I’m psyched to be going tomorrow to the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia to watch the quarter-finals and final four of the Women’s Flat Track [Roller] Derby Association (WFTDA) national tournament, aka the Declaration of Derby. The tournament begins today and ends Sunday with the awarding of the Hydra trophy to the winning team.

Roller derby? Hell yeah!

To paraphrase a hackneyed phrase that appears in some form in almost every mainstream media article on modern roller derby, it’s not the roller derby of my youth. That is to say, the sport of “classic roller derby” I watched in the early ’70s on UHF TV was a scripted spectacle in which an impressive degree of athleticism was secondary to fighting and pro wrestling-style hero-and-villain posing.

Modern derby is played as legitimate sport. Unsurprisingly to me, it works. When the modern derby movement started in 2001 in Austin, TX, the founders initially planned to play it as spectacle. They quickly found it was more fun — not to mention safer — to play for real.

The movement spawned several hundred leagues and has gone international — all amateur. Most of the leagues have all-women players — with men participating as coaches, referees, announcers, and statisticians. But that’s not the only reason my post title includes “no balls”:  in fact, derby is one of the few team sports where there is no ball.

Most leagues use the flat track because it’s much more economical in terms of setup and storage than the banked track used in classic derby.  Plus, it’s easier to find opponents. The men’s version of the sport is just starting to grow, by the way.

That brings me back to the tournament. The participating teams contain the best players from their respective leagues— travel teams.

Having read the team profiles on Derby News Network (DNN) and watched DNN’s Pants-off preview show, I’m offering up predictions for how this thing will play out …

Today

First round

The temptation is to pick the higher-seeded teams, but I’ll go with one upset — Denver over KC.

MADISON, WI 141, Boston 106
ROCKY MOUNTAIN 127, Houston 77
DENVER 131, Kansas City 121
GOTHAM 118, Detroit 52

Saturday

Quarter-finals

The marquis game, assuming Gotham beats Detroit Friday, will be Gotham from NYC against the Oly Rollers (heh) from Olympia, WA. Gotham had its 18-game win streak stopped by Philly in the finals of the eastern regional tournament in Raleigh. Oly, which breezed through the western regional in Denver, features a number of former world class hockey and speed skaters. Score one for the old guard — but just barely. The other three top seeds will have easier paths to the final four.

TEXAS 156, Madison 98
PHILLY 109, Rocky Mountain 86
WINDY CITY 97, Denver 60
GOTHAM 127, Oly 119

Final four

I’ll go with a pair of what most derby fans would consider upsets.

I see Gotham, last year’s national champion, falling prey to endurance issues  and perhaps a key injury. Game time for this one will be only a few hours after the end of the Gotham-Oly game. Furthermore, Gotham is the only one of my predicted final four to have played the previous night. I’m calling it Windy City in a squeaker.

The host Philly Roller Girls Liberty Belles team goes into the tournament rated #1 in the country by DNN; their 2009 record includes one-point escapes over the teams I see meeting in the other semi-final game. I hope I’m wrong because I’ll be rooting for Philly, but against Texas I see them coming up a point short — the third time the harm, so to speak.

TEXAS 95, Philly 94
WINDY CITY 82, Gotham 80

Sunday

Third-place game

I’ll give the host team a measure of revenge for the Phillies’ recent World Series loss to the Yankees. Playing a fourth game in 41 hours will make it tough for Gotham. I reiterate that injuries may play a role in Gotham’s downfall. It’s a rough sport — some skaters will get hurt this weekend. The swami in me says Gotham will get the most attention from the EMTs.

PHILLY 89, Gotham 71

Championship game

This one should be a little anti-climactic. I see Texas hitting their stride, buoyed by their semi-final win over Philly.

TEXAS 114, Windy City 85

DNN will be carrying all of the action live on streaming video via Justin.tv starting today at 3:30 EST. Hey, that’s less than two hours from now!

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UPDATED 10/30/09, 7:19 am:
At the end of this post I’ve added YouTube video of Weezer’s performance last night on the Late Show with David Letterman.

One of the few artists to have (barely) penetrated my musical consciousness since the late ’80s is the band Weezer.

They were one of son #1’s first favorite artists. More recently, son #2, age 14, has become a Weezer fanatic. Monday night he was thrilled to learn he was one of the winners of a Weezer fan photo contest on Facebook run by iheartradio, the web streaming portal property of terrestrial radio giant Clear Channel Communications. The prize: two tickets to an invitation-only Weezer show at the P.C. Richard & Son Theater in New York City.

Yesterday I took the afternoon off to escort my son and three friends to the show (one of those friends won the contest too). I hadn’t expected to see the show myself, but the promoters, as they crossed off the names of the contest winners and their guests lined up outside the theater waiting for the doors to open, offered me free admission.

I figured the promoters say the show will only be an hour long — how uncomfortable could it get. After all, it was a chilly evening, I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for a long walk in TriBeCa, and World Series game 1 wouldn’t even be starting on taproom TVs until just before the scheduled end of the show. So I decided to take up the promoters on their offer.

I’m glad I did.

Weezer’s songs are upbeat and catchy, and in the show they delivered them with intensity and enthusiasm. The sound, in the recently opened intimate, seat-less performance space (capacity 250) — “theater” is a misnomer — was clear and the volume just right.

For me the highlights were the infectious “I’m Your Daddy”, the very danceable “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” with its spoken word segments, and the raucous show closer, “Buddy Holly” from their 1994 debut self-titled “blue album.” (The first and second are singles from Weezer’s new album Raditude, scheduled for release next week.)

On the way in the room, the two young female security guards motioned all those entering toward the stage. That’s where my son and his friends wanted to be, and, as a result of our having lined up outside 90 minutes before the doors opened, they got their wish. (My son captured the  pictures accompanying this post.) I, on the other hand, asked one of the guards if I could stand in the back, lamely claiming “I’m a dad”. At first she was adamant, but quickly relented, probably after taking a second look at me, agreeing “you’re a dad”. It turns out I had nothing to fear — but I was glad to be in the back all the same.

There was one down note: the show lasted not an hour but a mere 30 minutes. Although I heard only minor grumbling in the audience when front man Rivers Cuomo announced after five songs that the next song would be the last — I think most of us were too surprised to react — I have to think the vast majority of the audience shared  my disappointment. My appetite had just been whetted when it ended.

So is it a lesson here that I should be at least a bit more tuned in to new music — that I might hear I lot of other stuff I would like? I may have gotten a sign to that effect: This morning the car radio, with its dial left set to the station my son favors on the rare occasions he doesn’t opt for his iPod, greeted me with “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” from the concert set list.

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Image via Wikipedia

“On any given Sunday …” the promotion arm of the National Football League used to trumpet. Pro football has become so popular the NFL put away the trumpet — heck, they probably sold it. Sure — on any given Sunday — or Monday or Thursday — a favorite can fall to a heavy underdog. Indeed, many weeks there are one or more significant upsets.

In recent years, though, there is less and less parity between NFL teams. Recall New England’s undefeated regular season in 2007 and Detroit’s winless season last year — both firsts for the league since the 16-game schedule started in 1978.

Well, the trend toward less parity is accelerating, alarmingly so, this season.

Exhibit A is this past Sunday when there were six — count ‘em, six — games with winning margins of four or more touchdowns!

• New England (5-2) 35, Tampa Bay (0-7) 7
• Green Bay (4-2) 31, Cleveland (1-6) 3
• San Diego (3-3) 37, Kansas City (1-6) 7
• Indianapolis (6-0) 42, St. Louis (0-7) 6
• NY Jets (4-3) 38, Oakland (2-5) 0
• Cincinnati (5-2) 45, Chicago (3-3) 10

Ouch — times six! A rout, a smearing, a burial, a rollover, a demolition, and a drubbing! These scores resemble early season college football — when top-ranked teams host cupcake opponents, yielding pay days for the visitors sufficient to fund their athletic programs for entire seasons.

I’d say now on any given NFL Sunday — or Monday or Thursday — there is a pretty good chance your crappy team will get blown out by my playoff-contending team.

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As a roadgeek and a fan of road books and movies, I’ve long thought it would be cool to drive cross-country. So I waited with interest above and beyond the parental variety for the daily phone calls from my oldest son as he drove from our home in southeastern Pennsylvania across the country — nearly — to central Arizona where he is enrolling a few days from now as a college freshman.

His driving partner was his roommate-to-be. They arrived at their final destination last night after a week on the road.

Here is their route, covering 2,499 miles according to Google Maps, as near as I can tell from my son’s reports:

View Larger Map

Their vehicle was my son’s 22-year old diesel sedan, packed to the gills, with 304,000+ miles on the odometer — that is, at the start of the trip. There were, as one would expect, concerns about the reliability of the car, but thankfully it didn’t give them any major trouble.

No major trouble, that is, except for the air conditioning, which gave out on the second day. That the A/C was leaking refrigerant was known before the trip. We didn’t expect it to last the whole trip. He charged it a few days before the trip, at my urging, with the hope and expectation it would last most of the trip. The eventual disappointment on that score made the trip much more of an endurance test — in my mind at least.

I give them a lot of credit. I say I think it would be cool to drive cross-country, but given that I need an extra half-hour in the sack for each hour I’ve driven during the day, I doubt I would be physically up to the challenge — or would have been at his age, even with the driving responsibilities shared. And when you factor in the lack of A/C for most of the trip — well, you can pretty much forget that. Ah, youth — I remind myself that I didn’t own a car with A/C until I was in my early 30s.

My son and his friend are deserving of additional praise — and hearty thanks — for minimizing their lodging expenses. Their total for seven nights on the road was a cool $87! Night by night, here’s how they did it:

1. Pittsburgh, PA, free in the home of a friend
2. Bloomington, IN, free in the home of (now ex-)strangers, found through CouchSurfing.org.
3. Eldon Hazlet State Recreation Area, Carlyle, IL, camping, $20 campsite fee
4. Kansas City, MO, free, couch-surfing
5. Wichita, KS, free, couch-surfing
6. Albuquerque, NM, motel, $67
7. (backtracking) Santa Fe, NM, free with relatives

They made time to do some sightseeing in St. Louis, MO (day 4), Lawrence, KS (day 5), Albuquerque (day 7), and Santa Fe (day 7).

My son wanted to make the most of the opportunity to see roadside Americana, so they strayed quite a bit from monotonous interstate highways. Zoom in on the map above and you’ll see they went on US-50 in Indiana and Illinois on day 3 and US-54 in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico on day 6, the latter representing a pretty nice shortcut, mileage-wise.

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Well, that’s the way they do it on TV, isn’t it? TV’s hype machine has successfully morphed “new” into ALL NEW.

Sunday, on an ALL NEW Simpsons …

Next, it’s an ALL NEW Office, followed by an ALL NEW 30 Rock.

No doubt you’ve seen this usage of  “all new” ad nauseam if you watch prime time network TV with any regularity.

I think it’s stupid and annoying.

It’s as if you wouldn’t watch the touted episode if you knew it contained the least bit of footage recycled from another episode. And besides, you know it won’t, not if it’s advertised as a NEW episode — unless the episode contains flashback sequences or it’s a highlights anthology.

So inserting ALL is not only stupid and annoying on the networks’ part, it’s redundant. After all, stock (recycled) footage isn’t used to any significant degree in prime time network TV. Or is it?

I became familiar with the term stock footage as it relates to 3 Stooges shorts. Many Stooges shorts had stock footage, especially during the Shemp-as-third-stooge era of the late ’40s and early ’50s. It turns out the use of stock footage is a lot more prevalent in modern TV than I thought.  But still, I don’t think the usage rises to a level that can be called significant.

When you think about it though, “all new” can really only be applied to performance media. Imagine applying “all new” to other aspects of your life:

I bought an all new car.

Did you see the all new kid in our class?

Your all new house is beautifully decorated.

My daughter and her husband just had an all new baby.

Ridiculous.

Now when a product is “new and improved”. Well, don’t get me started. No product is ever relaunched unless its changes can be marketed as improvements. “If it ain’t broke …”, as the saying goes.

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The July 9 issue of the Delaware Coast Press turned out to have a wealth of “blog fodder” — just what was needed to energize my moribund blog.

This, from that issue’s GRAPEVINE column, wherein DCP readers’ “comments and observations” are featured without attribution, is a real LOLer:

All my life, I have heard and read about the price of gas — per gallon. But it’s not the price for a whole gallon of gas, it’s for 9/10 of a gallon. You’re always cheated out of a 10th of every gallon of gas. Over your lifetime, that’s a lot of money these companies are making. Isn’t it time to get the federal government to get rid of that 10th and make them give us the full gallon?

This is like the parallel universe of gas consumption. A put-on? Probably. But very funny. Who would have thought the “9/10″ on gas station price signs is a fraction of a gallon rather than a fraction of a cent? The answer: the writer of this GRAPEVINE submission.

With tongue in cheek, I say in response to the writer’s sentiment: “Here, here!” The feds do need to make the oil companies give us full gallons. Now that’s a cause I can get behind.

But why stop there? The oil companies should be required to reimburse each and every one of us drivers for the gas we’ve been shortchanged over the years.

Just for fun, I’ll ballpark the windfall I’d receive from that reimbursement. Now, let’s see …

• 36 years of driving,
• on average 20,000 miles a year (I’m keeping the numbers round here), giving a total of 720,000 miles,
• on average 20 miles per gallon, which is equivalent to 18 miles per 9/10 gallon, making 40,000 9/10 gallons purchased,
• at an average price of $2.00 per 9/10 gallon, I’ve spent $80,000 on gas (wow!).

The math gets confusing at this point, but I got the same answer calculating it two different ways, so it must be right — famous last words — well I said I’m ballparking. Anyway, here goes …

My windfall would be $8,000.

• The $80,000 I spent should have gotten me another 4,000 gallons. At $2.00/gallon that would be $8,000.
• I was shortchanged a dime for every dollar I spent. I spent $80,000, so I was shortchanged $8,000.

I don’t know about you, but an unexpected eight grand would look great in my bank account. Time to act.

Dear Senator Casey …

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Props to photographer John King for capturing the moment of a personal injury in the photo accompanying this article in the Delaware Coast Press (not the photo to the right) — at least if you believe the caption:

Jordan Wehtherholtv, 12, of Reading, Pa., gets a splinter while walking on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk.

I don’t believe it. Looks like a reenactment to me.

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Some readers may have already heard this news — others may not have known it was even in the works. But anyway …

I became a grandfather yesterday, May 31. My stepdaughter and her husband were blessed with the birth of a son, Benjamin.

He arrived almost four weeks early, the morning after an exhausting Saturday for my stepdaughter during which she co-managed a six-hour charity yard sale in the morning/afternoon and oversaw her dance school students performing in a three-and-a-half hour dance recital in the evening.

Benjamin’s weight at birth was 6 lbs. even. Since arriving he has developed some issues typical for early arrivers. It doesn’t sound like anything serious but we’re told that to be on the safe side he will likely remain in the hospital for an indefinite period after his mom is discharged tomorrow.

Newly minted grandmom Mrs. QC uncles sons #1, #2, and #3 are thrilled — as am I, natch’.

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Mowing season is arriving in QC-country, so this past Sunday my car’s parking accommodations switched from the cushy garage to the exposed driveway.

I’ve always locked my car overnight when it’s parked in the driveway. We’ve lived here since 1992. There’s “Black Beauty” right there:

But to lock it I either have to

• use the key

or

• close the driver’s door, open the same-side passenger door and then reach in and push down the lock button on the driver’s door.

A puzzling design decision — them Swedes are, um, quirky.

Anyway it’s a bit of a pain. So for this mowing season I got the notion I would leave the car unlocked overnight. The car is 15 years old, I don’t keep anything of significant value in it, and the neighborhood is pretty safe.

Here’s what has happened since:

• Monday morning I noticed — not right away — my No-W button had mysteriously moved from its normal spot — the storage compartment between the front seats — to the passenger seat. Hmm. I didn’t recall moving it. I moved it back and promptly forgot about the incident. (Yeah, I know we finally got rid of that “W” guy.)
• Monday night I locked the car. My mechanic (and neighbor) would be driving it the next morning to his shop to service it. I didn’t want him to get him to get the wrong idea when he walked up to the car, key in hand.
• After he brought it back Tuesday evening — with a new, shiny exhaust pipe and muffler — I left it unlocked.
• This morning — Wednesday —the driver’s door was ajar (but not far enough to cause the interior light to come on) and on the driver’s seat was the No-W button and several more items from the compartment.

So it seems a well-meaning, neighborhood watcher-type guy or gal is trying to disabuse me of the notion that I can safely leave the car unlocked overnight.

What to do?

The decision isn’t one I’ll labor over. To paraphrase Smokey Robinson, I’ve unseconded my notion — I’ll go back to locking the car overnight. It’s really not a big deal.

Interesting that someone would go to the trouble this person did, don’t you think? I’m grateful for the protection in some respects, but in other respects I’m angry about what I consider to be meddling and an invasion of my privacy. If my protector is a QC reader — now there’s a long shot —maybe they’ll defend their actions in the comments.

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My favorite DJs on Blip.fm have turned me on to several cool songs I’d long forgotten. In some cases I’d either forgotten or never knew the title and artist — like in the case of “Little Green Bag” by George Baker Selection, a number 21 hit in the U.S. in 1970.

You know how a song gets stuck in your head? Well, usually it’s just part of a song — the part of the song that contains what music industry insiders refer to as “the hook” — because it grabs you.

Can a song be one large hook? I ask because “Little Green Bag” is stuck in my head in its entirety.

Suffice to say, “Bag” is hook-laden. I warn you: Don’t play this video unless you’re prepared for a musical brain imprint that could take days to fade.

Smiling yet? Go ahead. Play it again. Or play one of the many other videos of this song on YouTube. I can wait.

AllMusic.com reviewer Stewart Mason characterizes “Bag” as “utterly beguiling”. Sho ’nuff!

George Baker Selection was a Dutch band. Their other hit in the U.S. was “Una Polama Blanca”, which peaked at number 26 in 1975. Baker is Johannes Bouwens. At 64, he continues to perform and record as a solo artist and is master of the domain GeorgeBaker.com. (To see the English translation of Baker’s site, click “English” beneath the navigation menu; strangely it seems one cannot get to the translated version directly.)

With a track this cool, itemizing the qualities runs the risk of detracting from the pleasure. But I’ll do it anyway.

“Bag” features what are typically rock music’s supporting players — the bass and the rhythm guitar.

• With the bass-driven opening, we’re put on notice to expect something, if not special, then at least different.
• Persistent rhythm guitar drives us the rest of the way with varying intensity — except for the break. All the changes in intensity are timed just right.
• When the bass comes back out front for the break, it’s no wonder Baker is moved to stage-whisper — for the second time — “yeahhh”.

There is an extraordinary dissonance to “Bag”. Had I heard the verses and chorus separately, I would say no way they’re from the same song. But with the rhythm guitar as glue, it works.

• The verses (“Lookin’ back on the track for a little green bag …”) sound like what you would get if you threw “It’s My Life” (The Animals), “Clean Up Woman” (Betty Wright), “Venus” (Shocking Blue, another Dutch band), and “Israelites” (Desmond Dekker and the Aces) into a blender and switched it to “High”. (That is, what you would get if you didn’t get a god-awful mess.)
• The chorus (“Looking for some happiness but there is only loneliness to find …” — I needed to consult a lyrics site to decipher those lines) brings to mind the 1982 number one hit “Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, another extremely catchy track.

“Bag” is like a jigsaw puzzle — the pieces could only fit together in one way. How that happens is, like Mason writes — “utterly beguiling”. Delicate percussive accents add to the enjoyment.

As for the vocals, I love Baker’s delivery — the stage-whispering and other embellishments, the way he dials up the intensity and pitch in the middle of each verse, the hiccup-py “out of sight in the day”, and the English-as-second-language quality. The meaning of the lyrics? Who cares! They are merely the conduit for Baker’s fun delivery. Many commenters on YouTube insist the little green bag is a bag of pot. Judging from the video, I’d say they’re probably right. Not that it matters.

You may remember “Bag” as the soundtrack for the opening credits of Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 movie, Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino’s 1994 follow-up, the rollicking Pulp Fiction, is one of my all-time favorite movies, so it’s strange that I haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs. Now that I know “Bag” is on the soundtrack, I won’t delay much longer.

In fact, last night I rented the two-DVD 10th anniversary reissue of Reservoir Dogs from the library and will watch sometime before the end of the month. James Berardinelli, my online “go-to” guy for movie reviews, gave Reservoir Dogs the maximum four stars, as he did Pulp Fiction. I’m concerned I might be put off by some of the violence, especially the “ear scene” which I’ve seen in part on YouTube, but I’ll avert my eyes if need be. (I think I’ll pass on the two not previously released camera angles of this scene — DVD “bonus features”).

I expect watching Reservoir Dogs will ensure the imprint of “Bag” in my brain lingers a few more days.

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