Halloween
Mayhem
October 23, 2005
by Mo Peters
Lara Croft and Wonder Woman on roller skates! Enough cleavage
and blood references to match late night Cinemax! Adolescent
fantasies were in full bloom around the flat track on Sunday
night as the Texas Rollergirls mixed things up for an exhibition
bout benefiting five worthy charities.
Team
allegiances were set aside as members of the usual four rollerderby
teams were jumbled into two super-teams, the Kandy
Apple Killaz and the Fantastic
Fives. The match pitted teammates against teammates
and made bedfellows of enemies. But Rollergirls are nothing
if not competitive, and they didn’t need much coaxing
to unleash the pent up aggression born from their ten-week layoff
since last season’s incredible championship bout.
The
Kandy Apple Killaz
donned red and white and entered the track to horror-flick music
that was only missing the Vincent Price voiceover. The
Fantastic Fives flew in with a superhero theme
and were so clearly ready for a smackdown that you could only
hope they were skating for good and not evil.
Catastrophe,
skating as Lara Croft Tomb Raider,
began racking up points for the Fantastic Fives from the first
jam. Trouble and
Barbarella skated
like longtime teammates in matching capes, even containing Buckshot
Betsy, something no one was able to do all last
season. Rice Rocket
got in on the fun, striking a superhero pose when she broke
out of the pack and then looking back at her vanquished foes
with a taunting mouth-guard smile.
Soon,
the Kandy Apple Killaz had had enough and began to fight back.
Devil Grrrl and
Sedonya Face
threw some huge blocks and generally roughed up the pack. Skating
past the benches, Lucille Brawl
and Lady Stardust
got tangled up and started swinging, kicking off one of the
larger melees in recent rollerderby memory. Teammates on both
sides jumped in as though they were flying off the third rope,
old school WWF style. Melicious,
skating as “The Bowler” threw her
bowling ball into the pile and had it taken away by the referees
as they peeled girls off each other.
This
scrum kicked off a string of brawls and penalties that lasted
all night. Speedy Marie
was kicked out of the jam for grabbing the luscious leg of Catastrophe
and pulling the rest of her to the deck. The two usually skate
as teammates, which made the aggression even more shocking to
fans of the Hot Rod Honeys. Perhaps, it was just frustration,
as Catastrophe
and her Fantastic Fives had opened up a 43-16 lead by
the end of the first period.
During
the intermission, a costume contest included a youngster dressed
as a kissing booth, causing hundreds of grown-up fans of the
rollergirls to ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
The
Fantastic Fives assault on the Killerz continued into the second
period, and they skated like 10’s. Highlights included
the Powder Puff
girls skating in perfect formation, an impenetrable wall of
puff. The second period ended with a bang as Sparkle
Plenty was victimized by a takedown and got
in a tremendous scrap that ended with Catastrophe
throwing her helmet and getting kicked out of the game.
After
two periods the score was 67-28 in favor of the Fives.
What
the bout lacked in drama, it made up in blood thirst. Fight
night at Playland continued to the final horn, sometimes with
two or three unrelated brawls breaking out simultaneously. Captain
T Bag, who won the award for most mentally scarring
superhero, even got the crowd in on the pain by dipping her
own tea bag onto two trackside fans. The final score
was 89-48 in favor of the Fantastic Fives, but with
bodies strewn across the track, rollerderby lived up to the
night’s billing as a Skate Key Massacre.
FINAL
SCORE: Fantastic Fives 89, Kandy
Apple Killaz 48