Brawlin’ with the Betties

Source: brawlinbetties.com

The Brawlin’ Betties skated into victory while flaunting fishnet stockings at Earl Warren Showgrounds’ roller rink on May 7.

The Mission City Brawlin’ Betties is Santa Barbara’s all-female competitive roller derby league. The Betties faced the Prison City Derby Dames of Chino Hills at 5 p.m.

“I saw fishnets and panties on the flyer,” said Phil Rider, 64, a motorcycle tour guide. “That was enough of a draw for me.”

Roller derby players dress sexy, like athletic pin-up girls.

Rider recalled his college days when he dated a roller derby player. He said that she was the feistiest of his former lovers.

The nature of the roller derby sport calls for strong and independent women. Players frequently bash into each other and get knocked down while wearing roller skates.

“There’s no hiding in roller derby,” said Bench Coach Mourning After Kill #0. “The weakest link is immediately apparent.”

One player from each team is designated as the “jammer,” who scores points when she laps members of the opposing team.

The four other players from each team roll in a pack and serve as blockers who help their jammer get ahead while obstructing the opposing jammer.

The Betties work hard together and, as a result, form a tight-knit community.

“We’re all a big family,” said Booty Ninja #86.

The roller rink was covered with signs showing support for the Betties, such as “Get Wasted by Stella Ar-Twat.” The smell of alcohol wafted around the rows of fold-up chairs that seated the populous crowd.

“You have to think about what brings people to these events,” said Rider. “Does coming here show that people are into kinky stuff?”

Santa Barbara Mayor Helene Schneider is one of the Betties’ biggest fans and friends. She was given the honorary stage name “Polly C-Maker.”

“This is the best you can buy with five bucks,” said Schneider about the roller derby event.

Schneider blended in with the crowd until a rowdy crowd member dubbed “Brawlin’ Bobby” chanted her name.

The Betties have their own roller derby alter-egos that they channel through their stage names. Booty Ninja got her name from her “big butt” and black belt in martial arts.

Booty Ninja #86 Source: brawlinbetties.com

Team members lead relatively normal professional lives outside of roller derby.

Mourning After Kill earned her master’s in marine biology from UCSB and now “hugs manatees” for a living. B-Stroyer #69 is a cosmetology instructor for students who “fear” her. Booty Ninja is an employee for Citrix Online, a company that sponsors the Betties.

Booty Ninja performed the “Star Spangled Banner” prior to the roller derby event. When she forgot the lyrics, the crowd enthusiastically sang along to help her end the song.

Over the microphone, Booty Ninja said, “I did not just pull a Christina Aguilera!”

Several team members said that roller derby is harder than it looks.

“You have to play offense and defense at the same time,” said Mourning After Kill, who played many different sports during college. “You don’t get that in other sports.”

Roller derby was endorsed as a great workout by the Betties. The sport helped B-Stroyer with a significant weight loss.

“Roller derby changed my life,” B-Stroyer said. “I used to weigh 255 pounds.”

The Brawlin’ Betties steamrolled the Derby Dames 242-48.

I’M BAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCKKKK

I remembered that I have a blog the other day. And I kept putting off making a comeback. Until now. At 4 in the morning. Because I have insomnia. I guess I’ll illustrate what I’ve been up to since last I blogged:

I celebrated Christmas with my family.

Then I got my hair did at this salon.

I began a fascination with Alan Rickman.

My former science teacher mailed me this poster.

I saw this on the news.

My childhood memories were corrupted.

I perused the coffin display at Costco.

I wrecked my cardboard car.

I tried to kill myself over a crazy lover, but my Sassy Gay Friend saved my life by taking me shopping.

Okay, okay. None of this happened. Well, two of these events occurred. But I will be very mysterious and refrain from indicating them. Also, they are not pictorially represented with accuracy. I tried to make my absence seem interesting, but it progressively devolved into quite a morbid narrative. This is what happens when I assemble the random pictures that I have saved to my computer.

Extra: This is my current face via my new iPhone:

Oh, how I love purple lipstick.

Exxtra: This is a video via my 8mm iPhone app:

Exxxtra: This is a song (“Weekend” by Smith Westerns) that you should listen to:

Procrastinating…

(I thought about writing this much three days ago.)

How to Write a Bare-Minimum-Acceptable NaNoWriMo Novel

Aha! I figured out a way to make a credible NaNoWriMo novel: have an unreliable narrator.

Now, in the month-long flurry of penning 50,000 words, you no longer have to worry about your imminent use of plot holes, faulty dialogue, and ramblings unrelated to the story. Essentially, make your narrator the scapegoat to all of your problems. (S)he won’t mind. It’s not like (s)he exists.

(I just realized that revealing this information is equivalent to admitting that my novel will be faulty. But I don’t want to delete this post because apparently having one clever solution cancels out a whole novel of errors to me. And this is all I could muster writing about on my blog.)

If you want a not-fashion-model for such a narrator, look no further than the narrator I’ve employed: Edmund Ptolem is a portly, middle-aged antique shop owner. Every time I put a voice to his words, I hear a burly New Yawka dialect – hence, he was born in the Bronx. (Yes, the idea of his accent is the cause of his birthplace. I love defying causal relationships.) He’s an unsophisticated blue-collar worker, so I don’t have to put too much polish – i.e. effort – on my wording. He prefers to keep to himself. But when bombarded with people, he talks his head off. And I mean off. He’s birdwalking in so many directions that you don’t know if it’s aimless or if there’s a point. But the content of what he has to say is kind of endearing. To me, anyway.

Here’s the first paragraph of my NaNoWriMo workings. Yes, I’m serious:

“Uh, what? Who? Me?! Alright, alright. I just wasn’t prepared for the sudden visitation is all. What can I do for you? Oh, you want me to tell you about her. That’s all anyone wants me for. To tell them a story about some girl that I’ve told beyond being able to count. Yeah, I’ll tell you the story. But on one condition: you write this down so that I don’t have to tell it ever again. You still want to hear it? Alright! But I hope you get writer’s cramp. ‘Cause I’ve got a chronic cramp in my throat that you’re about to agitate.”

See? I’m getting away with a lot due to my unreliable narrator. I’m off to sustain some kind of pathetic attempt at a word count for my novel now. Ciao!

Extra: This month is going to be harder to cope with than I thought. I’ll be on quadruple writing duty as well as keeping up with all of my classes. But I voted for the first time in my life today (well, technically yesterday)! So that’s exciting. XD

Extra Extra: A sample of my budget Halloween costume:

20s/A Clockwork Orange face mashup. How innovative...

Exxxtra: Beautiful writing music: “Imaginary Person” by Ty Segall:

It applies because, you know, characters are imaginary persons.

November eez so crazee

(Disclaimer: I don’t care that my phrasing is off in this post.)

I feel very lagged up in my writing lately. Does “lagged up” even exist in the English language? Eh, I don’t feel like Googling it. Today I am putting down my usual mantle of wordsmith (not to toot my own horn) and taking up casual word-butchery. It’s only temporary though. I just need to get the juices flowing by splatting blood around with a butcher knife.

Between my recent week of midterms and my rekindled obsession with Neopets, I have not made the time to write. Which is pretty damn stupid. Especially because November is drawing near.

“wuts goin on in novembr,” you ask. Well, my grammar-deficient friend (note: this is a hypothetical person who is really an extension of my temporary disregard for language, not the supremely intelligent reader), many writing related things are going down:

1. NaNoWriMo: It’s like Burning Man for writers. National Novel Writing Month is an annual event in November in which writers must complete a 50,000 word novel within a month -> approx. 1666.7 words a day (I love the idea of leaving a 0.3rd of a word to finish for the next day). Obviously, the quality of the writing isn’t a standard. But the opportunity to bust my lazy bum into writing a first draft novel is paved with golden rainbows and cherry blossom marshmallows (?). Here is my profile if you want to befriend moi: thecrkelley

2. The Atlantic Student Writing Contest: I’m submitting to all three categories – poetry, fiction, and essay – with new material. Yeah, I’m probably not going to win. I’m just going to take a pessimistic stance and be happily surprised if I do win. But it’s not going to happen. Take a gander at those past winners, mostly from the Ivy League. Um, everyone loves a good underdog story? Right?…

3. Poli-Sci 11 page paper: Just. Not. Fun. Dry, academic writing is the hardest thing for me to do. Granted, I want to be a literary critic. But that’s literature – the analysis of which is very creative. This involves a rigid accumulation of facts through the research of many sources. Not my forte.

3. This blog: I know, how very redundant. But I don’t want to abandon this like I have been doing lately. I love myself too much to do that.

So thas wuts up. It’s not that I’m complaining about the process of writing or anything. I love the process because it provides a tangibility to thoughts that are vaguely floating around in my mind. And I find that writing something down always leads me to stumble upon new layers of my thoughts. It’s just the process of motivating myself to write has got me down, man.

Ugh, here I am making lists again. I told myself I wouldn’t do these anymore because the format is so boring and not a proper filter for creativity. Next time I will finish the fricken short story that I’ve had drafted for weeks. And then my blog will be mixed up a little.

Just becuz

A New Obsession with Myself

Oh, look at me blushing at myself. Yes, I have fallen victim to the trend of neon nail polish…and I love it. I’m not usually invested in my looks. One indication is that I walk two miles to and fro school everyday – my seepage of sweat tends to overcome any redeeming quality that I may possess. And if I wore make-up, I would look like a cake monster, which is like a cookie monster but scarier.

But look at me! I initially thought this color would give the effect of rotten-looking nails, so of course I had to experiment. To my surprise, my nails were glowing, like some neon sign in the window of a liquor store. I even attracted the attention of a nice coffee shop lady who moved a table across the room for my convenience. I mean, it’s not intentional that my nails are taking advantage of people or anything…

I think my excitement when creating a new post wrongfully labeled this as an obsession. I like to think of this as an infatuation that will end once I chip my nail polish. Like when I find a celebrity attractive and then I find out that he is married with kids. This is only a fling. Or maybe a friends-with-benefits-thang, since I can always re-apply.

There really is no profound point to this post. I’m just procrastinating from my Statistics homework. Gah. kthxbai!

Extra: I managed to cover a portion of the graffiti on my wall with pseudo-posters because I forced myself out of laziness. Isn’t that cute?

The Self-Aware Mystery

My whole sense of identity has shifted today. This is all due to Tommy Wiseau, the director of the cult film, “The Room.” He released a short film entitled “The House That Drips Blood on Alex” this week. And…it’s actually pretty good. The film has a ridiculous plot, horrible acting, and laughable editing – which are all intentional. What has become of the world?

Dripping blood on "Alex"

The funny thing is that Wiseau also promotes “The Room” as an intentional black comedy, whereas everyone else in existence disagrees. Either this or “Holiday in the Sun” (a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie) holds a special place as the worst movie that I have ever seen. Did he just recently become self-aware, or has he fooled us the entire time? Was “The Room” not actually shambles of shameless self-promotion, but instead the embodiment of intentional ambiguity? Dare I ask: is Wiseau actually a genius? A magician of movie viewer perceptions?

And if Wiseau could pull this off, is every unintentionally hilarious thing that I hold dear actually a clever ruse? Is there a secret conspiracy to fool the easily amused who feel superior to the gawd awful? My innocent love now feels corrupted. I recently posted about my adoration for music so-bad-it’s-good. Now I’m ashamed that this may be evidence of my naivete. I feel the sting of shock evocative of the time I found out that Stephen Colbert is not actually Republican.

A secret genius?

Perhaps showing your capability is the weakness of this world. “The House That Drips Blood on Alex” shows itself to be that blasted form of intentional-unintentional-hilarity, which ruins all of its so-bad-it’s-good value. But if Magician Wiseau is unintentionally revealing his genius, there might be some redemptive value in “Alex.”

I am self-aware that I am most likely over-speculating this situation. After all, “Alex” was written by sketch comedy group Studio8, whereas “The Room” was written by Wiseau. But every time I enjoy the unintentionally hilarious, there will be a lingering consideration of deception.

Here’s a Hipster Dinosaur to ease the pain of dreadful possibility: