“I really like Jessica Abel’s stuff. I thought Out On The Wire was great, one of my favorite reads last year. But this one didn’t take me to as interesting a place. Which is weird when one considers that the place Out On The Wire went was podcast studios and Trish Trash is about a roller derby on MARS.
I was once quite enamored of roller derby. Before my city had a team, I went about an hour away to watch Denver’s team more than a few times. When I visited Oregon we made the trip to see a roller derby bout. But now I think I’ve gotten a bit bored with it.
Roller derby is an interesting sport and fun to watch. It’s also one of the few sports where the women’s league is the dominant league. I don’t think there’s a problem with roller derby. I’m just not a sports person, spectator or player. I own one sports uniform, which is a t-shirt for a rec volleyball team (we were un-undefeated last season. That’s fancy for “we lost EVERY game”) and two hockey jerseys, which are both for fictional, podcast-based teams.
However, if I were to make suggestions to spice up the sport of roller derby?
+Mechanical Track: Imagine a track that was like a moving walkway. Sometimes it goes one way, sometimes the other.
+Penalty Tank: This is like a penalty box, but it’s a dunk tank. And before the player can come out, another player has to throw a ball and trigger the mechanism to drop the penalized player in the tank.
+Mascots: Roller derby mascot game is weak. There are some, but this should be a bigger part of the spectacle.
+The Hat-dicap: This is a hat full of cards with different handicaps that can be placed on skaters. Things like having an arm tied behind a back, skating backwards, whatever. Whatever works for the skaters. These could be deployed to keep things interesting during the bout.
+Fan Games: You know how at baseball they do that thing where the fan has to run out and put the base in, then run home? I’m thinking fans have to shotgun a beer, skate around the track, shotgun a second beer, then around the track again. Something like that would be fun.
+Jetpacks: no explanation needed.
By the way, these all apply to all sports, far as I’m concerned.”