The Roller Derby
Posted by Mitch on May 15, 2010
I tend to be a creature of habit. I don’t try a lot of new things because, well, life has been fairly good. I certainly don’t eat exotic things, and I don’t often go to things that I’m not accustomed to.
So, how is it that I found myself going to the roller derby? Because my friend Scott wanted to go after reading about it on Twitter through one of my friends there, Mel. I’d actually never met Mel, but sat behind her at a Christmas party last year while she was working this long gray dress; hotness all around. Anyway, she’s the public face of roller derby in the area, and she’s got the face for it. She believes in it so much that she actually got this tattoo on her side within the last few weeks; nope, wouldn’t be me, but she gave us a public viewing, which we get to show here.
Of course, anyone over 45 remembers roller derby because it used to be on TV all the time. Some of us remember the movie Kansas City Bomber with Raquel Welch; stunning, I must say, and pretty believable. Back in the day, we thought roller derby was fake, and I guess one has to own up to the fact that there was always a bit of entertainment mixed in with what some claimed was a sport. Many of the participants were acting like bad people, which made you wonder just how real it was.
These days, it’s quite real, and very little like it was back then. For one, it’s more of a woman’s movement than a mixed gender thing like in the past. At the event I went to, there was a men’s game, but it was a pick up game of local guys who just wanted to try it out. Truthfully, they weren’t very good en masse, but there was one guy really good on one team, and it showed as his team beat the other team by almost 100 points. Once they were done it was time for the home team, the Utica Clubbers.
What’s the idea overall? I had Mel explain it to me, which worked wonders. By the way, I’m not as large as this picture might make you think I am; it’s all about perspectives (although, after seeing it, I did join a gym; that story will be later).
You have two teams, of course, and the bulk of the team is supposed to stop one person on the other team. They are known as blockers. Their purpose is to try to keep the individual person on the other team, the one who scores all the points, from passing them. That person is known as a jammer, and you can tell that person because she’s got a star on her helmet. Most of the time each team has two jammers so that one can replace the other for a breather. The final piece is known as the pivot; I learned about this position later on. This person is the one whose job it is to keep an eye on where the jammer is and to let everyone know the jammer is coming and where, so they can try to block the person. I’m not going to get into much more of how the game is played, but if you’re interested you can check out this roller derby game link.
This was an interesting event for me. The crowd reminded me of the type that would show up at an independent wrestling circuit. The picture you see of the guys in big blue hats is indicative of a lot of what I saw, although most people just sat in the stands. There was a women dressed like a purple bee. There was one in a sequin top, tight short skirt with a tail. There was one I was intrigued with because she reminded me of a fantasy nurse with bright blonde hair that was indicative of what you might have seen in the 40′s, very stylish. There was a guy wearing a monkey around his neck.
There were a lot of kids there. There were signs pulling for both the team and their favorite players. Even the referees had fans; that doesn’t happen in any other sport I know. The team in pink in these pictures actually came to Rome, NY, where the event was held, from New Hampshire; that was stunning to me. It’s not really a league, as they don’t keep statistics; it’s more of a universal club. This club has 6 teams in multiple states, and sometimes they go to other states to both play and watch others play.
My friend Scott, who took all the pictures you see here, talked me into it by saying we’d go to the casino afterwards; I’m so easy to bribe. But I had a wonderful time, and met another Twitter friend I’d never met, Meghan, and one I did know, Frank; I’m giving their real names rather than their Twitter names, as that’ll be on them if they read this. I also met this guy who played in the men’s game named Jason, whom I saw a video of in the production Rocky Horror, as he played the main character and was very good in it. And after the initial band that was playing when we got in there, which was hurting both my ears and my feelings (angry rock/punk music; Mel said it was too loud also, as I was feeling like an old guy), this guy named Deaf Geoff, the DJ, was playing some music that was fantastic, and then I learned he’s actually legally deaf; think about that folks!
Of course Scott didn’t get all the shots I wanted, but I think there’s enough here overall to show some of what it was all about. Turns out Mel wasn’t skating that night in a match, but she was a referee for the guy’s game, which is why she’s in the outfit she’s in. We stayed for the first half, when the local team was ahead; they lost later, but I guess it’s not about winning or losing, just having fun and women showing that they’re not shrinking violets for anyone.
Hey, they had nachos, and I got to play poker later, though I was card dead so poker wasn’t as much fun as normal. Still, it all works for me; I may even go again some day.
Might, that is. 
Video Highlights And A New Page
Posted by Mitch on Mar 9, 2010
I have a lot of videos on this blog. Sometimes they’re easy to find because they match up with the content. Other times they’re kind of hidden gems, something I used to add something different to the post.
Overall the videos are all over the place, so I decided it was time to consolidate them, as well as highlight a few of them here. I did this before with my post showing my early videos up to June 2008. Below are 9 others I’d like to highlight, mainly because today is the 9th of March. For all other videos on this blog, though, go to the link above that says Videos, or of course you can click on the link I just created.
This video of Tunak Tunak Tun by Daler Mehndi just thrilled my wife and I when I discovered it last year. It’s infectious and fun.
This was the video of the year in 2009, a funny wedding entrance video.
We’ve talked a lot on this blog about commenting; this was Chris Pirillo’s take on it.
I had someone recently tell me about Google 411 service; told him I’d written about it in 2008, including the video.
I had finally written about the movie The Secret, and this was the 20 minute video clip from The Secret, which is enough to get you going.
This video caused a lot of consternation for a lot of people, mainly me, on my business blog for about 2 years before I decided to move it over here instead; it’s a motivational video of a boy with Down’s Syndrome.
A very recent video showing that stupidity and racism is still alive in America, courtesy of this Rachel Maddow clip with Pat Buchanan being stupid.
Talk about people with a passion that I’m not sure I could ever find again, this one highlights something known as Free Running.
Finally, we’re coming up on St. Patrick’s Day, and even though I’m not Irish and I’m not Catholic and I don’t drink beer (let alone green beer), I figured I’d get into the spirit of things this one time by presenting the Muppets singing Danny Boy.
And there you go, 9 videos I wanted to bring some life back to. I hope you check these out, and if you’re ever looking for some entertainment, remember to check out my Video page above.
Muppet Monday
Posted by Mitch on Feb 16, 2010
I’ve been on kind of a serious kick and decided it was time to cheer things up for a little bit. As you know, I’ve talked about my love affair for the Muppets often enough around here. I have a bunch of Muppets videos all over the blog; one day I’m going to create a page where I’ve got all my videos, including the Muppets. In the meantime, I want to share these six with you, which I love.
Julie Andrews, Lonely Goatherd (Okay, I love Sound of Music also)
Raquel Welch; she still looks great!
Linda Ronstadt singing one of my favorite songs ever, and supposedly she said she never sung the song better than for this show.
Pearl Bailey, bad jousting scene from Camelot. Pearl was actually a U.S. Ambassador when she decided to do this particular show, and in the movie Carmen Jones, was the only actor in the movie who actually sang her own part.
Rita Moreno, the first person to ever win an Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Grammy.
Opening song from the movie Muppets From Space, as they perform Brick House
And that’s that; back to other topics next time.
Cleavage; Yeah, I’m Going There!
Posted by Mitch on Jan 29, 2010
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You see that image there to the left? Every time I’m on Facebook and I go to play this game called Lexulous, that is the first image that pops up when I go to play a game. It’s an ad for a dating service, which proves to me and everyone else that Facebook really isn’t targeting ads to anyone in particular sinse my Facebook profile shows that I married. However, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the image more than that ad. What’s the first thing you notice in the ad? Cleavage!
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Yep, I’m about to tackle the subject of cleavage. I figure we might as well talk about it, because it’s everywhere we go. Guys, we’re just inundated with it pretty much 24/7. It doesn’t even take a lot of cleavage to pull our eyes over there. I don’t think that this makes any of us perverts by any means whatsoever. My wife even says it’s just pretty much “eye candy”, and she would be someone who knows. Let’s just say that my wife could give most of these women a run for their money, but instead has decided to always wear clothes that cover up her cleavage as much as possible.
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I put it that way because in reality there is no hiding what she’s got. Over the years, I have taken to following my wife by a few steps as we walked through malls and places where there are a lot of people. I do that because I love watching people, but I also love watching the reaction that people have when they see my wife. She’s one of those people who makes you smile all the time, but when it’s warm and she’s only wearing a shirt or sweater, even women will take a look at her chest. I have seen women frown and get this look on their face as though she’d done something wrong, then notice I’m looking at them and suddenly turn their heads away. Women get really strange when they see other women’s cleavage, as if it’s something that’s evil.
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Not us guys though. We try not to acknowledge it, but the truth is if it’s out there we’re going to take a look. It’s not that we go out of our way most of the time, but it’s there. I’ll tell you this truth, though you may not believe me. I didn’t notice my wife’s chest when I met her because she kept it covered up. It probably wasn’t until two weeks later when I went to a party and she was dressed a little bit differently that I noticed it was there. I am not someone who’s predisposed to look at women’s chests, instead preferring to look at women’s eyes. However, when it’s blatantly out there and thrown in my face (so to speak), I’m probably going to look. I’m not going to stare, but I’m definitely going to look.
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When it comes to cleavage, we guys are not necessarily discriminating. Most of my friends are women, and for the most part I never pay attention or notice what they’re chest look like. And yet, every once in a while you catch your female friends wearing something that’s either low-cut enough so you see cleavage, or loose enough so that when they bend over you can’t help but notice the cleavage. That’s not our fault either, and I’m not saying it’s the women’s fault, I’m just saying that suddenly your eyes are drawn to it and you have to look. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of cleavage either; we guys will pretty much look at anything.
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I really think we’ve been conditioned to this kind of thing over time. When you think about it, throughout history bodices have always been highlighted by high society. When women used to wear corsets, the basic idea was to make the waste as tiny as possible so that the cleavage stood up. Bodices were cut low to help cleavage pop out of the top. These days, we have a lot of entertainers who are showing a lot of cleavage, whether they have a lot of talent or not. I think we can look at pop icons such as Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson and debate about whether we pay as much attention to them as we do because of their voices or because of how they look. And it’s obviously not just singers, especially if you take a look at this picture of Selma Hayek. I mean, homegirl’s got it going on, and as pretty as she is I think we would all notice her anyway. But wearing something like what she’s got on here, it’s just hard to take your eyes off of that.
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For you ladies who are reading this, I’m wondering how honest you will be with us on this topic of cleavage. Let me preface this by saying that most of my life my friends have been women. I have been privy to some inside information that most guys don’t ever get to hear. I have had some of my women friends tell me that they know the effect that they have on men based on some of the clothes that they wear. They’ve often said to me “I wouldn’t be wearing this if I didn’t want anyone to look at me.” I’ve also heard that there is a rule that says, for the most part, that it’s okay for women to show cleavage as long as they’re holding back on showing everything else. Personally, I think it’s a very strange rule, and I’m not sure I’m buying it all that often, but in general I’m going to let it go because I’m probably going to look anyway.
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A part of this goes back to the old question “does sex sell?” I think it depends on what is being sold. Obviously sex appeal sells a heck of a lot of records. I don’t know if sex appeal sells movies all that well. I don’t know any guy who’s thinking about a woman whose body they think is outstanding that says “I’m going to see this movie because so-and-so’s got an incredible body.” When it comes to television, I’m not so sure. I don’t know a single guy who initially said “I’m going to watch Ghost Whisperer because it looks like an interesting show.” But I know a lot of guys who watch it after the fact, and I’m betting what got them to watch it in the first place was the fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt has one of those bodies and is often showing off some of that cleavage.
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I’m going to say this in closing. America, good or bad, has a thing about women’s bodies. Even those who decry the fact that women might be dressing too sexily are watching them. There’s no getting away from cleavage, and frankly I’m not even going to try. My general thought is that women can wear anything they want to, as long as they retain a little bit of reality about it. Some of my women friends have said to me that they want guys to look at them, but not all guys. My response has always been you don’t get to make that decision. That’s just the way it is; if you’re out and about and you’re dressed in that fashion and people look at you, deal with it and move on.
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And that’s what I’m going to do with this post about cleavage. I think it’s time to move on and see what some of you have to say about it, and I’m betting that Sire is really going to enjoy this post, if only for the pictures. Is this post salacious? It might or might not be depending on your reaction to it. For me, it’s just another topic to talk about as we head into the weekend. And, like I said, I’m not mad at anybody.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Leno Vs. O’Brien – I Called This One
Posted by Mitch on Jan 15, 2010
I figure it’s my turn to comment on the fray that’s become the late night wars between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, wars that never should have occurred in the first place.
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Here’s the deal for the uninitiated. Jay Leno this is one of the host of the Tonight Show for about 17 or 18 years. The show came on at 11:35 at night and ran for an hour. It was followed by the Conan O’Brien show, which also ran for an hour. In 2008, it was announced that Jay Leno would be giving up the Tonight Show and that Conan O’Brien would be taken over. Everyone thought that was a fair deal, and that maybe the Tonight Show needed some fresh blood.
Somewhere along the line, Jay Leno decided that he didn’t quite want to give up television life just yet. Leno has always been a very active guy, still doing comedy tours and weekend shows while he was host of the Tonight Show. But he must’ve gotten used to the big money that television gives you, so he started a little bit of back chatter. What the network, NBC, decided to do was save a little bit of money in television programming by creating a nightly show for Jay Leno at 10 PM. The show would come on Mondays through Fridays and run for an hour.
The network love this idea; almost nobody else did. When I first heard it I said to my wife “that’s not gonna last and Jay Leno be back on the Tonight Show within a year”. It turns out I’m sort of prophetic; it didn’t even last a year, and by all accounts Jay Leno will be back as the host of the Tonight Show during the last week of February after the Winter Olympics. Conan? Well, he decided not to be emasculated by being pushed back to 12:05, and it’s probably gonna take his ball and go play elsewhere.
My overall opinion is that both moves were the wrong move from the beginning. Jay Leno still had the number one rankings for late night, and there was no reason to believe that they were going to be falling anytime soon. It would have been interesting to see Jay Leno in the spot when David Letterman was going through his problems and eventually took over the number one spot for a while. When Conan took over the Tonight Show, he had the number one rankings for a few nights, but then Dave took over and that was that.
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I don’t know how many people saw the Conan O’Brien late night show, but I never thought that he would be the common guy who would work well in 11:35 spot. He’s nice enough guy, but is never come across to me as a comfortable and engaging guy whom people would look at and say “there is a guy like to sit down and have dinner with.” That’s the kind of guy Jay Leno is. You were just comfortable with Jay, and you could tell that his guests were comfortable with him also. I don’t know that anyone could really ever see Conan O’Brien sitting down with the President of the United States or any other big-name politician and having a regular conversation with them.
I also wondered about the strategy of having a Monday through Friday talk show during primetime. I mean, just which networks did you think were going to allow the stars of their television shows to appear on his show? Whether their shows were directly on opposite his or not, it was now more of a threat to the other networks than a promotional tool. Initially some of Jay’s old friend did show up, but by the end, which is in actually over just yet, you could tell it was a bad idea that just wasn’t going to work.
Let’s face the facts folks. We want real entertainment during our primetime ever gonna be watching TV. Late night talk shows during primetime might work on the cable channels, but we’ve all come to expect something different on the networks. Sure, NBC did save some money, but they seem to forget their legacy, which used to be a network that knew how to pick original programming that was actually good. At least they had the good sense to make sure to bring back, in some form or another, all of the Law and Order shows.
I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t watch late night TV shows all that often. As a matter of fact, I tend to watch a lot more documentaries that I taped earlier in the evening. When I do decide to check out late night, I used to love to mix up the Tonight Show and David Letterman show, because each show has something that I enjoyed and would laugh at. While I enjoyed Conan show at 12:30, there was nothing about his show at the earlier hour that ever seemed as good as anything that David Letterman had on his show. Then again, I’m almost in the next demographic that they’re not shooting for anyway.
At this point it’s almost all over, and come the end of February it’s going to be like the final episode of one of the seasons of Dallas, where they decided to write off the whole season by saying that it was just a dream sequence. A year from now someone’s going to ask “did Jay Leno actually have a TV show on before 11:35?” And probably no one can remember.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
I Love Natalie!
Posted by Mitch on Jan 15, 2010
I don’t know how I found this young lady, but I can’t get enough of her videos. Her name is Natalie, and she either lives in Australia or New Zealand as far as I know. I know what got me to watch the first video; she’s just the cutest thing. But she’s funny as sin. She has a great take on a lot of things, and most of them are things that I believe we think of all the time and either just let them go or wonder the same thing she does.
If you decide to look it any of the three video below, you’ll find that she’s very creative as well. She’s figured out how to put multiple copies of herself into the video, and she loves to dress up as well. Sometimes she even has her mother in a video, and I don’t know who the guy is, or whether it’s multiple guys, but she’s not always alone. Near the end of each video, she will also show pictures of people she’s run into who want to have their picture taken with her, and then she does a brief rundown of some of the comments are videos of received.
You want to think about how powerful YouTube can be? According to her statistics, there’ve been more than 26 million views of her videos. Someone’s got to put this young lady on TV!
Anyway, I’m sharing three videos that I thought were particularly funny. Warning, some of them might have a bad word here and there, so view it first before you decide to share with the kids. I don’t know if you will find are as funny as I think she is, but I’m betting Sire’s gonna say she’s cute enough to at least watch. Oh yeah; she also makes more than $100,000 a year with her YouTube page, so that might encourage some of you wannabe internet stars. lol
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
My 10 Favorite Blog Posts Of 2009
Posted by Mitch on Dec 31, 2009
We’re winding down the year, and since I’ve already posted my goals for 2010, I thought I’d take a look back to see what I really liked that I posted in 2009. That’s not necessarily an easy task, as I had well over 200 posts, but I do what I do for my readers, and also for myself I suppose, as I get to see where my mind was at certain times throughout the year.
The posts below weren’t necessarily the most commented posts of the years, although, as it turns out, one of them actually was. These are posts I liked for some reason, and that means it’s a selfish reason. Maybe later on, at some point, I’ll actually post something about the most popular posts for the year; we’ll see. In the interim, I hope you enjoy some of these posts that you might have missed throughout the year, and heck, you might think about doing something like this on your blog.
1. Barack Obama – Our Time Has Come – There shouldn’t be any question why this post is here, even though it may not have been one of my better written posts. You just can’t imagine how proud I was on this day, and man, I wasn’t hearing any mess from anyone about “well, he’s not all black”. If he were walking down the street no one would be saying “Hey, there goes half-white Barack.” So, my wife and I were proud, my mother was proud, my grandmother was proud, my dad would have been proud, and it was a great day.
2. Seven Things You Don’t Know About Me – This one was part of a meme that someone else started, and I decided I’d go this route rather than the 25 questions meme that was going around.
3. Massive Traffic To Your Website/Blog – This post was a rant against all those other posts you’ve all seen where someone is talking about how to drive massive traffic to your blog, but it’s the same thing you read over and over, without any proof that any of what they’re talking about works. You know me; I hate when people copy from each other without offering anything new.
4. Six Things I’ve Learned About Affiliate Marketing – This post turned out to be the most commented on post of the year for me, and Sire, it topped out at 88, so no, I still don’t have a post that’s reached 100 comments. These were pretty good lessons; if I’d only listen to myself every once in awhile.
5. Dad, Mom And Computer – My story about how I used to talk with my dad on the computer and how it meant so much to him, then my mother later on, and of course me.
6. The Keys – Talk about having faith. This was my sharing the story of how I lost my keys on the day of a Syracuse University basketball game, how I knew I’d find them, and how it all came true.
7. Five Personal Lessons On Health Care – This one told the story of what I went through when my mother fell ill in September, and is probably the first time I gave advice to people with my background as a health care consultant that everyone needs to know.
8. No, Reading And Creativity Are Obsolete – Someone else wrote on the topic “is writing obsolete”, and I decided to counter her argument, so to speak, with what I thought was really the problem.
9. My 13 Favorite Singers – I loved putting this one together, and I felt I needed to go there because one of my most popular posts, Top 100 Singers Of All Time, was based on a list that Rolling Stone did and I just commented on it, but a lot of people thought those were my choices.
10. World Diabetes Day – 2009 – They do this type of thing yearly, and being diabetic, I always have some kind of story to share on the subject. This bad boy is growing fast, and I’m sorry but I just don’t believe that all the people gaining too much weight is actually all their fault. So, this is my tale for this year.
And there you go; if that’s not enough to read back through, I don’t know what is. I hope you enjoy going back through a portion of my year with me.
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