Skate or Die! Sirens vs. Swarm Derby Dolls Bout - Slideshows | LA Weekly

We strapped on our knee pads and sharpened our roller skates for the all-girl LA Derby Dolls bout, Sirens vs. The Swarm, on September 12 at the Doll Factory.  LA's Sirens came decked in police gear while San Diego's The Swarm donned yellow and black.

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Ellen Page rolls with it in 'Whip It' | LA Times

Ellen Page (a’s Bliss) is a 17-year-old who becomes hooked on the roller derby after watching skaters in action. It is Page'’s first leading role since "Juno."” (Darren Michaels)

A girl's coming-of-age story has a number of required elements. There's the funny best friend. There's the dreamy boy. The need to break out of the oppressive bonds of a small town and teenagedom. The parents who just don't understand. The sneaking out to roller derby practice. Wait a minute . . .

Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, "Whip It," opening Oct. 2, travels some familiar territory while cleverly swerving around its clichés, says its star Ellen Page. That's one of the reasons she agreed to take the part, her first leading role since her Academy Award-nominated turn in "Juno."

"It's enjoyable to be involved with something that could easily be pegged or pigeonholed, and to be working with Drew, who completely wanted to avoid all that and make a really sincere, truthful, multidimensional story," Page says. Speaking on the phone from London, where she's filming Christopher Nolan's "Inception," she goes down the list of characters who manage to escape conventional treatment, starting with her own.

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Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page says she learned how to ice skate growing up but was never particularly good at it. After working for three months with her trainer Axles of Evil (a.k.a. Alex Cohen), and scrimmaging with some real L.A. Derby Dolls, she proudly estimates that she did about 99% of her own skating seen on-screen. Some of Bliss' teammates and opponents are played by Barrymore, Kristen Wiig, Eve and Juliette Lewis, under noms de guerre like Iron Maven and Smashley Simpson.

Page, 22, speaks so highly of her compatriots that she realizes it probably sounds too good to be true. "When you're learning something new with a bunch of other girls, you become so supportive, and we all became so close," she says. "It was one of the best, if not the best, filmmaking experiences I've ever had. I felt like this lucky little kid." One with a killer nickname: Babe Ruthless.

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Derby Doll Bout Preview: The Swarm, SD @ The Sirens, LA | San Francisco Examiner

The Swarm huddling up to discuss strategy. Photo by Charlie ShutterThug Chu

The second of half of the 2009 season is well under way for the San Diego Derby Dolls (SDDD), San Diego’s banked and flat track roller derby league.  This Saturday, September 12, SDDD’s banked track team, The Swarm, will travel to Los Angeles to take on one of their sister league’s teams, the Los Angeles Derby Dolls’ (LADD) The Sirens.

This will be the third time this season SD has traveled to LA to play an LADD team, but the first time The Swarm will go up against The Sirens.  Both teams would like to claim the title of 2009 Champions of the Doll Factory, and both teams are equally favored, in their own way, to make it to the championship game in December. 

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Bring Out the Gimp: Fight Crew v Varsity Brawlers | Los Anjealous

Prelude. How was your summer, dear readership? What’s that you say? It was good, with the sunny days and the outdoor recreation and the grill-cookouts and the friendly friends? Well, that’s great. I’m happy for you. Oh, and how was DF’s summer, you want to know? Why, how very kind of you to ask. Let’s see, how do I put this? How about en Francais: it blew le chunks. And to translate from the French for you goddamned philistines, that’s how the frogs say that DF’s summer was as about as enjoyable as eating an enormous, hairy elephant-ass sandwich with an XL plate of steaming kittykat feces on the side, all washed down with a 64oz tankard of yeti snot.

Ahem. To explain for those of you who have been living under a rock and/or failing to read regular DF-related updates on the justifiably popular blog “All DF All the Time”, DF (due, predictably, to a perilous combination of inebriation, clumsiness, and pure unadulterated idiocy) experienced a truly spectacular dual fracture of his left tibia and fibula back in mid-June and spent the rest of the summer largely horizontal and in various stages of massive discomfort and/or Vicodin-induced haze.

So it’s been a shut-in couple of months for DF, but his recovery is well under way and at long last it’s time for him to make his crutch-tastic debut, complete with comically pronounced limp. And what better place to re-introduce the world to the new, hobbled DF than the Doll Factory, where the Fight Crew will try to break their loooong regular season losing skid against the Varsity Brawlers, who are looking to win for the first time in their (admittedly short) history? In other words, derby people, it’s time to bring out the gimp!

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