BrianH
At the Start
A pillow creed
As the punkchick-infested Pillow Fight League takes flight, the list of sports at least 100 times as entertaining as baseball has increased by one.
Steven Wells
Guardian Unlimited/Sport
January 30, 2007 11:41 AM
Once restricted to public school dorms and soft-porn, the pillowfight crashed into the bohemian mainstream in late 2004 when hipster flash-mobs, bored with pretending to be zombies, started battering each other far-from-senseless with duck-down and/or polyester filled weapons of mess-destruction.
It was, everyone agreed, terrific fun. So it was only a matter of time before some Canadian punk-rock types started a competitive pillowfighting league featuring rollerderby style sexy riot-grrl punk chicks sporting gaudy tattoos, transgressively enormous amounts of make-up and regulation sized 100% man-made pillows from Honest Ed's, aka "the Harrods of Toronto".
Yep, it's official, The list of North American sports that are at least 100 times as entertaining as baseball has just increased by one. In December 2004 the competitive pillowfighting concept was tested at a Toronto rock gig using burlesque performers. Watching women "lost their minds". When given pillows "they tore each other apart". The formation of the Pillow Fight League (slogan "Fight Like a Girl") followed shortly.
Soon professional pillowists with picaresque punk-rock monikers like Sally Spitfire, Champain, Eiffel Power, Polly Esther ("She's a pissed-off waitress in real life, and a pissed-off waitress on the mat"), Sarah Bellum, Lynn Somnia, Betty Clock'er, Digit Jones and Ruth Lesley ("ritualised combat helps to keep me in top form for when the revolution comes") were slugging it out in front of crowds of over 500 in properly regulated matches across the continent.
Most combatants are ditzy caricatures of modern American femininity - the waitress from hell, the maniacally cookie-cooking soccer mom, the garishly tattooed trailer-trash harpy - but the PFL is no poodlefaking WWE style scripted sham. "We don't want actors pretending they're playing somebody else," league commissioner Stacey P Case told the New York Post. "If we wanted a pillowfighting nun, you'd have to be a nun."
The strictly refereed bouts are for real. "I was peeing blood" said Champain after Betty Clock'er bruised her kidney . These women make the padded prima donnas of the NFL look like pussies. Based on boxing and mixed martial arts, PFL rules forbid hair-pulling, eye-gouging, or sticking bricks in your pillowcase. It's not all about twatting your opponent with a pillow (although that would be exciting enough). There are throws and holds - all involving a pillow - and fighters are allowed to smother opponents into submission.
Being an alternative, hipster, punker-feminist kinda thing, the birth of the PFL inevitably sparked a furious debate within the alternative, hipster, punker-feminist community as to whether competitive pillowfighting is exploitative.
To which the only same response is - in the immortal words of the late, great Sid Vicious (channeling Eddie Cochran) - who cares? (Anyway, it's not.) There are many readers of this page who don't consider a sport to be legitimate unless it was invented by stripey-unitard wearing mustachioed and pipe-smoking Old Etonians circa 1832. But given how contrived, rule-ridden and burdened with sexless stats-obsessed nerds "proper" sports like cricket, baseball and American football have become, surely we can afford to sacrifice at least one of the crusty old duffers to make way for this refreshing and feisty new arrival. I suggest baseball.
A TV deal is in the offing. Ditto for the ever-more popular rollerderby (one day all sportsfolk will be feminist punk women).
Looks like this sporting revolution will be televised.
As the punkchick-infested Pillow Fight League takes flight, the list of sports at least 100 times as entertaining as baseball has increased by one.
Steven Wells
Guardian Unlimited/Sport
January 30, 2007 11:41 AM
Once restricted to public school dorms and soft-porn, the pillowfight crashed into the bohemian mainstream in late 2004 when hipster flash-mobs, bored with pretending to be zombies, started battering each other far-from-senseless with duck-down and/or polyester filled weapons of mess-destruction.
It was, everyone agreed, terrific fun. So it was only a matter of time before some Canadian punk-rock types started a competitive pillowfighting league featuring rollerderby style sexy riot-grrl punk chicks sporting gaudy tattoos, transgressively enormous amounts of make-up and regulation sized 100% man-made pillows from Honest Ed's, aka "the Harrods of Toronto".
Yep, it's official, The list of North American sports that are at least 100 times as entertaining as baseball has just increased by one. In December 2004 the competitive pillowfighting concept was tested at a Toronto rock gig using burlesque performers. Watching women "lost their minds". When given pillows "they tore each other apart". The formation of the Pillow Fight League (slogan "Fight Like a Girl") followed shortly.
Soon professional pillowists with picaresque punk-rock monikers like Sally Spitfire, Champain, Eiffel Power, Polly Esther ("She's a pissed-off waitress in real life, and a pissed-off waitress on the mat"), Sarah Bellum, Lynn Somnia, Betty Clock'er, Digit Jones and Ruth Lesley ("ritualised combat helps to keep me in top form for when the revolution comes") were slugging it out in front of crowds of over 500 in properly regulated matches across the continent.
Most combatants are ditzy caricatures of modern American femininity - the waitress from hell, the maniacally cookie-cooking soccer mom, the garishly tattooed trailer-trash harpy - but the PFL is no poodlefaking WWE style scripted sham. "We don't want actors pretending they're playing somebody else," league commissioner Stacey P Case told the New York Post. "If we wanted a pillowfighting nun, you'd have to be a nun."
The strictly refereed bouts are for real. "I was peeing blood" said Champain after Betty Clock'er bruised her kidney . These women make the padded prima donnas of the NFL look like pussies. Based on boxing and mixed martial arts, PFL rules forbid hair-pulling, eye-gouging, or sticking bricks in your pillowcase. It's not all about twatting your opponent with a pillow (although that would be exciting enough). There are throws and holds - all involving a pillow - and fighters are allowed to smother opponents into submission.
Being an alternative, hipster, punker-feminist kinda thing, the birth of the PFL inevitably sparked a furious debate within the alternative, hipster, punker-feminist community as to whether competitive pillowfighting is exploitative.
To which the only same response is - in the immortal words of the late, great Sid Vicious (channeling Eddie Cochran) - who cares? (Anyway, it's not.) There are many readers of this page who don't consider a sport to be legitimate unless it was invented by stripey-unitard wearing mustachioed and pipe-smoking Old Etonians circa 1832. But given how contrived, rule-ridden and burdened with sexless stats-obsessed nerds "proper" sports like cricket, baseball and American football have become, surely we can afford to sacrifice at least one of the crusty old duffers to make way for this refreshing and feisty new arrival. I suggest baseball.
A TV deal is in the offing. Ditto for the ever-more popular rollerderby (one day all sportsfolk will be feminist punk women).
Looks like this sporting revolution will be televised.
