About 3 years ago I heard from Michella (now Phd Dr Marino) that she was doing her dissertation on Roller Derby, the sport she was taking up. And in July of 2011 she with her sister Erin made the trek to Sonoma to listen and learn at the feet of the Commissioner. And in the past three years she met with many of the old and Modern Roller Derby.
Well now Michella is teaching at Hastings college in Nebraska and in just a few weeks will offer the first college credit course anywhere on the game From January 6 through January 24 the subject will be History 266,”Hell on Wheels: skating through modern Amercan History.” And on January 9 the subject will be the sport from 1959 to 1973 “The Jerry Seltzer Reign and Fandom” and the class will get to see and hear me via skype. I bet if I had asked Steve Butcher (my boss at Brown Paper Tickets) he would have sent me a bus ticket, but what the hell.
All of these years I have built this reputation as a maverick in Roller Derby,NHL, Ticketing, Film Festivals and Hookers Balls (see elsewhere on this blog), associating with Hells Angels and Frank Deford, and this woman is trying to legitimize me. Well, I won’t let it happen. No matter what the result of this class, I will still be the same carefree bon vivant trying to convince all of you that what I learned about gorilla marketing from Roller Derby and Ticketmaster is available to all leagues FREE with Brown Paper Tickets (along with their amazing free services: jerry@brownpapertickets.com)
If you are near Hastings (and there is not a helluva lot to do in January in Nebraska) see if you can get in or audit Michella’s course…..It goes all the way through modern Derby……maybe Steve will still send me the bus ticket.
Legitimate? NEVER!
your article, like you, is clever and funny…!!
I would love to take this class.. Hoping to be part of this history again soon… Can I take the class via Skype??? #MalibuClassiX #KnowledgeisPower
check with Michella, she is on facebook.
Come on Jerry! If people find out your a knowledgeable, passionate guy who wants the modern era to see the success it deserves, you’ll lose your edge man! Very funny. What a great opportunity. It’d be interesting to hear what students say who’ve never experienced derby before. Even in big college towns like Madison and Columbus, we’ve NEVER had much of a student fan-base. Oddly enough, the ones we get are all Masters and Doctorate students.
Despite Jerry’s concerns of my legitimizing him, I did no such thing yesterday! And just so you know Jerry, as I was grading a student’s questions yesterday, someone wrote “Sidenote: Jerry Seltzer is a bad-ass.” So, there you have it 😉