THE CORNER OF DEATH
Right before I left New York, I noticed that the annual “street fair of death” had come to my neighborhood again, with it its questionable, rickety rides designed to thin out the population, one carnival ticket at a time.
Oh, they don’t CALL it the “street fair of death,” because they don’t care about the truth. They call it a fun fair. That’s exactly what they called that festival of bad ideas I went to in the Midwest, where the biggest attraction was a crane manned by two fourteen year old guys—the one that had a cardboard sign that said, “crane rides $5” and when you gave them the $5 they would hoist you up and swing you.
And people thought I was crazy for refusing to do it.
But any of you who have read this blog for longer than a minute know that I have a healthy appreciation of fear. I am good with fear, in the same way that some people are good with wine.
But all of that is hastily put aside for Roller Derby.
I was first introduced to the glories of the Roller Derby by my friend Winchester Grey, who runs the internet.* Winchester said he felt strongly that I would enjoy the derby. And he was right. Then we started bringing Scott and Justine, and they loved it. And recently, we started bringing Robin Wasserman, who also seemed to like it, but with the healthy Harvard skepticism for which she is justifiably famous.
Here’s how Roller Derby basically works . . .
There are all these SUPER COOL GIRLS (in this case, of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby, which is the New York league) with excellent names like Suzy Hotrod and Besonslay and Stevie Kicks and Surly Temple. Each team has one person going around the track called a Jammer. Her job is to whip around the track, scoring points. Meanwhile, basically EVERYONE ELSE ON THE OTHER TEAM is trying to STOP HER by BLOCKING HER through AWESOME FULL-BODY CONTACT. And, of course, they are doing this all on roller skates while going super-fast and wearing excellent outfits, and everyone in the stands is SCREAMING for MORE BLOOD.
Can you find one thing in that not to like? Even one?
So, Scott also blogged about how completely excellent Roller Derby is, and a Roller Derby princess named Em-Dash (she is also an editor—HOW EXCELLENT IS THAT?) wrote and said, “Would you like to come as our guest? And sit in VIP seats?”
To which we said, YES, PLEASE.
So we got to the Roller Derby and were pointed toward where we would be sitting, which was quite near the Bad Girl seats. (When they players are bad, they sit in these. They usually SKID up to the them on their KNEES and crash into the chairs for fun.)
We were just getting ourselves situated, Justine, Scott, Robin, and I, when someone came over to us and said, “Do you know what they call this section you are in? The CORNER OF DEATH. This is where a lot of the players lose control coming around the bend and CRASH INTO THE STANDS at about a hundred miles an hour.”
Robin and Justine looked a little wide-eyed at this, and Scott and I smiled and said, “Coooooooooool.”
For a while, Justine and Robin wanted to convince us that death by flying roller derby girl would be bad, but Scott and I just didn’t get it. I have always assumed that I will die in some absurd way, anyway, like that playwright who bought it when a low-flying eagle dropped a tortoise on his head.** Death by roller derby girl is several steps up from what I have been imagining for myself, so I am okay with it.
To give you some sense of how completely wonderful it was, here are some pictures Scott took:
I see from the website that there are tryouts in December. Which brings me back to the point that I want to be a Gotham Girl very, very badly. However, when I said that thing about how I would not be afraid of being in the roller derby? I meant the other thing, the thing in which I am ACUTELY TERRIFIED of being in the roller derby. I hate injury and death, I really do. I would be very good with the making up of the name-wearing the uniform-skating in circles around the track thing . . . but the part where you get chased and slammed into walls and body-checked . . . that is where I might fail. The only thing I can think of that might work in my favor is that I have a POWERFUL WILL TO LIVE and I might be good at running (or skating) away from people who want to kill me.
I mean, this is what the crowd looks like. They make it clear what they want.
Maybe I should keep with the writing instead. I have enough of it to do.
But! I promised today that I would be announcing the winners of the SUITE SCARLETT SWEEPSTAKES! I love the truth, so I will fulfill this promise.
Back at the start of the summer, I told you about a sweepstakes Scholastic was having for Suite Scarlett, in which the grand prize winner got a trip for two to New York City, a stay in a fancy hotel, and the somewhat dubious award of having BRUNCH WITH ME!
THE WINNERS!
The winner is . . .
Genevieve Huard of Washington! Congrautlations, Genevieve! I will see you soon!
The five first prize-winners are: Amber Gibson, Caroline Sydney, Sarah Silberman, Amanda Braun, and Kayla Layman. They will all receive signed copies of Suite Scarlett.
NEXT TIME . . . SEKRITS ABOUT ENGLAND REVEALED!
*Okay. Winchester works for Google, but this is kind of the same thing. He took me on a tour of Google one day and let me ride one of the Google scooters down the hall, which I liked a lot. Then we went down this really serious-looking hall with the fattest cables I have ever seen running all along the ceiling for miles and miles, and I said, “What is that?” And he said, “The Internet.” And I said, “oooOOOOooOOoooooOoooh.” Also, it was Winchester who faked me out on my birthday by telling me that I was going to a special “Google party” and instead took me to dinner with Scott and Justine. He, also, does not care about the truth.
** I think this was Aeschylus, but it might have been that guy who wrote Cats.***
*** Oh wait. He’s still alive.****
**** Anyway, my major point in even mentioning this is that there are always new things we can be worrying about, like birds with an artistic agenda. Also, this seems to speak to my theory that everyone should wear a helmet at all times.*****
***** Which they do in Roller Derby.
Posted: Thursday, September 25th, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
Categories: Suite Scarlett, fear, roller derby.
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