Favorite Finds + Day of the Dead Excitement

This Saturday will mark my first chance to participate in a Dia De Los Muertos celebration, and I couldn't be more excited!  Austin has a parade, there are Day of the Dead exhibits at the Mexic-Arte Museum, and after helping my kids make sugar skulls on Thursday, I'll get to try my own hand at it this weekend - assuming there's any meringue powder left over.

It's also this time of year that my family and I start compiling our Kaboodle lists for Christmas.  I have a difficult time choosing things I'd like to get, but I have no issue finding things that I like!  Here are a few of my favorites after browsing through Etsy:

Top left: goldfish ring by dillondesigns.  Choosing a favorite design was near impossible - I liked them all.

Top right: starry night lamp by glyntpottery.  I used to spend hours sticking glow stars to my ceiling in the patterns of constellations.  This looks much easier... and much prettier.   

Bottom left: Lucy peacock feather headband by Lovmely Accessories. This makes me think of a vintage ladies cap to be worn to a movie theatre with red velvet seats and chandeliers. 

Bottom right: Frida and Diego organic t-shirt by Mis Nopales Art.  Frida + Dia De Los Muertos + red + wearable art = perfect.

Top left: Upcycled orange vintage messenger bag by Get ready, set, go!!! This seller has all kinds of vintage luggage - including the baby blue cosmetics case my grandmother has (probably) had since the 60's - all with hand painted designs to guide the pieces into modernity. 
Top right: Typewriter key bracelet by Keys and Memories.  I've posted something like this before, last spring, so maybe the fact that I'm still attracted to it merits a purchase. 
Bottom left: Butterfly wing necklace by Butterfly Senses.  I actually did purchase this - two of them - just in different colors.  Hopefully it's as beautiful in hand as it is on monitor. 
Bottom right: Deep purple satin skirt by larimeloom.  It's true, I'm a skirt chaser, and I'm in fabric love.

Now the difficult part will be to remember that the money in my account is for spending on other people's Kaboodle lists, not my own!  Lucky for me, though, if I need an insta-fix of handmade items, I can go down to Parts and Labour on South Congress and spend the afternoon admiring hand sewn, hand screened, hand-me-down worthy pieces.  It almost makes me want to break out my hot glue gun.  Almost.

Motivational Monday: Lessons from Children's Literature on Bravery

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."    Christopher Robin to Pooh

I don't squeeze people's hands when I shake them.  I have never known if this is because I am uncomfortable with physical closeness towards people I don't know, if I don't squeeze hard because I don't like having mine crushed in turn, or if it's because of what I was accused of not long ago: being afraid to establish my presence.  

Like a lot of people, I've spent a large portion of my life trying to be inconspicuous and not get into other people's way by avoiding confrontations.  When younger, this manifested itself through the desire to have Airwalk tennis shoes, Jnco jeans, and a penchant for being well-behaved.  The most outlandish things I have ever done with my appearance are my all-black phase (which was more camouflage than a stand-out technique) and a partially-pink hair stint.  These are superficial manifestations, but there were more serious consequences to not wanting to be noticed, such as not participating in class discussions in college, not stating opinions in a public sphere, or seeking permission and approval for everything I want to do. 

It always makes me smile when I see the bumper sticker: "well behaved women rarely make history."  It's true, isn't it?  Since standards of "well-behaved" have shifted over the decades, and often enough the societal norm has been in the wrong - such as when it said certain people couldn't vote, or hold particular jobs, or speak freely. 

I finally finished Sidra Stone's book, The Shadow King.  The main point that I took away from it, is that now when I feel myself starting to get frustrated with myself, a situation, or another person, (especially my roommates), I stop and re-evaluate where my impulse behavior is really stemming from - is it a frustration that is actually my own, or something I've learned - like the idea that I should be demure, that other people should take care of me, that I should take care of the house, that I shouldn't act without the approval of male figures in my life?  When I was considering buying a new camera last week, I realized that I asked the advice of two boys and my father first, and didn't seek any female input or trust myself to make the decision independently.  Why?

At the end of the book, Stone writes "everyone 'knows' that it is feminine to be receptive and available, to be able to interact smoothly and pleasantly with other people and to blend our energies with theirs...as women, it is important for us to have some awareness of our own energy fields and to have real choice in whether or not they are open." She states that "the goal is mastery of your own domain."  It takes a high level of bravery and confidence to declare yourself master of your own domain, as it means you have to trust yourself.

And that's the whole point - you have to trust yourself and your true thoughts, not the ones that you hear in someone else's voice, no matter how closely it mimics your own.   

It seems fitting that Where the Wild Things Are has undergone a rebirth in popularity since the release of the film.  What better to model the balance between bravery, dominion of one's own terrain, as well as accepting (and respecting) the love given us to other people, than a small boy who declares himself king to avoid becoming the dinner of wild things, who at the end of the day boldly weathers a stormy sea to sail home so he can both show and receive love. 

What monsters are you scared of rising up in front of you, or tigers are you worried are waiting on the other side of the door?  Even something as simple as writing a blog post is a challenge for me, since it opens up my words and ideas to ridicule - a terrifying thought.  So this is me being brave, writing in a public sphere with all the possibility of looking silly looming around me.  But, I've decided I don't care, and here's the first step towards acting on courage as opposed to fear:

1) Remember that most monsters are imaginary, and many aren't nearly the threats that they may seem.

2) Let your curiosity be stronger than your fear.  If the door to where you go seems dark and hermetically sealed... find a drill, and start small. 

3) Believe you are the king, (or queen), and declare yourself as such.  Don't be arrogant, but confidant.  You have no reason not to be. 

4) Light your own path.  There is nothing in nature that says a negative force is stronger than a positive force.  Why should it be that way in your head?  Brighten your thoughts and everything around you.

5) Take the first step and trust yourself to know the way.  Getting lost is ok, sometimes that's the point of the trip.  The final destination isn't always what you expect it to be, and that makes the adventure all the more exciting.

With my lighting bolts a glowin' I can see where I am goin'

Central Presbyterian Church's Anniversary & Cornbread Casserole

This weekend, Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin celebrated its 170th Anniversary.  It was founded in 1839 and exists today in a beautiful stone building with a grassy courtyard and a sanctuary crowned by vaulted beams and stained glass.

 

Saturday night, the church hosted a celebratory dinner (free!) in the fellowship hall and out on the courtyard, and Sunday's services were opened up with traditional Scottish bagpipes.

                     

 

I was officially introduced to the congregation - being in front of crowds is always a little scary - and now my membership is official.  After the services, the young adults group hosted a picnic in Eastwood park.

I'm really happy that we found this church - I know that a young adult group that can talk about gay acceptance in church, flip cup, and the connection between spiritual beliefs and current events, is a good fit.

The picnic was a potluck, so I took fruit salad and cheesy cornbread casserole.

Since it was a presbyterian church's anniversary, it only seemed fitting to pull a recipe from a presbyterian cookbook.  My grandmother gave me a copy of her church's, (Little Rock Second Presbyterian) cookbook, Second Servings, with recipes compiled from all of the members.  Ever since eating brunch at Z'Tejas with my step-mom and step-sister, I've been craving cornbread (which they serve in an iron skillet as the free bread).  So, this recipe seemed perfect:

Delux Cornbread Casserole (submitted by Carolyn Neal)

1 box of Jiffy cornbread mix

1 can creamed corn

1 can whole kernel corn, drained

2 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

1/2 stick melted butter

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1) In a large mixing bowl, combine the mix, creamed corn, whole kernel corn, eggs, sour cream, butter, and salt.

2) Transfer to a greased 9 x 13 baking dish.

3) Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the center is firm.  Remove from oven and sprinkle cheese on top.

4) Return to the oven and bake for an additional 15 minues.

5) This caserole can also be cooked for 30 minutes, set aside until ready to serve, and then cooked the additional 15 minutes, (which is what I did prior to transferring it to the park). 

Austin Vet Care & The Cone of Shame

Today was supposed to be Bella-bath day at Dirty Dog Dogwash, but when I tried furmanating her before our trip to the tub, it became evident that her little dandruff issue had become a much bigger problem - because spots on her back started bleeding - oh no!

So the dogwash was quickly replaced with a trip to the vet.  I took her to Austin Vet Care, which has 24 hour emergency care service, and the vet techs took her back to examine her the moment I walked in.  It turns out, that under neath her masses of fur, she'd developed a skin infection (yes, gross), that was related to her being allergic to Texas, (just like her momma - I take zyrtec every couple of days to stave off the Austin itchies), and probably scratching herself to infection.  I feel like the worst pet owner ever for not seeing it, but with as much hair as that dog has, it's really not surprising that it went unnoticed by all members of the household.

Now, poor Bella must wear... the cone of shame!  (but $500 later, she feels a whole lot better, and no more itching allowed).

Ladies Rock Camp Austin

Tonight was the homecoming game of the high school where I work, and it happened to be against the school where Lennon works.  So fostering rivalry, we spent most of our Friday night watching Texas high school football and a Grambling/Prairie View A&M style half-time show.

 
Most awesome drum major ever.  Although the kids at my current school are quite impressive as well.  I know if my Chicago-suburb-Jr-High band had been asked to move like that, disastrous things would have followed.

Afterward, being fiscally conservative and taking Lennon's ulcer into consideration, we went out for coffee.  Flightpath is a favorite, and now I like it even more knowing it was an important site in the birth of Austin Roller Derby.  After sitting down, I looked up and my eye was immediatley caught by a poster pasted in the community corner.  Can you guess which one....??

Ladies Rock Camp!  I've been checking out information about Girls Rock Camp for a while because I'm interested in contracting them in the future as a vendor for my after school program.  Their website makes me both wistful and bitter that there wasn't anything like that for me when I was in high school in Arkansas.  So the tag line on the poster at Flightpath spoke to me directly: "Wish you had Girls Rock Camp when you were young?"  Um, yes! 

So I jumped over to their website, and the camp is on the calendar for next weekend, Oct 23rd-25th.  I'm free!  Sadly for the poor among us (but good news for the new non-profit), the camp is not free.  It's $350 for attendance, but they offer a payment installment plan.  In the description of the program it is written in large capitol letters: NO MUSICAL EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.  Awesome.  I fit the bill.  Unless my clarinet and choir days from Jr. High count... probably not. 

While I am super excited about the possibility of attending, (I haven't registered yet), I get concerned when the voice in my head tells me I am taking on too many things.  Being brand new at my job, I am constantly swamped, if only from doing everything without really knowing how.  Being bored has also never been an issue with me, as I have too many hobbies, too many interests, too many books I want to read, and too many blogs that I do read. 

One of these blogs is Zen Habits, a site that discusses living simply and with purpose for maximum serenity and fulfillment both with what one has and what one can accomplish.  Today, their post was entitled: Coding Simplicity: How to Avoid Feature Creep In Your Life.  Basically, this was a metaphor using technology that works initially, then gets so over packed with features and functions, that it no longer performs well.  The obvious translation: if one doesn't streamline their endeavors, they become the dreaded jack of all trades but master of none.

My own interest list could span scrolls: reading, The New York Times, my blog reader, writing, acrylic paints, oil pastels, Catch hrase tournaments, baking, music, travel, writing, decorating, cook books, slam poetry, dusty poetry, fruit flavored craft beer, loose tea... and I rarely commit to exploring any one thing for more than a couple days, when it is then shelved and returned to a month or more later. 

So, while my wanting to attend Rock Camp may add to my bloat, I don't foresee many demands on my time coming from it.  Although hopefully I'll meet some ladies that I'll want to remain friends with.  It also prompts me to think about how I should try streamlining my time since I've been overly tired recently.

My priority hobby list:

1) Read a few pages from a book every day

2) Follow my blog reader + post comments

3) Make dinner at least three times a week

4) Bread baking on weekends

5) Create a blog post at least five times a week.

6) Yoga twice a week

7) Get mentally prepared for NaNoWrMo

8) Learn how to use the digital camera I will hopefully buy soon, and then take it everywhere

9) Journal art

That's not too bad, and if I consider it organic, then I can whittle and modify the list to make sure I'm channeling my focus on to projects and interests I genuinley want to see flourish.  This may mean I need to vacuum less obsessively. 

Otherwise, I'd hate to go the way of the PC.... (even though I love my PinkVaio).

Speaking of keeping hobbies to a manageable level.... oh, snap!

The Urban Housewife Does Austin

One of my favorite bloggers (and would probably be one of my favorite vegan bakers if I ever got the chance to taste her creations), The Urban Housewife, recently visited Austin and did two great posts about her exploits - both the gastro and the generally grand variety. 

You can read all about it, and get motivated to go out to eat, in her two-part series here and here. 

Restructuring A Belief System

Sara Beak from The New York Times

I used to be a closet horoscope reader, until I became a fan of Sara Beak and other "New Gurus," (so dubbed by the New York Times).  Luckily for myself and the other mystic-curious out there, spirituality now seems to be evolving from the oft-laughable genre of "new age" to the wildly popular "new enlightenment."  I'd conjecture the sweeping popularity of spiritualism, eastern religion, mystisicm, etc., is an obvious next step in a consumer culture that has started collapsing in on itself.  And this is a good thing.  While taking a stab at "yuppies" can be a quick way to attempt establishing one's own intelligence over the middle class (although, if yuppie is in your vernacular, you probably are one), I would like someone to point out the negative of people becoming more enviornmentally conscious, more thrifty with their spending, and more excited about handmade, homemade goods.  If there's a line at the door outside of Ten Thousand Villages verses Pottery Barn, I'm all about it.

Natural soaps from Ten Thousand Villages

I also don't see any downside to women (who seem to be the largest adherents to modern spirituality) wanting to find balance in their life beyond being super woman (very stressful endeavor) and following fashion magazine dictates (is the gloss ceiling finally broken? ...sorry).  Dr. Neralich always repeated to his classes that we are spiritual beings having an earthly exprerience, not the other way around, so ignoring the essential nature of humanity because it seems "silly" to many westerners, really just makes us the silly ones.

Back to horoscopes, I've taken to watching the Soul Garden videos that are streamed onto Gala Darling's web site.  The "forecast" for Aquarius in the month of October discusses the importance of restructuring my belief system, which I feel has been a task I've undertaken since moving to Austin.  I've decided to go back to church after a long hiatus which I began when I decided that it was not reasonable to invest in a religion that I don't entirely believe in.  And by that, I simply mean that I don't think any one religion is right, and that  religions are humanity's interpretation of divine events and inspirations, so why recite creeds that I don't buy 100%? 

Not going to church, though, created a "spiritual void," that has left me feeling disconnected from a part of myself that, in verbal irony, keeps me grounded.  When I'm cultivating my spirituality whether through church, yoga, meditation, books, etc., my stress is lowered, my breathing is deeper, and things in life take on a deeper importance. 

I used to have a Jewish boyfriend who I loved very much and wanted to be with for much longer than we ended up being together.  Members of his family were not pleased that I didn't come from a similar background, but at the time, my understanding was that I just needed a God who wasn't abstract.  And Christianity gives that to people by putting a human face on God, and considering that idea again in recent months, I decided to return to the church fold I grew up in.  It's not a sprititual make over, but it's a start.

Dr. Neralich also said that whenever he went into people's homes while traveling through parts of Asia who practiced Buddhism, he was always met with the same answer when he asked how to follow the spiritual path: "sit down, practice." 

One of the awesome things about Austin is the Austin Area Interreligious Ministries.  The church I've been attending participates in programs put on by this organization, and a look at the calendar gets me excited about all of the things I want to become involved in beyond Sunday worship and yoga classes.   

Things coming up include the Spiritual Book Club that next meets at Book People on November 9th, and the Interfaith Thanksgiving Celebration on November 22nd. While I know attending things doesn't equal a well practiced spiritual life, it still opens the channels of dialogue, prayer and reflection that are necessary for cultivating a calm and open mind.  I can get so tense that I forget to breathe, so anything that puts me on the track of spiritual mindfulness and keeps me on it is a positive, and I'd like to fill my life with far more positives than I typically make room for.  I'm always open to stories and advice about how to go about this. 

Dave, a great human being. 


On Pandora, appropriatley: God Made The Automobile
 

Little Rock Central High School's GSA Club

Last night I got in bed and curled up with the latest issue of NEA Today.  Even though I'm not teaching this year, I'm still a member of the National Education Association, and receive their magazine as a benefit.  The cover stories "Literature in the Digital Age" and "Religious Groups Reach Out to Schools" initially attracted me to the October/November issue, but reading through it, I turned the page and got very excited to see a photograph of a familiar sight - Little Rock Central High School.

Most people recognize Central High as the infamous sight of the Little Rock Nine, where Little Rock public schools attempted integration for the first time by enrolling nine students from the all-black high school across town.  One of the most famous images of this incident is that of Elizabeth Eckford attempting to enter the school while separated from the other eight.  The incident gained national press when the National Guard was called in, Little Rock's white population went crazy, and the following year all schools were closed to eliminate the possibility of integration.  I'm happy to say, as a Little Rock native, that this is not the climate in Little Rock any more.  When I was in eighth grade, the 40th anniversary of the incident rolled around and President Clinton came to speak to the huge, multi-ethnic crowd.  In fact, I'd venture a guess that Central High is now majority African-American.  There are also a lot more private schools in Little Rock with large white populations... but we won't get in to that now. 

The facade of Central is still just as grand as ever, but I remember visiting friends there when I had a day off from my private school, and some of the walls were crumbling in the classrooms.  Luckily, (prepare for a bad pun), walls aren't the only things that are still crumbling at Central, (and in all fairness, they might have repaired that problem since I was last there).

 

The article I turned to in NEA Today was called "The Power of One," and was written to encourage teachers to embrace students of the GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, queer) community in order to prevent incidents ranging from bullying, to dropping out, to suicide.  The driving point of the article is to remind educators of the importance of "adults who will stand up for (the GLBTQ students)" being present in schools.

Aside from both loving the message and bitterly thinking about how my job might have been in jeopardy if I had ever proposed sponsoring a Gay Straight Alliance at the last school I worked in, I got excited to see that the curly haired youth on the far right is Devon Beardon, a student I had the pleasure of meeting at CAR - the Center for Artistic Revolution, in Little Rock when I visited their youth section - DYSC - Diverse Youth for Social Change.

Both CAR & DYSC are amazing programs headed up by Randi Romo, who is Devon's grandmother, and who I also had the extremely good fortune of accidentally meeting at a poetry reading at Sticky Fingerz, during the Arkansas Literary Festival that Lennon and I volunteered for last April.  When I told Randi about seeing the article, she said there was one false bit of information - that a former Central student profiled, Jeanie, had not been beaten up in front of teachers in the Central High parking lot, but that she had been bullied, and an administrator had threatened to expel her if she brought forth any more complaints about her treatment.  I hope whoever said that to her has since been fired.

The article also details the importance of teacher support for ALL students, establishing groups like the Gay Straight Alliance, which we had at my high school in northwest Arkansas when I was a senior in 2002, establishing policies against intolerable behavior - including my pet peeve - calling things "gay" - (ask any of my former students - my class was a no gay/retarded zone!), and participating in the Day of Silence, which students at my last school did do on their own.  The next one coming up is April 16, 2010.  I want to get one going at my current school through the Youth for Unity program!

Another element of the article was the suggestion of incorporating characters and literature into the high school canon of required reading.  I had the book Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger, about a transgender teen, on my classroom library shelf, and it was checked out multiple times, and the students who read it enjoyed it and recommended it to others without any raise of an eyebrow, (it was the administration and parts of the community that I saw as ultra-conservative).  It was also telling, to me, that a film like Milk came out (no pun this time) and met success in a city like Little Rock, that is often overlooked by the cosmopolitan crowd.

I hope that with the recent speech by Obama, as well as other advances in cultural dialogue, will encourage schools and students to catch up with the age of tolerance.  It would seem obvious that a society divided by prejudice and hate can not thrive, but then one hears the term "gay" slung around hallways as though it had no tangible affect on individuals, and it becomes clear that the collective empathy of American society still has a long way to go.

Even after teaching Elie Wiesel's Night and a holocaust unit, there was still a large disconnect in students between the lessons of history and their daily lives.  A unified front is necessary to quell the accepted intolerance practices that permeate modern speech and thought.  I'm happy to be a part of an organization like NEA that backs cultural acceptance of all people - old and young.

Green Bean Cashew Curry

One thing I love about living in Austin: twenty-four hour grocery stores.  This is especially important since my work schedule shifted from the typical 7:30AM - 4:30PM with teaching, to after school programming hours, noon - 8PM.  The naughty habit that I'm trying to break is sleeping in till 11AM, and then doing all of my "living" after 8:30, sometimes staying up till 3AM, or... during a Lord of The Rings marathon, like last night... 4AM.  HEB feeds my poor sleeping patterns by affording me the capability of buying important things like cupcake liners at two o'clock in the morning.  Arkansas is yet to realize that some people don't run on a diurnal schedule.  If you're not quick enough to be at Kroger buying groceries before 10PM, you need to set your alarm earlier to make it there the next morning. 

Today I came home determined to cook a healthy dinner, since eating out tends to make me gain weight rapidly (duh), and my money disappear (unless I eat at Maria's).  So while I went to the store for a few supplies, I set Lennon to the important task of toasting nuts.  He burned them a bit, but it was ok in the final dish:

Green Bean Cashew Curry

2 tablespoons curry powder
1-2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 teaspoon chili spice
1/2 large red onion, chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/3 cup water
4 ounces firm tofu, cut into small cubes
1 cup snap green beans, snapped in half 
1 1/2 cups cauliflower, cut into florets
1/3 cup cashews, toasted
a handful of cilantro, chopped
2 cups rice



 

1) Begin cooking the rice.  I combined two cups of mixed brown and white rice with four cups of water, and cooked in a covered pot for twenty minutes.

2) Toast the cashews: lay them out on cookie tray and bake at 400 degrees for 7 minutes.  Give them a shake after a few minutes, and check to prevent burning!

3) Bring the coconut milk to a simmer in a large skillet.

4) Wisk in the curry powder and salt.

5) Add water, onion, and garlic.  Stir and simmer.

6) Add the green beans and cauliflower and cook until tender.

7) Add the tofu and stir.

8) Add the rice and the cashews and mix together.

Serve sprinkled with cilantro. I also like my meals salty, so I put a little soy sauce on the final product.

Now if I could just work on waking up in the morning and enjoying my tea and blog reader before noon, I'd be on the road to good health. 

Of course, if one were to ask Bukowski, he'd say this assumption was silly.

Hip Hop Theatre Explosion at The Vortex

On Friday I got to take my kids on their first fieldtrip.  Part of the after-school program I run has a group called S.O.U.L. Sessions that comes in to teach kids kids breakdancing, DJ'ing, and free style hip-hop.  This organization also works with another Austin group, the Cipher, that is comprised of local hip-hop artists, including a student or two from the high school where I work.  The fieldtrip was to the Vortex Theatre to see Hip Hop Explosion.  The students I took got to break dance and rap with members of SOUL Sessions and the Cipher.  They also got to see one of their mentors, a Safe Place employee, and phenomenal youth worker, (she appropriatley runs a group called Phenomenal Women), perform with her group Public Offenders.  The sets of the show included break dancing, several rappers, a slam poet, Public Offenders, and the Cipher.  Zell Miller III (also works for my program) wasn't hosting that night, but the lady who was did well and is much prettier :)

I'm not really into hip hop, but I like connecting students to an art form that they are willing to embrace, and when I see them perform and do well, I want everyone else to know that those are my kids and they are stellar.

So really... what job could be better than essentially being a youth-enrichment-specialist?  Our next big fieldtrip is a tour of Austin graffiti art to prepare the kids to create a large mural under the guidance of SOUL Sessions artists.  Not a bad day at the office, even if I didn't get home till midnight on Friday.   

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A bit of housekeeping:

I'm trying to set up shop officially.  I don't really understand the technical side of social networking, or things that must be simple to the "8 bazillion users" of social bookmarking sites, but I'm determined to try and figure a few of the user-friendly sites/tools out.  I'm also camera shopping - preferably something used, that can take pictures at night, and can increase my repertoire from the "point-and-shoot" genre.

Maybe once that's complete, my next project can be a home-made banner!  But I'll try not race ahead of my abilities.

Texas Rollerderby Calvello Cup Championship

Last night was the Texas Rollerderby Lonestar Rollergirls (yes, that's a mouthful) end-of-season Calvello Cup Championship bout. I'd always been curious about Rollerderby, as there are lots of stereotypes about it floating around, as well as allusions to it that sparked my interest - starting with Sam's mom on Clarissa Explains it All to my favorite cake receptionist, Mary Alice, joining a team in Baltimore on Ace of Cakes.

In Austin, I first saw tickets for sale from girls in short skirts on skates down on South Congress during a First Thursday event. That night I only picked up a flier about TXRD, but later learned that I work with the manager of the TXRD team the Hellcats, Jonny Stranger. Prior to that discovery, he was known only as the film instructor that comes in to my after-school program to teach kids about movie making in conjunction with the Austin Film Society.

He's now become my ten-dollar-ticket man, since he sold me tickets to the first bout I went to, the Hellcats vs. the Rhinestone Cowgirls, with the Hellcats kicking the "rhiny's hineys," (read amongst the clever fan signs at the bout, amongst which was also "Who doesn't like Pussy?").

I like Jonny, in addition, because he once told students, during a stop-motion-animation class, that the human eye always assesses a scene and asks two questions: "Is it safe?" and "Is it beautiful?" A quote that now runs through my head often.

Since Jonny is my connection to the roller derby, Lennon and I attended the bout sporting all the pink we could find. And FYI, that hat is 100% his, and not borrowed from my belongings.

The Hellcats dress in pink jumpsuits that look like sexed-up car mechanic jumpers. Bloomers, fishnets, and helmet adornments are all the skater's preference. When they rolled onto the banked track, they brought in black roses and laid them on top of the opponent's helmets.

The Hellcats were up against the undefeated Cherry Bombs, a neon-green-sporting team that entered the stadium wheelding chain saws, guns, hockey sticks, and baseball bats. I was intimidated from twenty rows up.

The physical danger associated with Roller Derby is very real. At the last bout I attended, I was unsure how much of the fighting was legit, since many of the girls seemed to be laughing and very friendly off the track. Jonny told me that usually tempers will flare between two individual skaters, and others who jump in do it good humoredly and in an attempt to break up real scuffles. There were DEFINITELY real scuffles this time around. At least two instances with one skater throwing down another and beating her, and then a critical member of the Cherry Bombs - "Cherry Chainsaw" - twisted her ankle on a fall (I, and everyone else in the stadium, saw her foot go around), and broke it (like, compound fracture broke it). She started screaming and the entire stadium stopped what they were doing as ambulances had to be rushed in, morphine drip started on sight, and the track dismantled so she could be carried out on a gurney. Ouch.

After watching our first bout a few weeks ago, Lennon and I rented Hell On Wheels, the documentary about the origins of Texas Rollerderby, and there were several shots of broken bones, one showing a girl's foot hanging off of her leg, and later described as "held on by her skin and her tights." A collection went around the stadium for Cherry Chainsaw as she was being tended to, and $4,000 was raised on the spot.

Lennon's sister Laura came to visit us yesterday, so we took her to the bout as well. Some brother-sister fighting commenced in the stands.

Now that the movie Whip It is out, I suspect the popularity of Rollerderby will explode. One of the characters in the movie, Razor, is based on Jonny Stranger, long hair and all. So Jonny issued a formal challenge to the actor, Andrew Wilson (also a Texan), to a TXRD style two-lap no-rules dual around the banked track. I didn't think Andrew had accepted the challenge until the end of half-time, when Jonny rolled out on quad skates with a jammer helmet on and sporting leather shorts. Andrew cheated a little... he had on rollerblades.

Evidence that I need a much better camera aside, here's Jonny and Andrew lined up waiting for the whistle signal to start the dual.

On the far side of the track, you can see Jonny and Andrew wrestling here to prevent the other from getting ahead. This happened several times during their two laps around... and Jonny still won :) Go Austin!

In the documentary I learned the origins of "spank alley," which has evolved to be a row of front-row seats for lottery winning ticket holders, and then later is the line-up of everyone with a birthday in the house so they can receive spanks from all the roller girls. I think some people without birthdays snuck up there to get a spanking.

My co-worker Elizabeth also bought tickets from Jonny, and saved us seats in the stands, also known as the "thunderdome" in derby-speak.

The final score - Hellcats 44, Cherry Bombs 37. One of the announcers is Wesley Page, and the other announcer joked that he is Ellen Page's brother (the star of Whip It). I'm curious to know if that is true or was just a quip.

Although I feel bad for the Cherry Bomb's loss after the injury of one of their star players, I'm still glad the team who's colors I was sporting won. I can't wait for January and the next season to roll around! (haha - I'm taking cue from the incessant puns of the announcers).

Until then, I just have to satiate myself by getting over to the Alamo Drafthouse to watch the movie.