Roller Derby, Mama's Visit, and Chris in Germany

I found photos on my camera that I had intended to turn into several blog posts over the course of the month.

Roller Derby in Portland:


These are the Breakneck Betties. I am very impressed with roller derby. I expected it to be theater pretending to be a sport like professional wrestling, but instead, it's a real sport that uses campy names and costumes as stunts to sell tickets.

It reminds me of old Negro League Baseball in the sense that it was legit athletes playing a legit sport who had to clown around to attract fans. In this case though, the campiness is so intrinsic to the spirit of roller derby that even if the sport was ever taken seriously, I don't think the athletes would necessarily give up the showmanship. It questions the assumption that for a sport to be legitimate, it can't be fun.

Mama and Aunt Betty visit:


Mama and Aunt Betty visited me in my new house (that's not our house, that's a covered bridge near our house). We have a guest room here and are always happy to have visitors.

Chris Update:

Chris finished his internship in Seattle and went directly from there to a conference in Germany where he got trapped in an Escher building with an Austrian Robot-Monkey. And they have eggs. But only for decoration.


This is one of his pictures from Germany. I promised my mama that I'd link to Chris' Pictures on Flickr in this post.

He'll be back home next weekend.