Peoria Rivermen vs. Manitoba Moose(s) – Peoria, IL

Like I said, my family loves them some hockey. We all piled into various cars and headed down south to Peoria, Illinois, to watch the Peoria Rivermen play the Manitoba Moose. Again, I’m not a fan, but I do like to yell in public. So we chilled out in the stands and saw what Peoria had to offer. The Rivermen won in overtime in an action packed game (seriously, that wasn’t sarcastic this time).

Two of my nephews were at the game and the whole point was to embarrass them. Unfortunately, they’ both are used to my family, so it was very difficult to actually embarrass them. I tried though. My voice hurt afterwards.

My family went home with all kinds of schwag, but the hilarious part was my father. He would kick up his feet on the railing when the players were at the other end of the rink. Then when they would come back towards our end, he’d put his feet down so his shoes didn’t block the action. Yup, that’s my dad.

Quad City Mallards vs. Port Huron Ice Hawks – Moline, IL

I went to see some hockey while I was back visiting the folks. My family came in from Michigan and they’re big into hockey. So we scored some tickets to see the yet-to-win Quad City Mallards play the Port Huron Ice Hawks.

I won’t go into too much detail, since I’m not a huge hockey fan. I just like to yell at the top of my lungs and embarrass the rest of my family, which I EXCEL at. My sister, PalmMapper, was watching my niece Froggy like a hawk the whole game since my niece was working her magic with some older guys. Hilarious. But now I know that my camera has a decent zoom on it (if it didn’t have a caffeine-shaky operator).



Wouldn’t you know it, the Mallards won their first game in a shoot out. Weird. But I was glad I got to see it. It was actually a decent game and my father (who goes to many games) said it was the best he’d seen them play. Go Mallards, I guess.

Whitey’s Ice Cream – Coralville, IA

Sometimes when I drive home from Illinois back to Minneapolis, I call up my best friend Coach and see if he wants to meet me at the mall for some Whitey’s Ice Cream. He and his girlfriend, Toach (whom I need to come up with another name for or he’ll yell at me – I just haven’t done it yet), would meet EyeHeartPizza and I at the mall for a quick snack and then we’d bail.

I like to walk through the mall to get a feel for the "scenery" in the Iowa City area, so I park at the far end of the mall and walk through the whole thing to the end that houses Whitey's. It also has the added bonus effect of angering EyeHeartPizza since she hates malls and is already in a bad mood from the early start (and pounding head) she got. Sucked to be her.

I ordered a banana split with strawberries (to make it pink) and EyeHeartPizza even paid for it! If I would have known that, I would have gotten a large. Bummer. Whitey’s truly is the best ice cream ever. Whether it’s in shake form, or scoop, or even their desserty things, it’s amazing. Sadly, the ice cream isn’t going to be the focus of this review.

We usually grab a seat next to the ice rink and watch people falling down, or painful first dates, or hockey scrimmage or something. The last time we met at the mall, we got to see this older man who was high on life and having the time of his life. We talked about him for weeks, so we were hoping he’d be there again this time.

Guess what?

HE WAS THERE!!!!!!!!! This guy has the biggest cornball smile on his face ever. He skates all over the rink, doing spins and with his hands in the air and skating backwards and prancing around on the ice. It is the best ice cream snack entertainment ever. The guy will skate past where we’re sitting and make sure we’re watching him and smiling approvingly of his tricks. We were all convinced he was putting the moves on Coach. I mean, why wouldn’t he? This time, he actually had a girl with him – which really surprised us, if you know what I mean. He would skate backwards in front of her pulling her along, or just in front of her coaxing her forward. And every once in a while, she’d get a little off balance and they’d get tangled up and drop to the ice really hard. Then he would push her aside to watch him and he’d skate around and do some tricks. At one point, she whipped out her cell phone and was filming him, certainly at his request. One of the best parts was him skating to "The Final Countdown" by Europe. That's classy skating, I don't care who you are.

I’m not sure what the names of these moves are, but I don’t really remember seeing them in a lot of competitions. Oh wait, I don’t actually watch figure skating on television. That might also be why I’ve never seen these moves. I got as many shots of this guy as I could. I hope they work on here. You won’t be disappointed.

Since the review really wasn’t about ice cream, I won’t give it a Top 5. It’s really the old guy ice skating that I want you to see.

Minnesota RollerGirls – Roy Wilkins Auditorium - St. Paul, MN

This is going to be a long post, since it was such an awesome night. We sent out eVites to like 50 people trying to get people fired up about this sport. We got a couple of positive responses, so we were thrilled. Gerd and I LOVE roller derby, so we’re trying to spread the word.

We fought the Minnesota Wild traffic (NHL hockey team was playing the same night next door) and made it inside FAR earlier than we anticipated. I grabbed us some drinks and we hunkered down to wait for our group of people. We threw some coats on chairs around us, since the place was starting to fill up. There were SOOO many people that showed up in the auditorium. Waaaay more than the last bout we went to. Apparently Minnesotans love their roller derby!

The pre-show was the twin cities unicycle club. I missed a lot of it since I was in line for drinks, but what I caught was awesome. They did some jumping of bodies (live not corpses) which looks tough on a unicycle. They did some stair climbing and tight-rope cycling. They did some formations and stuff. Did I mention they had really young kids on tall unicycles? Like under 10 year olds!! Then they did a roller derby game called king/queen of the rink – last person on one wheel wins. It was hilarious and strangely cut-throat. They were just blasting each other and it came down to two guys and one little girl. The girl got taken out and the crowd started booing. IT was awesome. Great act before the bout, for sure!!!

It was another all-star game, so the first round was the rookies skating a punk vs disco theme. Lots of black clothes on one team, lots of sequence and hotpants on the other. I love watching the “green” skaters battle it out. They’ve got all the spirit, and much less of the talent. They fall at random sometimes and yet, they’re giving it their all. Go them.

The second round was the grudge match between the MN Rollergirls and the Madison Dairyland Dolls. Madison was won this competition four years in a row, so it was kind firing people up. This was serious action, complete with a little showboating which is always nice to see. These girls can really skate. I’m always impressed when I see them slingshot other skaters or jump over people or do some fancy contortion to get through the pack first. It’s awesome.

The halftime show was the Bratwurst Brothers, a local polka band. They got the crowd out onto the rink and polka dancing fast and furiously. Kind of impressive when there’s a thousand or so people dancing all spinny at the same time. The other 2000 people remained in the stands SINGING all the words to the songs. I didn’t even know there were words to songs other than roll out the barrel!

The third round (round two for the punk vs disco) was a solid round although pretty uneventful. I honestly don’t even remember who won – I think the punks?

The fourth round was the final round of the all-stars. Minnesota was trailing 95% of the round. The girls were getting more aggressive though. The ref started calling penalties left and right. At one point, there were more girls in the penalty box than on the rink. These penalties started to matter because MN started making a serious comeback. Down like 30 points, the girls were playing hard (aka dirty). A couple of times with Madison’s jammer in the penalty box allowed MN to make up serious points (like 14 in one jam!).

The crowd was going crazy! It was soooo loud in there. Time on the clock ran out, and most people thought it was over with Madison in the lead, but time ran out with both jammers in the penalty box, and according to the rules, you can’t finish a bout with a jammer-less jam. So they lined them back up for one last time. Suzie Smashbox, one of the best jammers I’ve ever seen, absolutely destroyed the pack. Lapped everyone and went back for more points!!! The crowd was on their feet screaming. The jam finished and we had to wait for the final point tally…. Minnesota won by TWO points!!! Insane. People were hugging and kissing babies and sloshing beer all over. It was the most intense sporting event I‘ve ever been to. Totally awesome.

All the people in our group were brand new to the sport and I was glad they got to see an awesome bout. It couldn’t have been any better.

We left and headed to Mancini’s Lounge for some after-bout drinks with most of our group. That place is straight outta Swingers. Red leather couches, mirrors everywhere, and a top 40 live band. Awesome. We ended up shutting the place down – it was a late night…

Top 5 things about roller derby
1. Girls on roller skates
2. Intense competition/skill
3. Crowd energy, close to 4000 fans
4. They serve mixed drinks…many mixed drinks…
5. Programs are an AWESOME touch

Bottom 5 things
1. Traffic from the Wild game
2. I didn’t know the words to the polka songs, so I felt like a loser
3. The lines for mixed drinks were long (like at most sporting events)
4. I missed most of the unicycle pre-show
5. I had to hold back a little since I was with work people

www.mnrollergirls.com

Minnesota Roller Girls – Roy Wilkins Auditorium – St. Paul, MN

This summer, I went to Seattle for a nerd convention (don’t ask) and while there, got to see my friend Nina do/play/participate in (what adjective is the right one!!!???) roller derby. It was super awesome. Like many guys, I went to see how women on roller skates knocking each other down (and because I was always fascinated by the hot pants and gold lamme back in the 70’s when it was on tv). However, once you know the rules and scoring system, the whole thing makes perfect sense and I was yelling like an idiot along with everyone else. Nina came to visit us this summer and we drove her to her traveling team’s bout in Milwaukee – yes, these people are dead serious about this sport. Gerd and I had a great time. And kind of got hooked…

So the season opener for the Minnesota Roller Girls was this past weekend. We knew we were going and we got the added benefit of having Coach and Toach come up from Illinois to visit us and watch roller derby. We especially knew we were going when we found out the bout was a “zombies vs pirates” theme. For background, Minneapolis does this zombie pub crawl which a few thousand people attend – hilarious.

The roller derby people adopted it and got fans to dress like their favorite. Then the zombie vs pirate bout consisted of rookie roller girls to give them some competitive track time. Great idea and tons of fun. And yes, Nina, I did wear my Rockets shirt from your Seattle team…

The first bout was zombies vs pirates. Great fun, and great action. The girls are hard workers and you can see they’re way engaged and also way green. Some skating mishaps and hilarity ensued. If you get a penalty, you skate to the penalty box and since there aren’t brakes, you slide into the box on your knees (ba-dum-bum). When the adrenaline is up, sometimes they skate in there too fast and fly over the chairs and ropes and into the crowd. Hilarious (and yes, dangerous of course – but whatever).

Second bout was the MN Roller Girls (MNRG) vs the North West Arkansas (NWA) somebodyorothers. These are the skilled girls with experience and a super competitive nature. It was amazing watching them skate VERY skillfully and avoid getting boxed out by the blockers. Two girls really stood out: Jawbreaker and Suzy Smashbox. Both from different MN teams, but since it was an all-star match, they were on the same team. They really tore it up.

Between halves, and ELO tribute band, name E.L.No, played for the crowd of like 2,500 people. Everybody out on the track getting crazy. It was a great time. They were really good musicians and were able to pull off a couple of really difficult songs (while Coach screamed requests from the balcony where we were seated).

The third bout was the second half of the zombies vs pirates. They were evenly matched and looked like they were slowly getting their skills together. Fun to watch and the announcers were very amusing with their one-liners and double-entendres.

The night ended with the second half of the MNRG vs NWA. NWA skated better than they did in the first half, but still got their asses handed to them by like 112 points. It was kind of a slaughter, but you could tell they were trying. They didn’t give up (like I would have done), and there wasn’t a run-rule where they just call the game, so they stuck it out.

Seriously, if you get a chance, go watch roller derby in your own home town or come up here to visit us and we’ll take you to a bout. MNRG has four teams, and of course, we picked our favorite team based on the color of uniforms, not based on which one had either Suzy Smashbox or Jawbreaker on it. Gerd is a Cubs fan, so she’s used to cheering for a losing team (burn)…

Top 5 things about MN Roller Girls
1. Girls on skates wearing tights and knee-high socks (come on, seriously)
2. 2,500 fans watching
3. Zombies vs Pirate theme - brilliant
4. Skating is now an actual sport in my mind
5. Girls flying into the crowd periodically
(I could make this list 15 things long if I wanted to…)

Bottom 5 things
1. Parking isn’t the greatest (or cheapest)
2. It’s hard to find the actual entrance to The Roy
3. Seemed like a long night of roller derby
4. My Seattle roller derby friends weren’t there to help cheer
5. My throat and head hurt from all the yelling I did (yeah, I’m one of those people)

http://www.mnrollergirls.com