Derby Dolls

A bunch of us ventured out to the hipster mecca that is Roller derby for the first time last night. I know I'm well behind the times on this when compared to friends back east. (Despite my distance I actually know two veteran Gotham Girls!)   

A few notes on my first experience at the Derby...

-After seeing this crowd, every coffee house in Silver Lake must shutter it's doors once a month. I think the ironic mustache stops becoming ironic when there's a couple hundred of them in one room.

-Alexis Arquette still has the manly voice when it comes to singing. (s/he "sang" the natl anthem) 

-I rooted for (but didn't bet on) the Tough Cookies and they won.  Porter betted on the Fight Crew and they lost.  The streak of my team winning when I don't gamble continues. (I won't be betting on the Superbowl because of this)

-I won the raffle.  (It was just tickets to the Derby Dolls movie screening, bleh)

-Pilsner Urquell in a tall can is much better than Tecate.

-Apparently banked track Roller Derby isn't the norm these days.  But seeing how it's all I know now I can't imagine it any other way.

-It's some operation this thing.  There must have been 2000 people there...filling this huge warehouse space.  At $20 for GA and $35 for the VIP bleachers (+beer/food/etc) they clearly made bank.  Who ever was the adwizard that thought to bring back all-girl Roller Derby a couple years ago is a frackin' genius.

-Before it began not one of us could figure out the rules even after reading the explanation in the program.  After it began it only took about two minutes before we all knew exactly what was going on.  

-One team's mascot was a guy in a lobster suit.  I'm not exactly sure why.

-We'll probably go back again next month.

Some pix and vids...

Trailer Tunes

The first full edit completed on Sunday has eight music cues...

Love at First Sight (Scumfrog Remix) - Kylie Minogue
Song 4 Mutya (Sunset Strippers Remix) - Groove Armada
Want Love - Hoxton Whores
D.A.N.C.E. - Justice
The Girl You Lost to Cocaine - Sia
Long Time - Static Revenger featuring Boston
Beautiful Liar (Freemasons remix) - Beyonce featuring Shakira
Make You a Star - Hoxton Whores

We got some fresh eyes on it and some great suggestions so we're taking another pass. It's mostly a rearranging of a couple scenes and a new approach on the opening. Hopefully we'll get it sorted in two weeks.

Onward...

R.I.P.

First post from my new iPhone

The last post from my old phone

No more holes

We finally got all the holes filled in the trailer on Saturday. It actually feels like...well...a trailer (albeit a slightly long one at 5 and a half minutes, but that's why we call it a "promo reel", right?) We also somehow worked in a clip from a Sia song--not that you'd recognize it as the vocals are stripped. Couldn't have done any of it without the help of the man with the edit...Mr. Darrin McKie.

We're going to bring in a new set of eyes this Saturday and see where we go from there.

Todd continues to crank away at the website. If all goes according to plan, we could have both ready for launching in February we hoped for a few weeks ago.

Onward...

A week in the life as a new year begins

So we arrived safely in Los Angeles last Sunday a full five hours after our scheduled arrival time. I know that travel delays and problems seem to be the expected norm these days but I was fighting one horrible cold so that five hours felt like fifteen. Bleh.

On monday we went back and forth about fifty times about whether or not to go out for NYE. We had plans to attend a party at the Roosevelt hotel with some friends. At the last second I decided to drink away my sickness and we went. It was fun hangin' with people...nothing spectacular, but fun. I didn't wake up feeling worse the next morning, so I suppose it wasn't a terrible choice to go.

Three fairly slow days of work later I thought I was feeling better...but then I had a friday where some crazy allergy attacked me and I went through an entire box of tissues. Random.

The monsoon rains came yesterday afternoon and Liz was to pick me up at work for our plans that evening. (I got a ride with someone so we wouldn't need two cars.) She was running super late so I ventured taking the subway. As is usually the case with me I had no umbrella or coat but I found a dude selling umbrellas for five bucks on a corner two blocks from workso I didn't get supersoaked. The LA Metro is a strange beast but it's nice if you're going the limited places it runs. 20 minutes later I was walking up the steps in Hollywood and met Darrin and Mike Ochs for dinner exactly on time. (The rain traffic caused liz to arrive much later).

Dinner was followed with seeing Sweeney Todd with director Tim Burton speaking after. It was at the Arclight Cineramadome and I swear they took out a wall in the back just to build the seats we were in so they'd be worse than previously thought possible. Good movie though and he had some interesting things to say in the 45 mins or so after that he spoke...but man do some people ask STUPID questions. Maybe it's just being in LA, but at least half of them began with "I'm an actor" or "I'm in film school" Shut up! Someone actually asked what his favorite color was and with the annoyingly suckup intro from some AFI guy, it felt like I was in the audience for the Actor's Studio show with James Lipton for a bit. One pompous self-admitted broadway freak dared to ask him what he'd do differently (she was upset at the cut songs). Burton took a minute or two being nice and then just said, "you know...nothing." Good for him. Liz wanted to ask him why his hair is so crazy....we were too far back to get picked though.

Then we braved the rains and headed home. If Darrin isn't feeling too sick, DJ Girl editing continues this afternoon.

And that's my week.