Quirky!

 

I’m spoiled for choice this morning, as Twitter has yielded two perfectly quirky local stories. Let’s have both.

From MLQ - - Major League Quidditch - - comes this announcement:

MLQ is excited to announce the newest addition to MLQ Championship: Take Back the Pitch!

Take Back the Pitch is a showcase that challenges the current understanding of gender in quidditch and opens opportunities for gender diverse athletes to play quidditch out from under the scrutiny of misogyny, transmisogyny and misdirected misogyny. Through The Gender Diversity Initiative, MLQ seeks to address the very real ramifications of sexism and transphobia for cis and trans women, non-binary folk and trans men. Through the open-access Take Back the Pitch tournament, MLQ aims to highlight and lift up athletes that are overlooked by their teams and in the community on account of sex and gender and give them the leadership opportunities, playing time and diverse skill training they deserve all the time.

Given that quidditch is a game (invented in a series of fictional works by J.K. Rowling) which relies both on magic and flight, I’m going to assume that the game these folks are playing is a highly modified version. I find it exceedingly delicious that MLQ is committed to supporting gender diverse athletes, since author Rowling has disappointed fans worldwide in recent years by holding forth on social media with numerous transphobic statements. It’s clear that the Harry Potter fandom is more affirming and inclusive than its author.

The tournament will take place on Monday, Aug. 23 as part of MLQ Championship in Howard County, Maryland. To learn more, visit the Take Back the Pitch page on the MLQ website.

Next up is a new comedy web series to be filmed right here in Howard County, Turf Valley, to be exact. And that’s the name of the show. Turf Valley is a short-form, live-action comedy web series about three stay-at-home dads.

... after ushering their kids onto the neighborhood school bus, (they) hang back to shoot the existential breeze. 

Creators Adam Rodgers and Thomas Ventimiglia describe Turf Valley as a cross between King of the Hill and Waiting for Godot. I’m trying to imagine what that would be like. 

You can visit their Kickstarter page to see a pilot and get a taste of what the show is all about. They are still raising funds to complete the first season:

The Pilot is in the can... Episodes 2-4 are financed... we'd love your help funding Episodes 5,6 & 7!

There are days I sift through social media and lament that nothing is happening in Columbia/HoCo. Today was a great day for the kind of local stories I love to find and share.