Sunday, September 17, 2006

Roller Derby

Roller derby is a sport for women who play life by a different set of rules. We’re proud, hard-working, independent-minded women. We’re vixens, wise-crackers, and naughty troublemakers. And we’re big-hearted women ready to get down and derby.
-(from their website: www.carolinarollergirls.com)

Damn! We had a stupid time last night! My friend, Bob Davis, home from his usual routine as tour accountant for pretty much anybody who’s anybody, (Metallica, System of a Down, R Kelly, Clay Aiken) arranged for a get together over at his house and then we would proceed over to the Dorton Arena (pronounced: dortna reena) where we would partake of some drankin’ and watchin’ some purty girls rolling around on roller skates in a rope lighted circle on the floor at the same time all the while trying to beat each other up. Now, how could I refuse that? How could anybody refuse that? I missed the getting’ together at the house part but I met everyone out there and hilarity ensued from that point in the evening until I stupidly tried to drive home some 10 hours later. I woke up this morning (uh..afternoon) and couldn’t figger out why my stomach was so sore, like I had done like some ungodly amount of sit-ups..you know 10 or 15 or so. But as I was telling Grace (who was sweet enough to suggest I have a night out with the boys) the stories of what happened I realized that it was sore from laughing so damn hard! I’ll do the best I can to remember what happened, and you’ll have to understand that part of the fun was being there and that it’s really hard for me to put into words how retarded we really got.
The roller girls were just a hoot to begin with and you’ll have to check out all of their names (on the website) to see what I mean. My favorite is Tara Himann, and yes there’s a definite gay overtone (not there’s anything wrong with that, mind you) to their behavior. Well anyway, 6:30pm and it was gametime and it got pretty wild. Girls were crashing everywhere..and hard! They sounded like wet seals when their flesh (and some had a lot more than others) slapped that concrete floor. Them gals meant business! Elbows and asses were flying! The “game” itself was definitely not rigged and it looked like they all were really trying to beat the shit out of each other and get out in front of the pack which is object of said game. Well, after we kicked Sin City’s ass, the crowd of hmm..a few thousand, were invited down to King’s Barcade to party with the girls. Let’s see, King’s holds maybe 300, so..go figger. Anyway we wanted to eat before heading down there so we (10 of us in our group) went over to the hot hip new joint in Raleigh, the Raleigh Times. I had heard great things about their veggie burgers so 6 of us put in orders for those, but another waitress came by and told ours they were out so we had to settle for grilled cheese. Not leaving a good impression on me from the git-go. But we enjoyed the cool night air and the fumes of the passing cars (and loud rice rockets!) and acted very cosmopolitan as we ate outside and laughed at stories about our other friends who weren’t there. We lost 7 of us after dinner so it was down to Bob, Carina and I to do the bar hopping thing. We started with King’s but we had low expectations (which were met) knowing that it would be packed. The entertainment for the evening was not another one of their usual crappy bands but instead was some pretty crappy karaoke singing. Some of the roller girls even joined in. We were completely done with the whole scene when some guy and girl got up to do a screamo version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. Steven Perry seemed to be a theme as I remember the singer from the shitty little band at the roller derby sounding a lot like him, and not in a good way (IS there a good way to sound like Steven Perry? Hmmm…fodder for yet another blog I’m sure). We finished our beers and left.
From there (and this is all on foot at this point as Raleigh has a bunch of bars close together, well..within blocks of each other, these days) we hit Slim’s. This is another place that pretty much won’t let you leave sober. Many a drunk tale starts or at least stops through Slim’s. We like playing there cuz it’s tiny as is the stage which induces a tightness not found on our usual stadium stages:). No one was paying much attention to the band last night though so we didn’t either. We went out back to get away from them but soon noticed that another band was setting up out there. We finished our beers and left.
From there we stumbled to The Pour House where the band for the night, Pink Floydian Slip (guess which band they are a tribute to?..God! Don’t get me started on people’s fascination with tribute bands! UHHH!) had to cancel so in their stead we got..shit metal from that rockin’ ensemble of hate…Purgatory! Never heard of’m and never wanna hear’m again. Their CD’s were on the table..for free and they still had plenty when I left.
Songs like “F**k You” and “Better Off Dead” were not really lifting our spirits so I tried to get into it a little bit more like the numbskulls down front and took my shirt off. I later apologized to the waitstaff. I was sorry they had to see that, but I was REALLY sorry they had to listen to that! Jeez! Like workin’ in music store! One shitty lick after another, the guitar player was great about playing his solos in completely different keys, pretty much the opposite key from whatever “song” they were playing. We had Jager shots and left. Sorry, they might be nice guys but they flat out…can I say it?... SUCKED!!
At this point we were a little discouraged that we were not to be entertained with someone’s gift of music and we took a stroll through Tir Na Nog. Let’s see, there’s acoustic guitars on stage and a dude standing there sweaty like he just came off, and he’s got a Hall and Oats T-shirt on…these are NOT good signs of things to come. Out the door, no beer..nothing. We DID get to see some guy aggravating the shit out of a cop. That was cool, cuz the cop was fittin’ to bust him one. That might’a given us that entertainment we were looking for! It was just hard to find any more enjoyment than watching girls kick the shit out of one another.
So I say let’s go to Raleigh Music Hall and visit that damn nut, Rob Farris. Rob’s got the run of the place and is starting to get things going down there after the city finally filled the crater in the ground out front which prevented people from access to the entrance of the place. That was problem there for a while. “Yeah, we got bands” “Hey! How the hell ya get in there?” So Rob’s doing great and we were so excited by that I made a motion that we celebrate with some of his finest liquors and he happily obliged. The hour was late though (thankfully!) so after a couple of shots we hit the road again. Next we fell into some place, I think it was called the Capital Room or something. But it was really dark in there and not so much was happening. Bob wanted to stay and make chit-chat with the cute little barkeep down there so I made him buy me another shot. One for the road, you might say. I gave him a great pick up line (“you wanna f**k or fight?”) but he wouldn’t use it so I drug his sorry ass out and Carina (who’s a great sport about putting up with our lewd and lascivious behavior, often inciting more of it) decided she’d had enough of us and took the adventurous ride back to the Bull City. Bob and I went over to his new house and I had it in my mind that I would have another Guinness to sort of drink myself sober. Oh yeah, THAT always works. We sat on his deck (Man! He’s got a big deck! You should go sit on his big deck. He especially likes when girls come over and sit on his big deck!) for a while listening to the new Stones “Rarities” and shootin’ the shit. Well, just when I had decided to spend the night on his couch, a perfectly fine couch mind you, I change my mind and grab my keys. It’s four in the morning, I’ll be home in 30 minutes, wake up in my own bed..yadda yadd yadda. You know the drill. So I feel fine, I’m headin’ on home, get out on that “AutoBunn”, a long boring stretch of road and start getting’ little sleepy. Next thing I hear is the roar of the tires hittin’ those grooves on the side of the highway designed especially FOR dumbasses like me. Well, THAT woke my ass up and I pulled into the driveway about 4:35am to find Mama there opening the door for me.
“Git on in here, ya sorry ass!” Nah, she didn’t really say that, but she should have. She’s too good to me, she should’a kicked my ass..ROLLER DERBY STYLE!

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1 comment:

Lisa Meltzer said...

I got a hangover just reading that.