Roller Derby

In case you didn't know this I have always wanted to a story on Roller Derby. I would want to actually play but I am not athletic and very uncoordinated. A few weeks ago I got close to doing a story. The Austin Roller Derby Girls (who the movie whip-it is based on) played an exhibition match at the Cuero Turkeyfest (Turkeyfest itself is a whole other story!) Anyway, the paper did a story on the event so I got to shoot my first bit of Roller Derby. These are my favorites (ha, can you tell I liked it?) I don't have the ability to do a photo gallery on here so sorry for the huge post. I'm also too lazy for full captions so I'm adding partial captions and some of the stage names cause that's one of my favorite parts.

When we got there they were building the track in the pavilion. Imagine if football players had to paint the field if they wanted to play football. These girls got there at like 8 am to start building.


Purr-Anna, left, and Hispanic Panic

Team Meeting before the match. The teams were the Hallow-meenies and the Spanks-givings.


Yeti Machete and the Spanks-givings

Stretching before the match.


Greta Ground-N-Pound.


Penalty Pillow Fight. (I'm not kidding)

Penalty tug-o-war

Rozy B. Hind (she was my favorite)

Oh yeah...They skate too.


Although I think that this was actually a penalty cart-race where they had to push the girl in front of them like a cart.

Fans at the end of the match. They actually turned out to be friends with my roommate because she knows EVERYONE! I told her that her life is like Cheers.



I think that this will suffice until I can do an actual story.

Victoria, TX

Hey y'all (see...I'm Southern now)

A few weeks ago I went for an evening walk because I had the day off with nothing better to do. I decided that y'all should know a little of what it looks like here cause it's not what I expected.

This is my house. We have the bottom, right apartment. There are two apartments upstairs and an office shares the downstairs with us. The balcony is fair game. If I have talked to you on the phone at all since I've been down here chances are I was sitting on that balcony. I call it the Big 'ol Southern House aka The Intern House.



There are a lot of cool houses in the area.




This man was sitting in his yard and I really wanted to take a picture of his house but instead decided to hang out with him instead. (Sometimes I get a little desperate for company) He has a grandson my age who is in college. He owns a ranch about 60 miles away that he drives to everyday. That day he killed a rattlesnake that he said was as big around as his forearm. He later gave me a tour of his house. I didn't like any of the photos though.



He has palm trees in his yard. South Texas has lots of palm trees. It's still kinda weird.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are bad. We should not judge people or places based upon stereotypes that we hear about those people or places. We should instead make our own judgments based upon experience and observation.

In other news this is the sheriff of a small Texas town...



Maybe I take back what I said...

Dog Love

This photo is brought to you by yesterday's assignment.
I spent 8 1/2 hours with this woman yesterday. Her story has noting to do with her dog.
My internship has turned me into the official pet photographer. I don't know why, it just keeps happening.
When the Advocate staff photographer saw this photo she said "Now that is true intimacy".

Enjoy!

Beach

At the beginning of the month (maybe the last day of September) I went to the beach. Being that I am from Michigan 87 degrees and sunny seemed like beach weather to me. Needless to say I had the place pretty much to myself (some teenagers did show up later). So now I can say that I have seen the gulf of Mexico (no oil thankfully) and that while all of my friends were finding their scarves, I was at the beach.

Holy Camera

So a few weeks ago I sat at work with nothing to do. (Which really annoyed my editor) Now I have WAY too much to do. I have untimely assignments to edit from last week still. I haven't even been able to make final plans with my source to start a longer term story. Therefore I have a list of things that I want to blog about and just haven't gotten around to yet. I promise though, its gonna be good.

Last week I attended a pet blessing at a local Catholic school. The student and their parents brought their pets on to the football field to be blessed by a prayer and holy water. Lots of dogs and cats, a goldfish and even a horse! (This is Texas after all).

Anyway in the process Monsignor Michael Herald felt it necessary to bless me...or my camera. I'm not sure which. Anyway hopefully I will take some super sweet divine-inspired pics soon.

The Haunted South

The South is totally haunted.
Earlier this week I had to go out to an old abandoned hospital where they have recently been doing paranormal investigations. The city shut the place down two weeks ago right before a ghost hunt (that I was supposed to attend and shoot) was to take place.
Anyway the caretaker of the place (who lives in a trailer out back with his donkey and pit bull) showed us around and told us all of the ghost stories and about how he has seen the ghosts. It was pretty cool and pretty scary. Like really scary. I didn’t see any ghosts though, just the videographer popping up unexpectedly making my life shorter each time.

This is the caretaker pushing the videographer down the hallway in a wheelchair. Its like a Hollywood dolly, he calls it the “handicam”. Get it? Anyway, I thought it was creepy.




This is a quick portrait of the caretaker I took while Bill interviewed him. I think that his story is more interesting than that of the building. The dude chooses to live and work on a haunted hospital. He is apparently part of “S.P.I.R.I.T.” which is the Scientific Paranormal Investigative Research Institute of Texas.




Here is the video. I helped a little. Mostly I just got in the way. I’m good at that.