Roller Derby is Jazz

(This is the first installment in a series entitled "The Analogy Project: Comparing the Incomparable.")  

photo by nocklebeast

Modern roller derby is the fastest growing sport in the pants-wearing world. Jazz is an American music style birthed in the early 20^th century, whose popularity continues to grow, especially among those predisposed to pants. Roller derby and jazz share many thematic, cultural and evolutionary similarities, although a grateful nation notes that Miles Davis rarely wore booty shorts. This paragraph contained a thesis statement. Don’t get lost!

 

Those unfamiliar with the current roller derby trend, and remembering only the iteration that consumed middle-America in mid-century, with all of its staged fights and well-planned outcomes, might associate this jazz analogy with a cheap lounge act along the lines of Bill Murray’s infamous character on Saturday Night Live (all for show, with a definite hint of someone’s tongue in a willing cheek). “Sure,” you think, “I enjoy the entertainment, but really, since the public failure of the XFL, haven’t we been through enough?”

Sunday: a review

Seven days in the week, and fewer than half are distinguishable among the fray. Monday’s reputation is well known and irrefutable. In fact, today is Monday and I would be remiss in describing it any way other than dreadful. Wednesday’s “Hump Day” moniker, while lending itself to sophomoric elbow prods, is embedded in our collective unconscious as a recurring attainable albeit low-slung goal. Saturday’s starring roles in numerous blockbusters, both film and song, have established its status as frat boy of weekdays. Tuesday and Thursday, seemingly content as the placeholders of the week, come and go all but unnoticed. But one rotation of the Earth remains a day of mystery, a day of ever-changing meaning, content, import and implication: Sunday.

By the time you are forty-six, you will personally experience 2,392 Sundays. Each will essentially begin the same, sun rising in the east, and end identically as well, sun setting in the west. However, every five hundred Sundays or so, elemental changes will take place. Saturday will always precede, and Monday will always follow, but what happens in between runs the gamut.

Doppelgangers Among Us or Who's That Girl?

(This column first appeared in the Good Times Weekly on August 18th, and can be found on their website here)

A few weeks ago, during a typically foggy, chilly Santa Cruz morning, I decided to take a brisk walk to get the blood moving, revitalize the senses and energize my mental state. It was early in the day and as such I chose to simply hide my comfortable almost-pajamas and disheveled almost-awake self with a black trench coat cinched dramatically at the waist, a pair of extra large sunglasses, and a neatly tied black scarf atop the leftovers of the previous night’s fantastic hairdo. As I headed for the front door, a brief glance in the mirror told me I looked a lot like a movie star in a clichéd disguise, more specifically (and fantastically, in the true sense of the word – the derivative of “fantasy”) I imagined I looked a lot like 1970’s era Elizabeth Taylor dodging the public eye. (Need I remind you that it was very early, and I probably had not yet had my reality-inducing first cup of coffee, so humor me.)

Basking in my newfound, if wholly undeserved confidence, I adopted a slight swagger in my step, thinking, “How would La Liz exercise?”  I committed to my own inner monologue and avoided direct eye contact with strangers, as if I were Someone Important who did not want to be bothered. I reminisced about my marriages to Richard Burton and my perfume empire. My journey led me toward the Boardwalk, and through small groups of early arrivals at the beach: groups of families, friends and a church group or two. My intent to breeze through on the wings of the starlet express was halted mid-step as a teenager muttered, “Is that Rosie O’Donnell?”

My personal Mancini soundtrack skipped a few grooves, my stride de-glamorized as I tripped over the offending comment, and my mouth fell open in shock. Rosie O’Donnell? The reality of my true demeanor fell over me like a breaking wave. Not the kind of wave that lifts you up and carries you like a graceful water goddess to the edge of the sand, but a wave that knocks you over unexpectedly, rolls you on the sea floor and tosses you out with sand in all the wrong places. How could I have been so delusional? Nothing against Ms. O’Donnell, but when one is trying to feign paparazzi dodging, one usually does not adopt a personage that requires dialogue along the lines of, “Yo! Exercising here! A little privacy?!!"

The remainder of my stroll lacked zing. I trudged home to resume life as plain old me. I thought about the mistaken identity perpetrated by the teen (whom I pegged immediately as a Taylor Lautner look-alike), and the doppelganger tribes among us. I admit to being one of those people who regularly says things like, “He’s a Robert de Niro guy,” or “She’s one of the Jessica Tandys” when describing someone. Apparently what I hadn’t considered was that I might be “a Rosie O’Donnell.” Doctor heal thyself? How about “judge pigeonhole thyself.”

Vote Bluto Tuesday For Change Today or I Can’t Believe I Watched the Whole Thing

(This column first appeared in the Good Times Weekly on July 8th, and can be found on their web site here)

The June 8^th election has come and gone, and with the exhale of relief as the primaries fade, comes the gasping inhale of sheer exhilaration as the California general election looms.

From now until November 2^nd it’s campaign free-for-all season! Some of you are pretty excited about this; some of you dread it like a root canal. Still others are making that confused golden retriever face right now, muttering “election?”

Being a fan of overworked clichés, I’d like to say I’m as political as the next guy, but here in Santa Cruz that can be a dangerous statement. Some of the next guys are much more informed, embroiled and passionate than I; some of the next guys don’t believe in voting.  Some of the next guys will rant your ears off on issues that only exist in their beautiful spotless minds. I personally don’t tend to wax political, even in an election year. Let’s just say, to borrow a phrase from the art world, I don’t know politics, but I know what I like. This generally leads me to the candidate and issues I support. But one thing I know for sure – I don’t like campaigns.

As campaign season gets underway, so will the sloughs of similes. Campaigns are like locusts; they come every few years, make a lot of noise and leave a mess. Campaigns are like childbirth; nine months of discomfort, a night of screaming at one’s closest support staff, resulting in at least one crying baby. Campaigns are like baseball; aficionados assemble fantasy teams while the rest of the country tolerates highlight reels. Campaigns are like a cheap buffet; all you can eat, but nothing you can stomach. Campaigns are like Van Halen; someone’s got to sing, and it’s not always David Lee Roth.

I’d like to throw another simile into the ring for consideration: Campaigns are like Popeye cartoons. Not merely because they are poorly colorized and include veiled support for the tobacco industry, but for a host of intricate parallels, to wit:

Cleanliness Is Next To...Solvency? (from the archives)

It’s happening again.  I’m having one of my moments.  My husband is self-employed, which means every now and then “the checks are in the mail” – to us.  Now, as history will prove, the checks really are in the mail.  We’ve never landed in the poor house, never even close.  In every economy we’ve been blessed, and I don’t use that word lightly.  I’m not the serene type of woman I imagine earns the right to use it.  No, I am the type of woman who exhibits what we call “Scarlett O’Hara Moments.”  Perhaps you recognize them.  They occur when the bank account gets a bit lower than desired and I forget to breathe deeply and remember that everything works itself out.  “Scarlett O’Hara Moments” occur when I hyperventilate unnecessarily, fall to my knees, grab two handfuls of dust-bunnies and say to myself, with jelly smeared across my forehead, not “I’ll never be hungry again,” for that would be too optimistic.  No, I say, “If we must be poor, then we will be clean!” for this, at least, seems noble.  My patient husband, recognizing my symptoms, looks forward to the brief bout of domestic organization that inevitably follows.  

I concluded somewhere in my parallel learning curve - HGTV and VH1 - that being rich and sloppy is bohemian, poor and sloppy simply negligent, so with stoic resolve I decide to scrub the entire house and each of the children (even the boys!).