Revenge of the Nrrrd

Posted on December 12, 2009

By Holly Hitsville

Riot Nrrrd skates for the Devil’s Night Dames and is sick of always losing.  She’s looking to get her revenge tonight and isn’t afraid to talk about it. Riot and I sat down and crunched numbers, precise grammar, the serious side of roller derby business, and the rock star opportunities that arise from being a dame on wheels.

You’ve played for over a year and a half and have yet to win a game.  However the Dames have a new training system in place and are looking for a fight. Can you tell us a little bit about the new regime?

Well, the Dames have had a history of high player turnover, but this year we’ve retained more skaters than ever before.  Last year we drafted about a million rookies, including myself, and we n00bs have been learning and working hard all year, including playing a lot of MCDL games during the “off-season.”  And the rookies we picked up in the recent pre-season draft, Betty Beretta and Formosa Fury, are not to be trifled with.

We also have two awesome new managers with hockey backgrounds, Candyman and Uncle Bodybagz, who are bringing a new perspective and some additional cohesion to the team.

But our new training system…..that’s top-secret!

What do you think of the Detroit Pistoffs?

You know, Holly, in all these interviews when you ask the skater about the other team, they always say such nice and encouraging things.  Where is the playful trash talk, I want to know?

So, what do I think of the Pistoffs?  I think they’re about to get Pist ON this Saturday!    (Ohhhhh, BURN!)

What makes you particularly nerdy?

Hmm.  The fact that my number is 1337?  The fact that I’m in my 9th year of post-secondary education?  The fact that I do science experiments for a living?

As the derby girls that I carpool with can report, I will often inundate them with nrrrdy trivia such as the fact that “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.” is a grammatically correct sentence or give them the history of internet memes.

Being a member of the league is a lot more than just skating in bouts. There’re countless hours of practicing, committee/business meetings, making policy, and events/meet and greets.

What do you think the most challenging thing is about being a derby girl off skates?

I think the hardest part is remembering that we, the skaters, in fact run this league, and that if we don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.  It’s so easy to hang up your skates at the end of the day and forget the business aspects of derby.  Obviously hitting a jammer to the floor is way more fun than, say, drafting a committee budget, but ultimately, we can’t have the former without the latter.

You were recently on the radio. Tell us about that event and what you liked about it.

Well, you (Holly Hitsville), Tess Tackles, and I were on “Pandora’s Lunchbox,” a half-hour radio show, ostensibly about food, on Ann Arbor’s WCBN.   Our segment aired on Thanksgiving.

My favorite part was actually hanging out in the studio beforehand.  It made me feel like a rock star.  We sat around drinking our coffee and sitting on 3000 year-old couches in a room plastered floor to ceiling with band stickers.  The host of the show, Mike Perini, gave us skating magazines from the ‘40s to page through, and we explored the studio.

© Copyright Detroit Derby Girls • Powered by Wordpress