And now a special lil’ guest blog from loyal Mayfair patron and Slaughter Daughter, Sister Disaster

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You know that saying “If I had a dime…”? Well here’s my version:

I am engaged in casual conversation with someone I am just getting to know, and as always it comes out that I play Roller Derby with the Rideau Valley Roller Girls here in Ottawa. Full Disclosure: I am extremely proud to be a part of my League, and I talk about it all the time! The response to this new information about me first causes the individual to exclaim: “There’s Roller Derby in Ottawa? They still do THAT?!?”. Followed by their personal connection with Roller Derby when they were a kid. Here it comes: If I had a dime for every time someone said…”I remember Skinny Minny Miller, she was awesome!”, I would have more than enough money to build a roller rink and open my own derby focused skate shop!  Then I am asked the usual questions about contact and elbows and fighting and banked tracks…and my answer to that is, “Roller Derby sure has changed.”

A Brief History of Roller Derby:

Roller Derby was a depression era pass-time. It started as a marathon like race developed by Leo Seltzer in 1933. It was co-ed, had two teams, and participants wore Dominion Quad Roller Skaters while they whizzed around a banked track made of slate. Over the years personalities of the skaters were developed, team and skater rivalries grew, all becoming very theatrical. The game itself also changed during this time, becoming about points rather than a number of laps to be achieved, this brought on increased occurrences of penalties and fighting on the track. Joanie Weston, Ann Calvello, Gerry Murray, Midge “Toughie” Brasuhun, and of course Skinny Minnie Miller were just a few of the ‘Good’ and ‘Bad-Girls’ of Roller Derby. The last Roller Derby Game was held in 1973. Despite an attempt to revive it with RollerJam in the 1990’s, Roller Derby was no more…until it’s revival in 2000 by Bad Girl Good Woman (BGGW) Productions in Austin Texas. Thank Goodness for that! Over the last 10 years rules of play of developed, and we play on any flat surface we can find. Here in Canada we skate in hockey arenas that have the ice removed for the summer. We still have wonderful names: DDT, Semi Precious, Lady Shambles, Slavic Slayer. We love to wear fishnets, and shiny booty shorts. But we also wear knee pads, wrist guards, elbow pads, helmets and mouth guards as this is a hard hitting full contact sport. The only one developed for women. A place where we can be aggressive, flamboyant and most importantly: Athletes.

The Movie:

Kansas City Bomber was Hollywood’s stab at depicting Roller Derby at it’s height. This is for all those people out there who remember Skinny Minnie Miller! An inspirational story about a skater trying to make good…at least that’s what I think the story is about…I usually get distracted by Raquel Welch skating on a banked track without a helmet! An insurance nightmare, eek!

Sister Disaster

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the Rideau Valley Roller Girls present Kansas City Bomber
at Sunday Night Geek Night – July 4th – 9pm

A rare 35mm print of George A. Romero’s third zombie film Day of the Dead is coming to the Mayfair Theatre for one night only: Friday July 2 at 11pm! Presented by Zombie Info.

Night of the Living Dead showed you a desperate group of survivors holed up in a rundown farm house. Dawn of the Dead showed us a battle for the control of a shopping mall between two groups of survivors with the zombies in between. With Day, Romero puts his human characters deep in a mine, with zombies on land and zombies in captivity as science experiments several feet under as scientists go head to head with an iron-fisted military man and his soldiers. The scientists want to study the phenomenon and find a solution to the problem, the military just want to blast the undead bastards away. Who will prevail? Again, the zombies aren’t necessarily the villains. Especially when one test subject, a zombie nicknamed “Bub” (played brilliantly by Howard Sherman) starts to show rudimentary intelligence and even a sense of humanity.

Day is considered underrated by many of Romero’s fans, especially considering makeup f/x artist Tom Savini’s showstopping gore is among his best work. Romero envisioned this film to be his zombie epic, with his original script featuring a zombie army and major production design. However, he could only get the money to make the film he wanted if he cut down the gore and agree to make an R rated film (Dawn of the Dead was released unrated). Romero then chose to make the film at a lower budget and make big changes to the script in order to have the freedom to make an unrated picture. Many ideas removed from the original script were later utilized in 2005’s Land of the Dead.

With it’s claustrophobic setting, dark humour and eye-popping gore and an exciting action packed climax, Day of the Dead is a must for any zombie film lover.

Day of the Dead trailer