Last night fans got a taste of what is soon to be the norm for North Star roller derby home bouts. So what happened last night?

We had two games that were put together by the awesome team of Cracked Pepper, Marshmallow Assassin and you can toss myself in there in the end.

Game 1: Marshmallow Toss
   We had two fans come out to the track and line up on each side in the straight-a-ways. They stood equal to the pack line, and we had two skaters toss marshmallows into their mouths for 30 seconds. The winner won 5 to 1. They walked away with tickets, t-shirt and passes to sit in the new VIP section.

Game 2: Derby Girl Makeover
   Again two fans pulled from the crowd. This time two men who had 30 seconds to dress like a derby girl. They had help from two real derby girls and after the 30 seconds was up, the fans got to choose who the winner was. Last night it as won by someone who went all out and demanded to be dressed like a derby drag queen. They also won the same prize pack.

*All contestants signed a bullet proof waiver that kept any and all involved (including the MCC, volunteers, NSRG, sponsors and anyone who is under any of those umbrellas) safe from lawsuit. The waiver was reviewed and agreed to by the league's lawyer who volunteers her time to help the league. So a big thanks to her as well.

Now maybe because no one knew what to expect, but when the games would start the fans say quiet, but I loked out and all eyes were still on the track even though the bout had just eneded moments ago.

It felt good to be able to give to the fans and to give to the league. It's been a while since I have felt that I have been able to give to these amazing girls because I am a person who needs to have results to measure my success. I think last night it was success that was the result. 

SUCCESS!!

A HUGE THANK YOU
goes to skaters Claudia Eyesout and Crust Almighty. They helped toss and dress the fans last night. It was great working with them and I hope they realize how much enjoyment they gave to the fans. LAst night would not have been such a success without these two.

The first 100 fans were treted to keychains bottle openers with the nsrg name on them. Great little items. I hope to see these on the merch table.  

Heck on Wheels
9/1/2008 2:45 PM..tr>..table>By Sarah Barker

Two women in braids, miniskirts, fishnets, and striped over-the-knee socks pull pink suitcases emblazoned with a star and skull logo into a south Minneapolis warehouse. Inside, a city lot-sized area has been cleared and an oval track marked on the floor with blue tape.

Upended mattresses, all having enjoyed previous careers, hold back industrial machinery and form a wall of crash pads. The air is filled with the smell of turpentine, the click and growl of roller skates on concrete, the shouts and laughter of 80 women, and the whistle someone is abusing.

This is affectionately known as the Roller Hole, where the North Star Roller Girls (NSRG), one of two women's flat-track roller derby leagues in the Twin Cities, practices three times a week. The league's office is a metal shelving unit bursting with organizers, papers, found clothing, and a 1,000-count box of sport tampons. Visitors must sign a liability waiver and indeed are at risk, confronted with challenging ideas, clumsy preconceptions, and a haunch with an apple-sized bruise—Naughty Kitty showing off her latest battle scar.

The North Star Roller Girls, formed in 2006, is a skater-owned-and-operated enterprise that empowers women, promotes athleticism, benefits local charities and artists, and promises a rocking good time. That's mostly its mission statement. But can an organization of fishnet-wearing, ribald women who take no offense at being called

Anita Tension (Nichole Nelson, B.A. '02). To see more before and after photos, click the image above. (All photographs by Sara Rubinstein)

..tr>..table>"girls" achieve all that—and on wheels?

The average North Star Roller Girl—and that is an oxymoron—is a 30-year-old professional, though the age range is 21 to 47 years. The league attracts free-thinking, independent, sassy, educated women. In fact, 12 of the 80 NSRG members are University of Minnesota alumnae or current staff or students. To name a few: Ida Kildher (Nicole Rubis, B.A. '99) is a high school band director; Rage-edy Ann (Tonya Trapp Custis M.A. '01, M.S. '03, Ph.D. '04), probably the most degreed person to throw a body block, develops linguistics software; and Medusa (Melissa Arnold, B.A. '06) works for the University's Clinical Neuroscience Administrative Center. Most of the roller girls would rather eat glass than do yoga, and what they lack in plastic surgery they make up for in tattoos and piercings.

Once inside the Roller Hole, the name on one's driver's license means nothing. The contact's name is Lynn. "I only know people's derby names," replies Dawny Darko, who ironically, has a sunny smile and a halo of blonde curls. "I think you mean Stripe Tease" (Lynn Zecca, B.S. '87).

Derby names are part of the camp and burlesque wit that fans love. Double entendres, an aim to intimidate, and celebrity takeoffs with a provocative twist produce true gems like Katarina Hit, Olive U Dye, Tickle Me Elbow, and SockHer Mom. All names must be unique and registered with the international master roster TwoEvils.org. But beyond clever, these

Medusa (Melissa Arnold, B.A. '06)

..tr>..table>names frame an alter ego that lets women inhabit a different persona for a while.

"Giggles is my alter ego," explains Giggle Byte (Joline Zepcevski, one of the U's first Ph.D. candidates in the history of science and technology). "I'm shy, so I sometimes introduce myself as Giggles because it's easier being her than me. An alter ego can say and do things I find difficult, like talk to people," Giggles says, fiddling with her helmet and keeping her gaze on the swirling skaters on the track.
Anita Tension (Nichole Nelson, B.A. '02), who writes training materials for Target, concurs. "You have to choose your derby name carefully because the persona gets to be part of you. I used to be shy too, but Anita Tension hits people and gets attention!" she says gleefully.

Spitting out her mouth guard, Rage-edy Ann explains that her PG-rated name had to be something her kids could say at school. "Although my son has a T-shirt that says, 'My mom is hell on wheels,'?" she says with a grin.

Geared up in knee, elbow, hip, and wrist pads, plus helmets and mouth guards, skaters swoop around the track, weaving, crossing over, hitching rides, talking trash, and hooting with laughter. Occasionally, one peels off from the streaming group, sliding to a flashy but functional kneepad-assisted stop.

Roller derby's pro-wrestling style and no-holds-barred camp is one of the hallmarks of the sport, but it didn't start out that way. Co-ed skating marathons

Medusa practices in a mattress-lined warehouse.

..tr>..table>in the 1930s eclipsed shuffling dance marathons because the action was faster and more exciting. Audiences loved the mass pileups that happened when skaters tried to lap each other, so organizers tweaked the rules to up the likelihood of collisions. With teams cruising and bruising around the track, roller derby picked up momentum and fans; it was one of the first sports to be covered by the fledgling television industry, as early as 1949. Women with outrageous personalities, sexy getups, and full-contact action ratcheted up the entertainment value for TV audiences, reaching a peak in the early 1970s. After that, professional baseball, basketball, and football shouldered in on prime-time advertising dollars and derby faded to an occasional curiosity.

In the beginning, derby owners, operators, and promoters were all men. The North Star Roller Girls is part of the derby revival and is an all-women enterprise with a heaping helping of do-it-yourself attitude. While the women took over the show, they kept the good-girls-gone-bad personalities—but this time they're in on the joke. They own their sexuality, wearing fishnets and garters if they want to, or not. "It's my right to express myself however I want, not as someone's prescribed vision of a feminist," says referee Stripe Tease.

Strawberry Snatchcake (Danielle Nelson, B.A. '98) takes feminism by the horns with her persona. "I could give the coy answer that my mother likes: 'I come from a long line of

Mickey Dismantle, who says, in derby, it's OK to be a girl.

..tr>..table>pastry larcenists. I don't know what you're thinking!'?" she says when asked why she chose that moniker. "I'll admit—I love the look I get when I tell people my derby name: surprise, followed by, most often, pleasure at being given permission to use a 'dirty' word. But I'll tell you the real reason I call myself Strawberry Snatchcake. Derby is the one thing I do just for myself. When I lace up my skates, I'm not Danielle the mom, or Danielle the wife, or daughter, or proofreading trainer. I'm Strawberry Snatchcake—tough, athletic, and, hell yes, sexual. I can't imagine anything more feminist than being who I am without reservation, without apology."

"Most of the injuries are with new skaters," says Lil Red Ridingcrop (Elizabeth Mork, B.A. '96), a bench coach, responsible for monitoring the number of skaters on the track at any given time. "A lot of practice is about gaining strength and stability and learning how to fall." That said, a tight group of skaters gets tangled up and collapses with a sickening smack. The merely dazed scramble up. Refs and skaters huddle over a supine figure, then tenderly help a limping Madge-O-Matic to the side. Despite a tooth-jarring meeting with the floor, Madge is back in action before practice ends.

Broken bones do happen—the league had four in the 2007–08 season. Hennepin County Medical Center EMTs stand by at bouts (competitive matches) and referees take care of the wounded at practices. Skaters on the rebound wear

Strawberry Snatchcake, who says derby is the one things she does just for herself.

..tr>..table>a yellow T-shirt during practice to indicate they're not up for full-contact bouting.
"I'd never seen women actually be outwardly violent and aggressive, and I liked that," confesses quiet Giggle Byte.

But Stripe Tease, a holdover disco skater and freelance Web designer, is quick to differentiate the physicality of roller derby from the brawling that is intrinsic to sports like men's professional hockey. Like the sexuality, the violence in roller derby is mostly theater. (Fans looking for graphic sex and violence can simply turn on the TV.) The blocks thrown in roller derby are governed by rules and facilitate scoring. Roller derby is like tough love with emphasis on the love. It's lessons in how to be strong given by the nicest people ever to bust a shoulder block.

"It's a great way to work out aggression," says Ida Kildher. As director of the Columbia Heights High School band, she has perfected a "death stare" that takes no prisoners, even from the percussion section.

"In derby, it's OK to be a girl," says Mickey Dismantle (Amanda Ward, B.S. '02), who spends her days in a male-dominated field, as a research scientist with Medtronic. "It's this aggressive, contact sport for women. These women have families and jobs and are competitive. I love this sport."

TamaLama Slamma (Tamara Srock, B.A. '99), hot pink and blue extensions in her red hair, is a behavioral therapist and mother. "I never had many girl friends, partly because,

Rhea Lentless, who took art classes at the U.

..tr>..table>outside of roller derby, girls are competitive in a different way—kind of catty and passive aggressive," she says. "In derby, girls are openly competitive. Now I have 80 girl friends."

Most NSRG skaters did not have a skating history but came to a bout and knew immediately this was something they wanted to do. "It's the only sport where I can sweat buckets and not realize it because it's so much fun!" says the athletic Medusa before sprinting back onto the track.

Not all NSRG skaters have a stereotypical athletic physique, however, but that's not what the league seeks in the women who try out every year. "One of the things about roller derby is that there's room for every body," says Stripe Tease. "Athletes come in all shapes and sizes. Every woman on the NSRG is beautiful, strong, and trying to reach an athletic goal, and I think the fans see that as well."
"They look like regular people," says fan Paul Wilkens (B.S. '96), a recent roller derby convert. "They aren't impossibly muscled. If roller derby was a bunch of super-athletic guys, it wouldn't be fun."

NSRG does look for women who believe in the mission, including volunteering with the community project of the month. April found the roller girls making a meal for the women at Simpson Housing Services, and in May they walked for Multiple Sclerosis. The league has also supported the Special Olympics, Boys and Girls Clubs, American Red Cross, St. Anne's Place, Toys for Tots, and ARC's

Rage-edy Ann, who has three graduate degrees from the U.

..tr>..table>Value Village. "We say we empower women. This is how we put our money where our mouth is," says Stripe Tease.

"Women in derby have inner strength, and I think it's because there are no stand-ins," says self-described raging extrovert Maggie McFaceStomp (Kelly Russell, B.A. '05). "If we want to get something done, we do it ourselves, and that confidence carries over into other parts of your life. Even the sexuality part. If you're confident, you can be sassy and wear a skirt the size of a belt."

As fans trickle into Hall D of the Minneapolis Convention Center, they make a circuit of booths ringing the track. NSRG sells cheeky T-shirts, posters, and buttons. An illustrated exhibit tells the history of roller derby. The audience is strikingly average: blue-jeaned families, 20-somethings sipping beers and talking .. phones, middle-aged men in a button-down shirts and loafers, empty nesters in wolf-adorned fleece.

The NSRG league is comprised of four teams—the Banger Sisters, the Kilmore Girls, the Violent Femmes, and Delta Delta Di—that bout against each other seven times during the season. The traveling team, made up of skaters from all four teams, competes with leagues from other cities. Blood, sweat, and tears weld close bonds during practice, but come competition night—when training partners become opponents—all bets are off. The women talk about being "frenemies."

Each team has a jammer who scores points when she weaves her way

The roller girls choose their derby names carefully, since the personas become part of them.

..tr>..table>through the pack, passing the opposing team's pivots and blockers. Blocking is done from shoulder to hip with the arms close to the body. Using arms to push from behind or punch to the side is a foul, as is tripping. Seven refs work bouts, watching for fouls and keeping score. The bench coach monitors penalties and substitutions.

Three blockers and one pivot on each team are simultaneously blocking the other team's jammer from passing through the pack (defense) and helping propel their own jammer through the crowd (offense), sometimes by pulling her train-like, sometimes by slinging her forward crack-the-whip fashion.

Adrenaline junkies line the edge of the track, occasionally getting a lapful of flying sister. The crowd of nearly a thousand ooohs at spectacular wipeouts, whistling and applauding as Sawsquash squashes Stalker Channing's move to the outside. If there is uncertainty about how points mount up on the scoreboard, it's quickly forgotten in the dizzying action. The announcers start the audience in a wave that follows the skaters around the track.

The dreadlocked and camo-skirted Tin Lizzy swoops around a block by Mickey Dismantle, cuts sharply to the inside, hangs on behind teammate Rhea Lentless, then nips through when she sees daylight. The crowd hoots its approval and a frail-looking elderly woman shouts, "Go, Strawberry Snatchcake!" 

---

Sarah Barker is a St. Paul freelance writer.

Stripe Tease says that roller derby has room for every body, athletic or not.

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Sigma bolsters its top-end EX range with the announcement of a HSM focusing-motor-equipped 50mm f/1.4 lens. Offering a moderate telephoto field of view on APS-C cameras, Sigma’s DG designation means it will also work as a standard lens on full-frame digital cameras. We believe this is the first time a 50mm f/1.4 lens has been offered with a ring-type focus motor. Pricing and availability information to follow as soon as we have it.

Press Release:

50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM

     Large aperture, standard prime lens for the latest digital cameras

The Sigma Corporation is pleased to announce the new large aperture 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM standard lens. For Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Pentax* and Sony*

• Standard lens with large maximum aperture of F1.4.
• It creates sharp images with high contrast and ensures superior peripheral brightness.
• Incorporates molded glass aspherical lens, perfectly correcting coma aberration and creating superior image quality.
• Super multi-layer coating reduces flare and ghosting.
• Hyper Sonic Motor (HSM) ensuring silent, high-speed AF

This is a large aperture prime lens with a standard focal length of 50mm, ideal for digital cameras. This lens is perfectly suited for a wide range of subjects enabling outstanding, sharply defined images against a nicely blurred background. The fast, F1.4 aperture makes this lens desirable for use with Digital SLR cameras. This lens effectively becomes an 80mm medium telephoto lens on digital cameras with APS-C size image sensors. The optimum optical design and molded glass aspherical lens elements provide excellent correction for all types of aberrations. This lens has superior peripheral brightness and provides sharp, high contrast images even at the maximum aperture. Superior optical performance is also ensured throughout the focusing range. The super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting. This lens has a minimum focusing distance of 45cm (17.7") and has maximum magnification of 1:7.4. It creates a very attractive blur, even when a small aperture is used.

This lens incorporates HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor), which ensures a quiet and high-speed AF as
well as full-time manual focus override.

* If the camera body does not support HSM motor, AF does not work.

01.12.08

Come out and support the bad ass girls of the North star Roller Girls and you can have your photo taken and posted in one of the galleries on the North Star Roller Girls website.

All you have to do is make a fun sign or come dressed in fan fun clothing showing your support.

The NSRG has the best team of derby photogs around and will be on the watch for the big fans. So get your started on making your signs, or your wild and fan fun outfit and we ill see you there!

The NSRG photo team is: Fotodog / David de Young / saint-n-swine

Click here to purchase tickets or place your order over the phone at (888) 690-9875.

Press Release from www.dpreview.com

Announced October 31st we have our review of a production Eye-Fi card. The Eye-Fi card is a two gigabyte SD card with built-in WiFi capability. The provided Eye-Fi Manager software allows you to associate the card with wireless access points and choose to have images automatically uploaded to your computer and also any one of seventeen online photo sharing sites including Facebook, Flickr, Fotki and Picasa. Once setup you can put the card into (virtually) any camera supporting SD and have your images automatically upload. We've had an Eye-Fi card for a few days now and have had a good opportunity to test it. So dive in to our review to see how the Eye-Fi card shapes up.

Eye-Fi Card Uses Wi-Fi to Automatically Upload Photos to Computers and
Online Photo Sharing and Social Networking Sites

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 30, 2007 – Eye-Fi Inc., a company dedicated to helping people navigate, nurture and share their digital memories, today unveiled the Eye-Fi Card – the world's first wireless SD memory card for digital cameras. The Eye-Fi Card uses home Wi-Fi networks to create an effortless and convenient way for users to send photographs from digital cameras to PCs, Macs and online photo and social networking sites.  See release entitled "Eye-Fi Announces Support from Seventeen Online Photo Destinations."  Priced at $99.99 with 2GB of storage, the Eye-Fi Card is available now from major online retailers.

"Digital cameras have made it extremely easy to take pictures, but the rest of the process is a hassle," said Jef Holove, chief executive officer of Eye-Fi. "The Eye-Fi Card removes the barriers and lets users get to the fun part of sharing and printing their memories. We're putting the magic back into photography."
Eye-Fi uses home wireless networks to eliminate the time-consuming chore of dealing with cables, card readers or software plug-ins associated with uploading photos.  Users simply turn on their digital camera and their pictures are wirelessly uploaded.  The Eye-Fi Card works with existing and new SD-compatible digital cameras and stores photos like a conventional SD memory card.

"We know that a large percent of digital images captured each day are never printed or shared. That adds up to significant lost revenues for photo sharing and printing sites," said IDC analyst Ron Glaz. "We anticipate wireless cameras will fundamentally change the way people manage their digital photographs in the future and believe that Eye-Fi Card will help drive these changes."

How the Eye-Fi Card works

During a simple set-up process, users can select from among 17 popular online photo sharing, printing, social networking or blogging sites to share their photographs, and select where on their PC or Mac they want to archive their images.  Once the set-up is complete, users can focus on taking pictures and sharing memories – and not on the process of uploading photos from their camera.

Eye-Fi's free upload service allows users to transfer an unlimited number of photos.  It handles full-resolution JPEG pictures and intelligently resizes the images if required by the selected online destination.
"We're thrilled to be among the first to sell the Eye-Fi Card and we expect it to be a big hit for the holidays," said Aaron Maguire of Buy.com.  "Eye-Fi understands how time-starved our customers are, and this solution matches their needs."

The 2GB wireless SD memory card, which holds approximately 1,000 images, is available now at major online retailers including Amazon.com, Buy.com and Walmart.com for $99.99 USD. For more information, please visit www.eye.fi.

(posted at www.dpreview.com)

4.5mm F2.8 EX DC CIRCULAR FISHEYE HSM

• The first 180 degree circular fisheye lens designed specifically for APS-C size digital SLR cameras
• Fast F2.8 maximum aperture making it ideal for low light photography
• Minimum focusing distance of 13.5cm and a maximum magnification of 1:6
• SLD glass minimizes color aberration
• Equipped with HSM with full-time manual focus override
• Equisolid angle projection method is possible for art and scientific use

The Sigma Corporation is pleased to announce the launch of the new 4.5mm F2.8 EX DC CIRCULAR
FISHEYE HSM lens.

This autofocus circular fisheye lens has an angle of view of 180 degrees in all directions. It is exclusively
designed for digital SLR cameras with the APS-C size image sensor. When used in conjunction with digital
SLRs with APS-C size image sensors, it produces circular image within the frame.

The F2.8 large aperture value produces a bright image in the viewfinder and allows photographers to take pictures in low light conditions, making it an ideal lens for Astrophotography and Aurora photography. Due to the quantifiable angle/area relationship it produces, this lens can be used for scientific and arts applications such as solid angle measurements of cloud distribution over the sky or vegetation distribution of the forest.

The minimum focusing distance of 13.5cm/5.3inch and maximum magnification of 1:6 make it particularly
useful for close-up photography. SLD --Special Low Dispersion-- glass provides effective compensation of
chromatic aberration. Sigma's Super Multi-Layer Coating minimizes flare and ghosting. It is equipped with
an inner focusing system that creates high definition and good image quality over the whole frame. The HSM --Hyper Sonic Motor-- ensures fast and quiet autofocusing and allows full-time manual focus override by rotation of the focus ring.

Read more here.

I was supposed to be shooting the entire concert of Collective Soul / Counting Crows. This was ended by the concert seurity even though I had my pass to shoot.

These are shots of Collective Soul.







The shots are to give you a feeling of the people at the show. Enjoying their time at the concert.