Neander Dolls

One of the guys from the Las Vegas Atheists group volunteers (not clear in what capacity -maybe as mascot??) for the Sin City Roller Girls and suggested a group outing to the match. The Neander Dolls, as they call themselves, is our local womens flat track roller derby team.

Apparently it is a pretty legitimate sport. I guess in the 70s it used to be rigged like wrestling, and the team owners took advantage of the girls. So now the teams must be player-owned and the game is a real competition, not predetermined and choreographed.

Tonight the Neander Dolls played the Grand Raggidy Roller Girls from Michigan. These girls are big, brauny, and brutal.

Our team has a kinda cave woman theme. All the girls wear short tiger-striped skirts with fishnet tights. They have funny names like Roxi Contin, Seemore Butts, and Bruce Killis, and Devil's Advo-Kate.

The game was easy to follow, but the scoring is still a mystery to me. There is one girl from both teams in the front called the pivots who set the pace, then there is a cluster of blockers in the middle, and then in the back there is one girl from both teams and they are called the jammers. They have to push their way through the blockers and make it out in from of the whole pack. The girl who does that first scores and then keeps scoring every time she repeats the process. The jam ends when the lead jammer puts her hands on her waist to signal the end of the round. Jams last about 2-3 minutes each, and then the players switch out and a new one starts. This repeats as many times are they can fit in over the peiord. There are 3 periods that make up a game.

We got to see these girls get bashed around, pushed, shoved and fall hard.

The Dolls put up a good fight, but lost horribly. I think the fianl score was something like 55 to 135.

In between periods we were treated to some exibitions. First we had a local martial arts group who did some sparring for about 20 minutes. They basically play faught with nerf sticks and floppy tin foil swords. And sometimes there were a couple of guys who would get down with their bad selves and breakdance while the others were sparring. Weird mix.

The second break we had a differnt group of breakdancers, but by then I was tired of taking pictures so I didn't get any.

In addition to all the roller derby action there was a raffle going on. Bring in a pair of socks for the homeless and you get a raffle ticket. We bought a couple packages (one men's pack and one women's) and they gave us a ticket for each pair. Armed with 13 tickets, we were bound to win something. Sure enough, ticket number 650224 was a winner. I got to choose from a gift pack of slumber party supplies (ahem...adult slumber party, that is,and I didn't think I could really use a big box of coconut massage oil and glow in the dark items), a Miller Brewing Co. pack of t-shirts and baseball hats, or a massage foot bath. I took the foot bath. Joe thinks this is the perfect gift...when I'm 80. I think I might use it before then.

The best part of this odd prize is the name. I don' think you can see it in this photo with Joe's head in the way and the glare, but it says: Hot Spa' by Helen of Troy. I love the random apostrophe or maybe accent mark, and is Helen of Troy the brand or are they giving her credit for inventing the whole foot bath thing in the first place??

It was a fun night and another Vegas adventure. This is a fun town.