On October 2nd, Fox Searchlight will release WHIP IT, featuring Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristin Wiig and Juliette Lewis. (Daniel Stern, utterer of a favorite movie line, “If hate were people, I’d be China,” makes the crossover to father figure, making me feel both old and comfortable somehow.) Although not a Mark Mothersbaugh bio-pic, as the title might imply,  it is the much-anticipated directorial debut of Drew Barrymore.  However, despite all of the glitter and fuss, the real star of the movie is…roller derby.

WHIP IT, based on the 2007 novel “Derby Girl” by Shauna Cross (aka Maggie Mayhem) formerly of the L.A. Derby Dolls, is a fictionalized account of experiences skating with the Texas Rollergirls, nicely wrapped in teen-vs-parent-angst-plus-rock-‘n-roll-love story. Got that?

Resin takes new shape in one local glasser’s hands

In surfing lexicon, the phrase “give a wave” is used on a rare occasion by nostalgic and well-intentioned old-timers who have reached a point of Zen-like surf satisfaction in their lives. Cynics may scoff: that just translates into “give me a wave.” But the more enlightened among us recognize the karmic value in letting the odd peak slide under their longboard to a stoked grom on the inside with an encouraging “Go!”

And while the act of giving a wave is ephemeral, one local surfboard glasser has found a unique way of making a more lasting statement.

In this, my final installment on RollerCon 2009 (http://rollercon.net/ ), the international roller derby convention on the Las Vegas strip, we'll get to the real personal nitty-gritty, beyond the skating and the learning. Beyond the networking and the elbow-rubbing. Even beyond the tattoo-comparing, the hero-worship, the grand Black and Blue Ball and the V.R . (http://www.thevagineregime.com/ ) guerilla pool parties. After all of the aforementioned activities, the week concluded as many Vegas weekends do, with the exchange of drunken vows, in the form of a mass derby wedding (and I don't mean a "wedding mass").

The "derby wife" among skaters is a special relationship having little to do with the sexual orientation (or current pre-existing marital status) of either party gettin' hitched. The relationship is best described in the introduction of the official derby wedding vows, credited to Kasey Bomber : (http://www.myspace.com/kcbomber)

Believe it or not, a roller derby conference in Las Vegas did require a notebook and pen.  Seminars and roundtable discussions on topics ranging from Budgeting and Bookkeeping For Derby and Junior Derby, to Balancing Sport and Spectacle and Building a Better Line-up, served to educate newbies with start-up leagues as well as jaded established league members.  (Kudos to all who lead these classes - I believe I am smarter now than I was on July 30th.  I know it's hard to believe.) 

Of all the announcements made at last months's Comic-Con in San Diego, perhaps nothing shocked the show floor harder than when Marvel blew the roof off of the convention center and revealed their complete acquisition to the full publishing rights of Marvelman. A character whose legal history rivals the most intense dramatics on display in even the most well written comics. To anyone unfamiliar, this may seem like a head scratcher. Just who is this "Marvelman" and why should I care? Well, I can answer that question with a name: Alan Moore.

Years before Moore made the jump across the pond to American comics and began his complete alteration of the comic book landscape with his work on titles like Swamp Thing and a little known 12 issue series called Watchmen, there was a British magazine called Warrior .  An anthology comic publication comprised of several serialized strips where the bearded one began to cut his teeth at redefining what the medium was capable of. Marvelman was one of the main features of the book which also included V for Vendetta. While the character himself dates back to the fifties as essentially a rip off of Captain Marvel, family and all (A secret word turns an ordinary person into a super hero with powers beyond those of mortal men, blah, blah, blah), it wouldn't be until Moore wrapped his hands around the title before the book would truly take flight and become something incredibly unique and beyond compelling.

Every group of like-minded people has its annual summit, a combination group hug, think-tank, motivational kick-in-the-pants, meat market, and (sometimes) drunk tank. Fantasists have Comic-Con, pagans have PantheaCon, computer hackers have DEFCON, and the cinema elite have plain old Cannes (some of you just pronounced that correctly for the first time).

A transformative tale of three local shapers

Wave-smoothing kelp beds, world class point breaks, and a relatively protected southwest-facing bay together tailor Santa Cruz into a high-performance surfing mecca. Marry nature’s bounty with the ingenuity of three local shapers at the forefront of producing red-hot, light and durable custom boards out of expanded polystyrene (EPS), and you’ve got one potent combination.
Photo Credit, Kelly V

When I was a kid I had no idea that comic books came out every Wednesday. Growing up without much money made trips to the shops pretty scarce so I would rarely see the same books twice. For all I knew my store was visited by the comic fairy constantly since every time I went, there would be all new and amazing reasons to warrant the public humiliation of begging for 2 dollars from my Mom. Back then the only scheduled comics that I knew of and could look forward to came in the newspaper - the daily black and whites (which felt like nothing more than a temporary fix) and that glorious Giant Sized Sunday Annual that came buried beneath what felt like pounds of coupons every week.