam.

"Food Fight" recap here, photos here.

tags: roller derby, rollergirls, Gotham Girls Roller Derby

"The mines on the road go boom, boom, boom...."

The newest issue of Rolling Stone profiles Peter Bouckaert, senior emergency researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The Atrocity Hunter.

For Bouckaert, the mass graves in Iraq, like the disappearances in Nepal, sum up how the world still seems unable to confront the crimes of tyrants. Killings go unchecked for years -- and then, when the evidence is finally unearthed, it's squandered. "Time and again," Bouckaert says, "small human-rights problems grow into major conflicts, and no one even pays attention until a lot of people are getting killed. Look at Congo. Three million people have died, and who sat around the table negotiating Congo's future? The guys with blood on their hands. We live in a world where if you commit one murder, you end up in jail -- but if you commit 1,000 murders, you have a pretty good chance of getting away with it."

Wrestling with demons

Dr. Dobson vs. Sen. Lott. As only the General can envision the action.

...I can almost see it now. Dr. Dobson, "Jesus' Jackhammer," dressed in a tight, white leotard, a big golden cross engulfed in flames blazing across his chest, and a tiny fig leaf outlining his bulge of righteous manhood, facing Sen. Lott, "Dr. Death-Hair," in the red long-johns of his people trimmed with the braided haircuttings of his 14th Amendment citizen servants.

Will the senator submit to Dr. Dobson's Rod of Loving Correction or will Senator Lott beat Jesus' Jackhammer like a runaway servant? We'll never know unless you make it happen.

Holy Rollers vs. Cherry Bombs

The banked track Lonestar Rollergirls will bout this Sunday, May 29th.

Miss Conduct and the Holy Rollers take on the Cherry Bombs.

Sunday, May 29.

Bout at the new Thunderdome.

Doors open at 6 pm, bout at 7 pm.

Tickets are $10.

Music by Gorch Fock and The Vain.

Check out the Lonestar Rollergirls website for more info.

tags: roller derby, rollergirls, Holy Rollers, Cherry Bombs

Hi. I'm Mackenzie Dillingham.

What is your Yuppie Name?

Citizen Filibuster - Austin

Join MoveOn members across the country in round-the-clock, 24-hour Citizen Filibusters to send a message that senators should do the right thing.

Citizen Filibuster

12:00 PM. Tuesday, May 24th.

New City Hall
301 W. 2nd Street
Austin, TX 78701

Rollergirls and the culture wars

The Guardian on the greatest sport ever invented:

And when it comes to the culture wars, the new Roller Derby is totally on the side of the good guys. While conservative bigots in America are frantically trying to get women off the soccer pitch and back into the cheerleading closet, the likes of Anne Phetamean, Donna Matrix and Helen Damnation are telling the bible bashers where to stuff their Victorian notions of femininity. Most of these women are involved in the punk scene, many are politically active, and some are academics and professionals. None are the simpering female eunuchs beloved of conservative ideology.

Roller Derby is part Madonna video, part punk-rock mosh-pit, part soft-core panto and entirely culturally transgressive. Joey Ramone would have loved it. Jerry Falwell would loathe it. George W Bush wouldn't understand it. If feminist punk icons Bikini Kill were a sport - they'd be the new, re-invented, all-girl Roller Derby. And Coldplay would be golf.

In short, the new Roller Derby is a cultural conservative's nightmare (and quite possibly his wet dream too, but let's not go there). So it is perhaps rather surprising that Roller Derby has flourished in America's God-fearing, dinosaur-disbelieving, feminist-hating, conservative heartland.

This has led to some fascinating cultural exchanges. In Texas, for instance, the rollergrrls have got right up the pert nostrils of the local sheetsniffing godbotherers.

"Why do you have to wear such sexy outfits?" whined one tissue-tearing mumbojumbilist. "Why can't you be a little bit more subtle? Why do you have to be sacrilegious? Don't you think you could increase the size of your audience if you weren't so controversial and so trashy?'"

Yeah, right - like anybody ever built a bigger audience in America by being less trashy.