Eastbourne Extreme

Today was an early start as the Wenches were off to Eastbourne to represent themselves, as part of Eastbourne Extreme were we were to help further interest in Roller Derby by taking part in a exhibition bout along with other teams from the area including “Brighton Rockers” and “Bristol Harbour Harlots”, aswell as skaters from "Eastbourne Roller Dolls" and while the original intention might have been to compete against each other for bragging rights, but thanks to a variety of circumstances in the lead up, the day ended up being quickly adapted with the skaters representing the various teams forming two mixed teams. Meanwhile I was taking up NSO duties as bout timer, which would not only place me in prime position for observing ref’s in play, but also allowing me to take full opportunity to pick up any advice that I could from the more experienced ref’s which today included “Reckless Rowley” who might be a familiar face to anyone who has seen the Helsinki ref’s guide to hand signals and again he proved highly knowledgeable on all things Derby, while also providing a great demonstration in pack refing.

Although I’d never NSO’d before I was keen to try and as bout timer, I was responsible for timing both the bout, which for this bout was to be split into two 15 minute periods, in a slight change to the usual 30 minute periods, seeing how the main focus of today had been switched from competion to promotion for the sport, which despite my own belief that the popularity of the sport is on the rise, there are still a lot of people who have never heard of the sport and Eastbourne Extreme in many ways provided the perfect platform to not only promote the sport of “Roller Derby”, which is something that was certainly achieved, despite my initial concerns that being at the far end of the festival, would have reduced our audience potential, but come bout time we soon found that we had attracted a decent sized crowd, while by time we had run through the first period plans were already being made with the Event staff to build on what we had established today.

The first of the two bouts today, was held inside at a local sports centre with only the minimum of spectators seeing how it was more for warm up purposes, than anything else but when there is a chance to get an extra bout into the day I was hardly going to complain, while also giving me chance to get the majority of my mistakes out of the way, to help further my own personal illusion of professionalism by the afternoon bout. Still I have always maintained that the best way of learning is via trying and making mistakes; as by making these mistakes it helps highlight the areas which you need to work on to stop you making the same mistakes again. Still it was during this first bout that R.I.P McMurphy added to her reputation by taking out one of the Harbour Harlots’s skaters, which certainly got her marked for the remainder of the day, with members of the opposite team frequently advising their skaters to watch out for her and despite her attempts to downplay it, I know that she got a decent kick out of having what was no doubt one of the hits of the day.

The second bout of the day was to take place outside due to the festival location which would be a departure from the more traditional floors of sports halls being replaced with the less forgiving concrete, which having spent the early part of my Derby career training on concrete I know all to well how little fun it is to slam on it. Still the change in normal skating conditions didn’t stop the skaters from putting on a great exhibition bout, with the weather brightening up enough to dry out the track, after initial concerns of the second bout being called off especially with the weather frequently threatening rain throughout the day, which thankfully stayed off long enough to hold the bout before it poured down.

In all it was defiantly a great day of Derby action and it even without anyone watching I doubt that it would have made it any less fun, while credit is definitely due to “Cherry Pileup” for putting together such a great day, despite the numerous factors which threatened to throw the day off, yet she didn’t allow it to faze her while maximising the use of the ref’s, NSO’s and Skaters she had. I also have to give credit to the Wenches for once again representing themselves as a team to watch, even if we also might have lost a few wenches in the lead up due to Injuries and other random circumstances, but once again they did us all proud.

Thanks to Portsmouth Roller Wenchographer Samantha for the photos

The Wench Awards 2011

Recently the Roller Wenches celebrated their first anniversary, which also came as a time for reflection as well as celebration, for it's only on this first birthday that we as a team realized just how far they had come, from a team which started with a handful of skaters with dreams of making their mark in the Derby community, to now being a bout ready league complete with a dedicated Zebra Squad, which I'm proud to call myself a member of as well as running fresh meat sessions to find more like minded ladies to join the Wenchy revolution and which has already started producing skaters more than capable of skating with the more established wenches. To further mark the occasion I was given the honor of hosting and tallying votes for the first ever "Wench Awards"!

After much voting amongst the wenches on the awards to be featured, which in turn created some controversy amongst some of the wenches, especially when it came to categories such as "The WILF Award" aka: Wench I'd Like to F**K. Still despite this I stood by my choice to go with the categories which got the most votes, with so many ideas for awards, had I not narrowed it down, it would have ended up with "The Wench Awards" having more darn categories than the Grammies.

So allow me to now proudly present the nominees and winners of the first ever Wench Awards

Best Afterparty Performance

• Crash Bang Trollop
• Mary Slagalene
• Brookslide
• wench's do "lies" by fleetwood mac

Walking Wounded (Best Injury)

• Brookslide
• Cherry Massacre
• Hanoffee Pie
• Little Lethal
• Crash Bang Trollop

Best Wench Couple

• Harold Bashup & Crash Bang Trollop
• Leah & The Dutchess of Crutches
• Little Lethal and Mary Slagalene

WILF Award

• Crash Bang Trollop
• Brookslide
• R.I.P McMurphy
• Moscow Cruel

Best Boutfits

• Halcyon Daze
• The Dutchess of Crutches
• Harold Bashup
• R.I.P McMurphy
• Smack Torque
• Mary Slagalene

Best Pants

• The Dutchess of Crutches
• Smack Tourque

Biggest Contributer Off Track

• Steve Dirty Pantz
• Harold Bashup
• Crash Bang Trollop
• Moscow Cruel

Best Ref

• Rudyard Crippling
• Chris
• Jostling Joyce

Best Coach

• Crash Bang Trollop
• Harold Bashup
• The Dutchess of Crutches
• Lunatic Lolly

Most Committed Wench

• Halcyon Daze
• Harold Bashup
• R.I.P McMurphy
• The Dutchess of Crutches
• Moscow Cruel
• Tily

Best Improved

• Hel On
• Smack Tourque
• Suzie
• Brookslide
• Harold Bashup

Best Jammer

• Brookslide
• Halcyon Daze
• The Dutchess of Crutches
• Helen

Best Blocker

• Moscow Cruel
• Smack Tourque
• R.I.P McMurphy
• Brookslide

One To Watch / Rookie of The Year

• Julie
• Tily
• Charley Ray
• Halcyon Daze
• Lou'd Behavior

MVP

• Slam Boleyn
• The Dutchess of Crutches
• R.I.P McMurphy
• Halcyon Daze

The added bonus for the winner of "MVP" is that the winner also becomes the face of our first bout poster, an although all of the nominees would be worthy of winning this award it was an honor this year bestowed on our head coach "The Dutchess of Crutches", who over the course of the year has carved out a fearsome rep not only with the wenches for her coaching and on track skills, but also in the appearances she has made at mixed bouts since passing her skills test and it's a well deserved win for the Dutchess.

Once again I offer my congratulations to all the winners and everyone who was nominated.

Albums To Train With

One of the toughest things I've found since I started training, is motivating myself to do extra training outside of the scheduled training sessions. Currently I go to training on sundays and if my work schedule is particularly good, I try to make our tuesday "Fresh Meat" sessions, which I enjoy as it tends to focus on the basics of skating rather than the contact side, which is an area I certainly need to improve, if I'm ever going to get through the Ref Level 2 skating exam. The other training session we hold each week is our main wenches practice on friday, which like sundays tends to be more focused for myself and the other members of the "Zebra Squad" on creating our own drills and combining them in anyway we can with whatever main drills are being run.

Still when your skating solo it can be particularly hard to get into the right mindset and it's a problem, that has come up frequently in conversations I've had over the last couple of weeks with many of the fresh meat, with many struggling to get into the right mindset for training, often allowing themselves to get psyched out by the more established skaters, while the other main problem being that it's just hard to get out there and run drills by yourself, which as anyone who has been in this sport awhile will tell you is certainly key to getting better. Now I'm not going to bullshit you and claim that I'm any diffrent in fact I frequently find myself, fighting the urge to see how many episodes of "CSI: NY" I can get through rather than push myself to strap on my skates and get some darn training done, knowing full well that I'll feel all the better for it. My main technique for motivating myself is largely down to having certain albums on standby, which help get me more into a training mind frame. So for anyone struggling for some training music here are some of my current top picks for training.

Album: Spend The Night
Artist: The Donna
Key Track: Who Invited You
Why?: Sure thier bass player Maya Ford is amazingly hot, but there is more to this pick than that, seeing how it is also one of my favourite albums, with the songs on this album having an element of fun, rather than trying to make any kind of statement like so many bands feel the need to do these days. Still for one reason or another "The Donnas" have never really broke the UK, despite remaining steadily popular stateside, which is something I've never been able to explain as they have so many fun and upbeat tunes, but then this country for some reason still considers junkie wasters like Pete Doherty as being who we should be listening to. Still never being one to just listen to just whatever NME or Q magazine tell me I should be, I’ve remained a big fan of this band and got my first introduction to them through this album and was instantly hooked, from the opening rifts.

Album: Sounds of Science
Artist: Beastie Boys
Key Track: Sure Shot
Why?: The Beastie Boys were one of the first bands I got into and this album providing a great overview of their career, taking in not only the hits, but an assortment of b-sides and rarities, showcasing their range of styles from old school hip hop (Shake Your Rump) to rock instrumentals (Gratitude) and even the occasional dip into punk rock (Egg Raid on Mojo). I tend to pick and mix from the two cd’s worth of material on offer here, but something to suit most skating moods, even if several of their earlier tracks such as “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” and “Fight For Your Right To Party” have been noticeable omitted from the collection.

Album: Start Something
Artist: Lost Prophets
Key Track: Make A Move
Why?: I’m not a huge fan of this band, but this is still a pretty solid album with all the tracks mixed from one to the other, which makes them sound a bit weird when you try to separate the tracks for playlists, but when played together sound great with the band still managing to create enough of difference between tracks to help them stand on their own, including the “Incubus” inspired “I Don’t Know”.

Album: Body Count
Artist: Body Count
Key Track: Body Count’s In The House
Why?: Another album to help you get your Derby head on and one that I like to dig out when I’m on my way to training, just because it helps me get pretty amped up for a hard training session or generally keeping unruly wenches in line. Originally titled “Cop Killer”, this album along with the release of N.W.A’s “ Straight Outta of Compton”, helped Ice-T and Co. upset countless parents when they were first released, even though they seem pretty timid in comparison to most modern Rap albums, despite still containing enough F’ing and blinding to still shock the more innocent of listeners, aswell as some great riffs even if the subject matter can get overly samey at times, but even Ice-T openly admitted that the album was more about raw anger with the band also paving the way for the likes of “Rage Against the Machine” and “Limp Bizkit”.

Album: Smash
Artist: The Offspring
Key Track: Come Out and Play
Why?: Once upon a time “The Offspring” were a pretty decent pop punk group, frequently being compared to “Green Day”, who like this band would also sell out for the big bucks of a mainstream label, with their much being more progressively mainstream with each release. Arguably their best album, though I’ve always been hard pressed to choose between this album and it’s follow up “Ixnay on the Hombre”. Still while I might have resisted the urge to list a bunch of Punk rock albums on this entry, while also wanting to avoid the cliché opinion that Punk is pretty much the backbone of this sport and that everything must in someway be related to that particular genre which, might have been true in the beginning but the sport like the image has certainly moved on since those early days.
“Smash” is a great mixture of fast paced tracks and more down tempo stuff, while also containing several personal anthems for myself like “Bad Habit” and “Genocide”, which pretty much part of the late 90’s soundtrack for myself, with this bad certainly playing a big part in the evolution of my musical tastes at the point of my life and it’s this album which not only helps bring back that rebellious spirit, but also help remind of what this band once were.

So theres five of my top picks, but what does everyone else train to?

What's In A Name?

One of the early defining moments of your Derby Career has to be that joyous moment when you see for the first time, your chosen Derby alter ego on the official name list (as you can see from the crappy photoshop image above), which recently I had the pleasure of happening to me, as “Rudyard Crippling” is now officially registered and all my own to merchandise the hell out of, should I feel the urge to. Still it’s good to know that it’s all official and that I won’t have the ever present risk that my chosen Derby name snatched away from me by some equally witty person, who happened to submit their name registration before me.

Derby names are within the community one of the most important parts of the sport, outside of general skating ability and toughness, for these names form the basis of the characters we choose to play and it’s these characters which add to the colour and general fun of the sport, while helping us to escape yet further still from the hum drum of our work day week, which if your working week is anything like my own, will generally consist of listening to people complain about minor issues while generally trying to get through the working day as quickly as possible. Unsurprisingly the idea of getting to escape this necessary daily grind and play around as your warped alter ego, who when it comes to my own Derby ego is still a work in progress, but at least with my name being made official it at least means that I can now start to build a character, rather than create one and have to start completely from scratch when the name gets rejected.

Meanwhile with the team edging only closer to fielding our first official team and my confidence as a ref growing, I decided this week to update my Facebook profile to reflect my Derby alter ego, especially with so much of my Derby communications happening on there, not only with my own team but also with other teams and refs as well.

The original plan had been to have “Rudyard Crippling” in quotation marks between my first and last name, but alas for all the money which Facebook makes on a daily basis, it can’t for some reason handle this request. What is more frustrating about this situation is that some of the wenches have been able to get their name set out like this, which according to “Smack Torque” is down to harassing the admins, who are nigh impossible to contact, though honestly I would have thought that it would be easier to have the site accept quotation marks, than having to justify my reasons to the admins, for what is essentially a straightforward and simple request, still despite the fact the site makes millions of dollars a day and has had it's film legacy secured by the uber amazing David Fincher, I must continue to battle out my name rights with them.

So for now I'm not going to grumble but instead work on merchandising myself like a Mutha Trucker!

A Quick Update

Team Photo taken for Portsmouth News 15.01.11

So since the last post on here was almost two months ago I thought it was way due an update on here, even more so when the team continues to go from strength to strength, to the point were we have been forced to setup a waiting list for potential new skaters, with the interest in the team only growing since the team got featured in two local papers, with “R.I.P McMurphy” even becoming our first featured cover girl (or should be Cover wench?) for "The Daily Echo". Needless to say it was an interesting conversation trying to explain what derby was to my Grandparents, much less my Granny Mac referring to me by my derby name, after I sent them copies of the articles.

R.I.P McMurphy - The Southern Echo 15.01.11

Still while we might have a girls queuing up around the block to earn their place, sadly the same cannot be said for our hunt for Referee’s which so far has only attracted a couple of people, which in a way I can understand, especially as being a ref might not seem like the most exciting role to play seeing how you have the dusty tome, which is the rules of Roller Derby to memorise while the derby gals are having all that fun, skating hard and knocking lumps out of each other, but I’ve been honestly surprised by how much fun being a Ref is, especially seeing how fast paced this sport is, just calling penalties and looking out for misplays is strangely exhilarating and with stripes being so sliming what is there not to like about the role?

As part of my on going training regime for the role, I have frequently found myself sponging whatever tips and info I can off the ref’s from other more established teams, especially seeing how I’m the first ref this team had, so lacking in any form of senior ref to learn from, which only makes it all the more amusing when I have my fellow ref’s advising me to speak to the team’s Head ref, which via the process of elimination would mean that person is….err well me and seeing how talking to myself didn’t seem overly constructive, I have spent most of these last few months, no doubt bugging the hell out of any ref, willing to field my numerous questions. One person in particular I can credit as being a big help would be “Scoot’her” who is currently a ref with the “Brighton Rockers” and who was also nice to come and run a training session with the team, which was not only great in terms of giving us new drills to try, but also helped re-inspire my Derby Ref dream by helping me to refocus my efforts and to also show me a standard to aim for, which honestly really helps especially with not having a more senior ref in our league.

Outside of training it’s safe to say that my attempts to complete “The Roller Derby Challenge” failed miserably, thanks to various events which meant that I not only fell behind, but was left completely unmotivated in terms of running drills or anything else concerning the challenge, but I guess there will always be next year. Still in the meantime I’m still skating hard, even though I’m finding now that my gear is holding me back, in particular my skates, which are currently still the same Roller Derby M1 Vipers I started with, which I know a lot of skaters frown on and generally write off as being crap, but they have been good skates to learn with but now I generally find myself needing the next level of skate, so hence the reason I'm currently working stupid amounts of overtime in the forth circle of hell, better known as my day job (who contractally can't be named), trying to scrape the extra cash together to get myself a pair of Riedell’s, which would ideally be my next skates and which currently continue to elude me, thanks to bills mysteriously appearing as soon as I get close to the funds I need, so looks like I’m gonna be with my current skates for abit longer, unless some nice person at Riedell’s decides to send me a pair (hint hint).

Still with so many of the team getting close to passing minimum skills and hence allowing us to field our first team in the derby leagues, I’m only working harder to cram these rules and learn the various hand signals and whistles, so here’s hoping that it all eventually slots into place, otherwise I guess their might be more than a few confused folks, wondering what sort of confused version of the YMCA I appear to attempting on skates, which while no doubt amusing as hell, really isn’t constructive in terms of reffing.

The Roller Derby Workout Challange Begins

So the holiday season has been and gone and what would normally be a season spent in a food induced coma, while attempting to get the blood alcohol level up to the point were you sweat wine, was sadly not to be this year thanks to catching a darn cold, leaving me feeling half dead and totally drained most of the time, which honestly isn’t the most fun way to spend the holidays. Hopefully you guys had a better time of things than me while the Derby world continues to beckon as the Roller Wenches enter a new year, with the goal of getting basic skills passed, so that we can finally get out there and start making a name for this team and carving out our own derby legacy and it’s clear already that in the months since the team formed, who the core team members are and the ones who really want this, especially with several of the team including myself signing up for, what could be seen as the derby version of a post holiday detox, known simply as the “Roller Derby Workout Challenge”.

The challenge is essentially an intense (read insane) eight week program combining both exercise routines and meal plans, designed specifically for Roller Derby skaters, with the intention of taking your regular training routine to the next level. This is also the kind of program which really tests were your breaking point is and forces you to push on through and this is just the feeling I’ve got just from reading through the exercise and meal plans…it’s safe to say this is going to be a tough eight weeks.

Why am I subjecting myself to this? Well partly it was being spurned on by several of the wenches taking part, which knowing other people going through the same thing, tends to make these things easier as you can spurn each other on, to go the whole distance rather than just giving up around week two. The other main reason is just down to the desire to get better at my chosen sport; despite currently training as a ref at the moment, I still feel that same desire to push myself to get better and plus it’s a whole lot more fun than just joining a gym.

So over the coming weeks I will be posting how the challenge is going, if only as a further inspiration to keep going, especially when things get tougher, as we move into the later weeks of the challenge (joy), but then I guess this why it’s a challenge, rather than a giveaway.

As part of this challenge I will be also be required to complete Homework assignments, the first of which I have completed below.

1) What do you think will be the hardest nutrition guideline for you to follow?

No doubt reworking my meal plans, so that it’s more centred around certain foods rather than set meals.

2) We want you to think before you eat, do you think before you shop?? Name three derby owned businesses.

Blood and Thunder Magazine, Wicked Skatewear and Derby Vixen who is truly the queen of custom toe guards.....do any of those count??

3) What is one thing that you have in your fridge or pantry that you thought was healthy but may now be rethinking?

Noodles though honestly it’s probably for the best, seeing how my attempts to use them in stir-fry in the past, have usually ended badly, as a greasy cold mess…yummy.
Honestly though I not sure how the meal plans will play out, seeing how I currently have around £20 a week for food, so will do my best to stick to them or at least rework my existing meals to be more inline, with what I should be eating, so if any part of the challenge which I’m going to fail I think this will be the part I do. Still surely it’s better to make some kind of change to what your eating rather than no change?

4) Do you know your league history? Who founded your league and in what year?

The “Portsmouth Roller Wenches” were formed in June 2010, by Laura “Luna Lolly” Burrell (though don’t quote me on her being the founder). The team inspiring the short lived men’s team “The Scurvy Dogs” who also came together that same month, though despite the best intentions, fall apart in September due to lack of interest. I signed up with the Roller Wenches as their first ref (in training) around late October with Michelle AKA “IC Hell” also signing up for ref duties shortly afterwards. The team now roll onwards with their training with the intention of getting the team to bouting standard.

5) How did you come up with your derby name?

“Rudyard Crippling” was the result of much scrawling down a huge list of names and then being forced to eliminate 99% of them, due to someone else already having claimed them. It ended up being almost by accident that I stumbled across the name, having picked up a copy of “The Jungle Book” and suddenly realising that “Kippling”, sounded a lot like Crippling and hence the name was born.

6) Attach a photo to your note that conveys how you feel going into this challenge. It can be of you, or of an object, or something you find on the web.

When ever I think of this challange I keep thinking of Rocky style montages.......so on a similar tact here's "Montage" from "Team America World Police"

So that's the easy part done, now onto the not so easy part, which will not only be sticking to the exercise plan, but doing it every day which seeing how I'm having to give up caffinee as part of this challange, it's gonna be real intresting to see how this goes.

The Hunt For Stripes Begins

So Portsmouth is still in the grip of a blizzard, giving the more work shy yet another reason to skive off work and were my own work place is concerned only adding to my daily personal hell I call the working week, listening to moronic customers complaining about their TV not working, or the fact that they have no broadband, which in the grand scheme of things really isn’t overly that important. Still it's not that you could tell this from the stream of expletives that I usually find myself on the receiving end of on a daily basis, but then I’m sure you could take any group of people involved in this sport and they would be able to regale you with their own similar tales of their daily mundane work lives, but then this is what makes Derby such a great sport, for no matter how crappy a week you have had, you can pretty much guarantee that by the end of a good derby training session you will be feeling a whole lot better, but then again this is no doubt the reasons that so many players refer to it as being their “Therapy”.

The other downside to this sodding snow is how like the rain, it prevents any additional training being done, making the Sunday training sessions only all the more important especially when it’s still such a daunting list of basic skills that are still to be mastered, with this almost obsessional need to cram in further training, leading to me spending the morning running around the garden attacking the snow with my wife’s hairdryer while shouting “Die you bastard snow!”.

Sunday's training session marked the final training session of this years derby season, which was made a little more special than usual, with the local paper showing up to do another article on the team, which i'm sure once it gets published I will get transcribed onto here for anyone who is intrested, especially as I’m real curious to know what they think about not only the team, but the sport on a whole, for although it is steadily becoming more recognised as a sport, rather than it's misguided public idea, of it basically being an excuse for folks to strap on a pair of quads and beat the snot out of each other, an image which is changing along with public opinion, especially as derby continues to grow and evolve with each passing year, though I do wonder if the sport will ever become mainstream, especially when it was such mainstreaming which lead to the decline of the sport in the first place and it’s truly the punk DIY aspect of the sport, which continues to help the sport grow, rather than sponsorship deals and fake celebrity status’s overshadowing proceedings.

Meanwhile as I continue in my attempts to learn the rules, which is getting there slowly, while occasionally throwing out fun interesting facts, in particular this rule.

9.4.2 Referees must be uniformed in a manner that makes them easily identifiable as the officials for the bout, e.g. a black and white striped shirt.

So according to this rule, it means that the ref pack can wear pretty much what they want, as long as they are all wearing the same thing to indentify their position, despite this fact the majority of ref’s tend to favour the traditional zebra stripes, rather than something slightly more erm….shall we say exotic, which this ruling leaves pretty open to personal interpretation. These traditional stripes not only make it a lot easier to keep a uniformed pack, especially when importing ref’s from other teams to cover the bouts, which is certainly something that we may end up having to do, when the team does become bout ready. In the meantime before I get too far ahead of myself, I still have to pass not only minimum skills, but also a ref exam as well which is reallyall the more daunting, especially when I look at the sheer amount of revision I still have ahead of me, which is something I wasn’t expecting to become such an epic task, much like finding my own set of strips, for as tempting as the Ann Summers outfit that Michelle had recommended, I really didn’t think I could pull it off, which I sure was a cause of much mass relief for the wenches and anyone potentially considering attending any of our future bouts.

Still it would seem that finding a set of ref stripes here in the UK is far from the easiest thing, with the usual sources like “Amazon” and “Ebay”, all drawing a frustrating blank, so now it currently looks like I will be having to import my shirts, despite some unique ideas from “Zebra Huddle”, which again only highlights how DIY the derby community can be, with stories of finding discarded “Foot Locker” uniforms to one ref spray painting his own stripes, achieving an effect described a “Distressed”, though short of mugging “Foot Locker” employees I think that importing shirts will still be my best option, though seeing how the majority of stores will also do the back plate I can also see it saving on another big headache when it came to sorting that out, much like trying to find skates for my darn hobbit feet, but then no one said this was going to be easy.

Movie Review: Whip It

While the majority of this blog, will be devoted to my ongoing Roller Derby misadventures, I still want to take the occasional diversion into various offshoot, the first of which I present here, which has been largely carried across from the original review I did over on my cult cinema blog "From The Depths of DVD Hell", as I was happy with the opinion I had after my first viewing and have now added a few changes, with things I noticed after giving it a second viewing, especially after my original thoughts on the film were so enthusiastically opposed by certain members of the "Roller Wenches".

Title: Whip It

Director: Drew Barrymore

Released: 2009

Staring: Ellen Page, Marica Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Drew Barrymore, Juliette Lewis, Jimmy Fallon, Eve, Zoe Bell, Andrew Wilson, Alia Shawkat, Landon Pigg

Rating: 2 / 5

Plot: Regular beauty pageant contestant Bliss (Page) is tired of her small town Texas life, especially being continually forced to compete in pageants by her mother (Harden). After discovering roller derby, she suddenly finds a new lust for life, as she begins skating for local derby team “The Hurl Scouts” under her new identity Babe Ruthless.

Review: Ever since Ellen Page pulled the indie double whammy of “Hard Candy” (2005) and “Juno” (2007) she has been an actress whose films I tend to look forward to and this film was no different, especially seeing how it seemed from the trailer to combine the wit of Juno with the brutality and excitement of roller derby, which was also another big draw for this film, being a big fan of Roller Derby, despite the severe lack of derby teams that we have over here in the UK, especially when compared to the US..... but then who doesn’t like the idea of hot punk chicks on skates?!?

The other plus this film had going for it, definitely has to be the involvement of former derby skater Shauna Cross, who wrote the original novel based on her experiences on the derby circuit, while also adapting it into the screenplay here, bringing a certain level of authenticity to the script, which is appreciated especially seeing how sports movies are notoriously tricky creatures, with the main failings often coming from the inability to replicate the same feelings and emotions associated with the sport in focus, especially to those who are new to the sport in question.

Sadly despite these two pluses, this is a film which falls seriously flat, proving to be a crushing disappointment, which I found even more so being a derby fan, especially as I was especially looking forward to finally getting to a great derby movie which this film really isn’t.

The themes of rebelling against the norm and breaking out, are certainly an obvious choice for the directorial debut of the former wild child Barrymore, though without a director with a firm grip on her reigns, she is here free to be as kooky and oddball as she wants, ultimatly meaning (as much as this pains me) that she is responsible for providing one of the most irritating characters in the film “Smashley Simpson”, spending every moment she is on screen, mumbling unintelligible dialogue and overacting pretty much every scene she appears in, thankfully her appearances are kept to a minimum. Still other supporting members of the cast fair a lot better such as stunt woman turned actress Zoe Bell turning up as “Bloody Holly” and giving another great laid back performance, which while it’s true might not be much of a stretch from her acting debut in “Death Proof” (2007), it doesn’t at the same time leaving her standing out, much like the brief but fun cameo by Har Mar Superstar, who shows up as the coach of the “Fight Attendants”, which can also be said of Jimmy Fallon’s role as the loud mouth announcer Johnny “Hot Tub” Rocket”, providing his various random insights as part of his role of sole commentry of each match.

The most noteworthy performance here though is courtesy of Juliette Lewis as “Iron Maven” who takes a special dislike to Bliss, seeing her as a threat to her top spot status and Lewis clearly relishes taking on one of the few meaty roles on offer, as she manages to be both brutal on the track, as she is with her bitchy words of the track.

Sadly Ellen Page despite still giving a good performance and remaining an actress to watch, here comes across bored, as she almost shuffles through her lines despite the trailer coming across like Juno on wheels, “Whip it” is sadly a far cry from the witty observations of Diablo Cody’s Oscar winning script and in a way it appears that the script is perhaps trying too hard to corner the indie youth market, by giving us an alternative rom-com, which is an area that it especially fails hard in, with the love interest, Skinny indie kid in a band Oliver (Pigg) provides almost as many grating moments as Barrymore, as I found myself having to endure the supposedly hip dialogue between Bliss and Oliver, which comes off more stale than anything resembling memorable, with Pigg having all the appeal of a squashed frog and with almost zero chemistry between either Page or Pigg, meaning that your listening to Bliss pining after him, but from Page’s performance, you get more the feeling that she really doesn’t care, which could almost be summed up by the limp wristed slap to the face, she dishes out after discovering Oliver’s cheating ways, while at the same time working against the tough girl image she’s been developing since joining the Hurl Scouts, seeing her standing up to the same preppy girls who are seen tormenting her at the start of this film and by the time this limp wristed slap is dished out, it kind of left me thinking why bother? I mean I would have much preferred she punch him out, or at least give it some gusto, than such a weak excuse for a slap.

Soundtrack wise it is a pretty sad state of affairs with the majority of the soundtrack, made up of dreary sounding indie tunes, with the few standout tracks, all being well known tracks by established bands like Radiohead, MGMT and The Breeders and these soundtrack choices, kind of came of a surprise seeing how grounded in the roots of punk rock the derby scene is, I was expecting more of a punk soundtrack than laidback indie, which really doesn’t work and feels like another attempt to be hip, much like the frequent references to Austin resident Daniel Johnson which pop up in the film, rather than providing anything resembling a suitable soundtrack, making the experience feel largely like your watching the film with the radio on at the same time.

“Whip it” is a film which sorely disappointed me, especially having all the build up as being something fun and different, but sadly beneath all it’s wannabe indie cool and stick on tattoos, it is just a pretty simple by the numbers coming of age flick, with a slightly interesting angle, provided by being set in the world of Roller Derby, which is sadly under used with Barrymore more keen to focus on the world outside of the derby ring, than the battles fought on the track, but lacks the sharpness in it’s script to hold the attention, especially when such a large chunk is especially being dedicated to a relationship with a thoroughly unlikeable character, making in turn parts of this film hard to sit though and certainly had me wishing for the power to just cut these scenes completely. I guess in conclusion that the wait for the great derby movie continues, as this really isn’t it, despite what it might seem on the surface.

How To Seriously Screw Up A Superman Slide

As I sit here to scrawl down this latest entry, Portsmouth is currently covered in a very Christmassy looking blanket of snow, which is kind of a rarity around here, especially seeing how we are located next to the sea, which generally ensures that everything gets covered in a thick layer of salt, meaning as a result of this that most snow rarely settles let alone falls here, so it’s nice to actually have some proper snow weather for a change. The downside to this situation though is the chaos that even the slightest hint of snow causes, with everything generally grinding to a halt, while the majority of staff at my work, generally using it as an excuse not to show up, while some of the slightly more dramatic members of the local public are no doubt at this moment in time, rambling to themselves about how we have angered the snow gods and no doubt dancing naked, in an attempt to bring back the sun or perhaps that's just a Cornish thing.

Okay now I have finished scaring your fragile little minds, with those shudder inducing images of naked hippy folks dancing, I think it’s safe to say that To find yourself in some degree of pain, the day after a hard derby practice, is something I find to be usually pretty normal, especially for someone as non-athletic as myself, whose daily exercise routine mainly consists of the walk to work and occasional run when I’m trying to make the ferry before I sails off. So after the first training session with the wenches, I could safely say that I was feeling it, especially seeing how everything bar my left arm hurt, thanks a combination of stiff muscle and general bruising from the numerous slams I tend to rack up over the course of a typical session. Still trying to figure out which pain was being caused by what is usually more difficult, as I get to spend the following days hobbling around like an old timer, with the overall condition not overly helped by having a job which requires me to sit at a desk for 8 – 10 hours a day, only further adding to the pains with the general daily joint pains. Still their training though intense was still a blast to do, while proving a great outlet for all the stress of having to deal with stupid people, moaning about about the latest failing of the engineers at work or our service in general.

Still this week I managed to add a whole new pain to the list, gained after running through “Superman Slide” drills. The Superman Slide is the more suicidal looking of the derby slides, involving the skater putting their faith wholly into their pads, by falling forward onto your knees then your elbows in a motion non to dissimilar to throwing yourself at the ground. It was while running through the first batch of these which triggered a sharp pain, almost comparable to a kick to the nuts, though perhaps not as lingering, occurring in the lower gut muscle / mass (please excuse my lack of fancy medical terminology), which of course I followed up with probably the least sensible course of action, by doing the same drill again, which surprisingly enough was once again followed by similar pain.

Whatever I have done has pretty much killed off any attempt to do anything, which requires the tensing of that particular area, which is actually a surprisingly large amount of things, for such a random area to injure, especially when I think about how I did it, which makes even less sense, much less the fact that I have manage to do something that has even confounded the vast (and occasionally questionable) medical knowledge of Google, which despite managing to real off a vast list of potential injuries, some of which I’m not sure are possible with the male anatomy, I had to resign to just labelling it a strained muscle and just get one with the best course of treatment for such things and to basically just suck it up and get on with things instead of acting like some big girls blouse, though the thing which honestly sucks the most is the lack of any bruising / hideous looking injury to show for it, so nothing to show for it here and I’m sure you’ll all appreciate not having to see a picture of my gut.

Okay outside of my various attempts to incapacitate myself this week, there was a focus this week on our starts, including the jammer start, which involves the extensive use of your toe stops as you aim to walk on your stops, digging them into the track as you move with a stilt like running motion, before dropping onto your skates in a graceful flow and not look like a your attempting to breaking out into some weird form of interpretive dance. Personally I’ve yet to break in the toe stops on my own skates, mainly due to currently lacking the required technique needed, for a successful toe stop, with previous attempts having worked to stop me, but only to quickly follow with a heavy slam, but if your not slamming your not learning right?

On the ref side of things the wenches now officially have two ref’s in training with both myself and my fellow David Lynch fan Michelle (a.k.a: Ic Hell) heeding the call of the striped shirt, which honestly is great, as it now means there are at least two of us, trying to make sense of the mountains of rules, which currently I have broken up into various sections and stuck up around the areas of the house where I’m likely to constantly see them, like the back of the bathroom door and the front of the fridge, with this tactic hopefully helping to drum them in, with the theory working on the principle of that if I see them often enough, that there is more a chance of them sticking. Still it will be interesting to see how this method works out….now if only there was a way of transferring this method to my skating technique.

The Story So Far....

So were to start? Well as always I guess the best place would naturally be at the beginning, for Roller Derby has always held a special place in my heart, even if in the early days of this love affair with the sport, it wasn’t exactly the easiest of sports to follow, having seen my first bout while working in New York, were I was at the time working as a camp counciler (read. Glorfied Babysitter) for a bunch of spoilt rich kids. From this first bout I soon found myself hooked with this obsession only grew while living in Birmingham, were the “Birmingham Blitz Dames” would soon become my team of choice to follow, pulling in countless favours and good Karma points with my boss at work, so I could make it to their bouts. However when I moved to Gosport, to move in with my gorgeous Wife Lily, I had to sadly sacrifice my evenings of derby carnage, only to eventually lear of a new team being formed down here in this costal town, which was honestly the last place I was expecting to find a team, let alone that a Male team was being formed aswell, a team whom would become “The Portsmouth Scurvy Dogs”. I was psyched to actually be part of a derby team, especially having been lead to believe that it was only the girls who could derby, so the prospect of getting into some derby was exilerating, despite the fact that my skating ability was less than non existent. Still I jumped at this chance to join the team, quickly blowing my hard earned commission cheque to get my start up gear together, while attempting to learn how to skate on my newly purchased set of quads, which would lead to a large amount of falling over and carving myself up on the concrete quad, which we were using for practice, while at the same time working on creating my derby alter ego, which after countless failed attempts and a whole bunch of crossed out ideas on the fridge white board, I finally came up with my derby name “Rudyard Crippling”, even though it seemed that the only person that was being crippled was myself, but the name stuck and it’s a name which I have now carried across as a Ref.

Sadly this team would be short lived, thanks to lack of interest and so the team was put on hold while we worked out a new recruitment plan, though it was around this time that our Derby Sisters who make up the mighty “Portsmouth Roller Wenches” whom had been going from strength to strength since their creation, began spreading the word that they were looking for Ref’s and while this might not have been my first choice, I was already too hooked from the few skate sessions I’d had with the Scurvy Dogs to walk away, so I approached the Wenches with the idea of signing up as one of their ref’s, after all this seemed like the best arrangement for not only me, but their team aswell as out of their arrangement they would get themselves a ref in training and I’d still get to be involved in the derby world, aswell as getting some use out of my gear, which other wise seemed doomed to gather dust in the wardrobe.

So now I’m a ref in training, working towards earning my stripes and attempting to memorise the numerous rules which, despite the chaotic carnage which might erupt on the track, is actually very strictly governed with rules it seems to cover nearly every occurrence and while it might not have been the original intention, I’m still having a blast while working towards earning a set of stripes to call my own, while generally loving every crazy and frenzied moment of my derby training once again.