and then someone suggested my RD name would be Buffalo Soldier

If anyone ever tells you that there is nothing to do in this town on a Saturday night, please tell them to stuff it. Because Friday night, over pints of porter, there were not one, not two, but three options for the following night floating around:

1. The symphony;
2. Motorhead;
3. Roller derby.

I chose wisely, which is to say the only one that was BYOB: roller derby.

Here's what you do at roller derby: you load a car with people. You stop at the Marathon and pick up two six-packs of the only beer in cars they have: Modelo and PBR.

You get to the arena, which is really just a repurposed hockey arena with tube lights duct-taped to the floor. There are lots of people standing around the parking lot, even though it is raining, and several of them are holding allen wrenches, and then they use them to shotgun beers, and you understand what the allen wrenches are for.

Inside you grab a seat on the bleachers and eat big soft pretzels with mustard and watch girls beat the hell out of each other, on skates, and maybe you discuss the finer nuances of roller derby naming, such as Jackie Daniels and Dot Matrix, and you drink the beer and think that this is a pretty damn fine way to spend a night. But you also want your other friends to be there, too, because you would take up all the bleachers and drink all the beers and then yell Hold Steady lyrics at the jammers, and that would be a pretty damn fine time.

Somewhere in the weekend I got a haircut and mailed out some poems and cnf, and watched Jake and Elwood run around Chicago, and bathed the dog in shampoo so we smell the same, and made some white bean and chicken chili, and a whole mess of these things, which are phenomenal with dark bittersweet chocolate and raspberries--but NONE OF THAT COUNTS BECAUSE IT DID NOT TAKE PLACE ON SKATES. SKATES, SKATES, SKATES.

The idea of cooking on skates, however, gives me an idea for the upcoming weekend: the B and I, hosting our own cooking show. We'll call it STEAKS 'N SKATES: FAST MEALS FOR THOSE ON WHEELS. And we'll only tape one show, and it will only last fifty-seven seconds, at which point we will both injure ourselves severely, but that near-minute? Instant YouTube classic.