more media, and a bear

Sometime in the late hours last night, a black bear was spotted in our downtown area. I first learned anything about the story when I first got on the computer today and checked KnoxViews.

I checked out the main local news sources, but whoever is writing for them just makes me cringe. It was all so . . . local news show. This site does have some video of the bear if you are so inclined.

It's expected that more animals may be seen in the area as summer approaches and into fall, partly due to our freeze in spring having destroyed much of the berries and acorns that make up the vast portion of the bear's typical diet.

After reading one local news site's description of what to do when confronted with a bear I knew I had to find something better. It didn't not seem to make sense, but I wondered how accurate this was, and I wondered if they were about to get someone killed.

This led me to the National Park Service page for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They have a great page about bears as well as bear safety tips. If you live near here or pretty much anywhere apparently, it wouldn't hurt to know what to do if you see a bear.

I'm not going into the steps here. Click over and read about it yourself. I'm not a park ranger or any sort of authority on bears, so I feel it would be wildly inappropriate for me to attempt it, and I wouldn't trust anyone that listened to me anyway. The GRSM page does a great job of it, such a good job in fact that this site pretty much lifted it whole with some really shitty editing to pretend they wrote it themselves. My googling brought up the second site first, at which I read about black bears. The writing is obviously poor, and as I read, I just couldn't trust a site that didn't have someone editing even a little bit. Imagine my surprise reading the original moments later after refining my google search.

local media

It's always fun to watch some other city's news, to see how what their aging white guy and young, attractive black woman have to say about whatever mundane shit is happening locally. What's even better is when your own local news not only does a story on your own local roller derby league but also does that story in sports as opposed to the 5:00 show that's about cooking and being a great mommy.

Mommys and cooking are fine, but roller derby is a sport and belongs with the sports. Also, please quit comparing it to professional wrestling. Derby is real, the hits are real and none of it is staged. Maybe the next story from the local media can involve something a little meatier than hearing yet another skater having to dispel the pro wrestling myth.

So without further ado, the local media story. Watch for Momma, and if your eyes are really quick, the darling fellow in the green shirt, screaming his head off, is one of our homeschool friends.

derby anyone?

Hard Knox Rollergirls welcomed Nashville's Rhythm and Bruisers to town and skated away with the win, 111-81. This was HKRG's first time hosting a team from out of town as well as our first win. After the bout, the general consensus seemed to be that this was the best bout many of us had ever seen, and many of the skaters seemed to agree.

I have to say that Nashville was a great group. I'd like to think we were good hosts, but it's not hard when the team, the staff and the fans are as cool as Nashville was. We'll be seeing them again soon enough at their house, and it will be nice to see them. We'll even say hello to Memphis on that trip, and we'll skate back home with the win, but we'll talk about that when it happens. Look for more info around July-ish.

The win wasn't won easily. Nashville skated hard, their jammers were fast and they knew how to throw up a blue wall in front our jammers. Jamming for Hard Knox were Miss Kat A Kombs (who also did her share of blocking), Goblynn, Boom Shockalocka, Jamaica 'Em Cry, and Momma, of blog fame, also known as Jamie Skull.

All our jammers did a great job, but without our blockers, they'd never have made it through Nashville. Madam Mayhem may have won the award for most two-in-one blocks, while Sushi Roll just might have had the most jammer take downs. Not to be outdone, Nashville's Hildabeast did her best to send our girls sprawling, while Red Vag of Courage kept being right where we didn't want to see her, again. And if we are going to pass out awards, our own Lady Paine certainly wins one for hardest hits with Tank Her A coming in a close second.

One special highlight of the night was getting to see HKRG's Beverly Killbilly on skates again. She's battled some injuries for far too long, and I know the entire league was happy to see her knocking people silly again.

I wish there were pictures, and I'd really love to have some real stats to share. Those things do exist, but I don't yet have access to them, so feel free to expect yet another post about roller derby in the not too distant future. I'll rhapsodize again about both the beauty and the sporting prowess of our skaters, all hail the mighty Hard Knox. Thank you Nashville for being cool and beautiful. We can't wait to see you again.