Ouch. Right in front of me, Mercy, who stands 6 feet 2 inches tall, puts a merciless hit on Zee of the Maui Roller Girls, sending the smaller woman skidding along the concrete near my feet.

At the end of the two-minute jam, Zee rolls to the bench on her pink fluorescent-wheeled skates. “;Where's the first-aid kit?”; she asks.

Last Sunday at Kamiloiki Park, Oahu's Pacific Roller Derby Hulagans slammed and jammed against the Maui Roller Girls. Part of GiRL FeST Hawaii, the free event drew more spiked hair and tattoos than might usually be seen at this suburban roller-skate park.

Roller Derby has changed. Decades ago, it was a professional sport — well, sports entertainment — played on an indoor wooden banked track. Now, it's an amateur movement, female, flat-track, concrete.

The skaters sport colorful names (Sugar Pop, Cookie Cut Her, Ena Propriate, Soviette Suzette) and all sorts of punk get-ups — gold hot pants, little schoolgirl skirts, tutus. Many favor fishnet hose, which by the end have gaping holes around their strawberry abrasions.

The action is as hot as the sun beating down, bodies flying and falling. There are apparently rules. You can knock somebody down, not elbow them, nor take a swing at them, an infraction for which the referee, Farewell Mel, banishes a Maui Roller Girl named Haole Bury from the track.

Mel, who wears a kilt, plaid cap and referee shirt, is actually Melon Davis, a Kihei tattoo artist. “;These girls are some of my best customers,”; he says. “;But you have to keep things fun.”;

At the end of the match, won 129-100 by the Hulagans, there's much hugging. Victorious Mercy — it's her real name, Mercy Shammah — is surrounded by smiling opponents.

“;(Expletive), you killed me, man,”; says one of her victims, Jump On Jen.

“;GiRL FeST. We're supposed to be stopping violence against women,”; says Mercy with an ironic shrug. “;I got hit pretty good myself.”;

  Zee is being rolled around in a wheelchair, having succumbed to a muscle cramp. On her more usual days, she's Lindsay Walton, an auditor at a Maui hotel. “;You write for the newspaper?”; she says. “;Tell everyone how tough I was. The toughest girl out there.”;

AHK MAH DIH NAH ZHADD

TV news anchorwoman Kim Gennaula has been working 14-hour days, finishing out her contract at KGMB News while starting her new job at the Kapiolani Health Foundation.

“;I get tired,”; she says. “;The other day, I didn't practice as thoroughly for the news as I usually do.”; She missed rehearsing one page of her script. When it came up on the prompter, just her luck, the first words were the name of the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

She got the first name, took a couple of tries at the second and finally said, “;I'm sorry, forget it.”;

She's yet to live it down. “;Now everyone at the station calls me Sarah Palin.”;

model behavior

Photographer Kim Taylor Reece now has his own reality TV show: “;Ka Hula: The Search for the Next Kim Taylor Reece Model.”;

Nine women, ages 20 to 27, vie for cash and trip prizes as well as the chance to pose for Mr. Reece himself. “;Can't complain, they're all beautiful,”; says Reece.

“;It's a little different than most reality shows, no eliminations,”; says producer Rory Wild. “;It was all by vote. The girls had to vote for each other, which was an interesting study in human behavior.”;

Wild's shopping the show to TV stations around town, but nobody knows who won. “;At the end of eight episodes, we're going to do a live show,”; says Wild. “;Dum Dada Dada Da! A surprise reveal!”;

makaha sons of mexico

“;It was UNreal!”; said Jerome Koko of the Makaha Sons. “;The promoter told us we were the first Hawaiian group ever to play Mexico.”;

The Sons flew back Monday from Guanajuato, a historic city in the heart of Mexico. There they played one of Mexico's most beautiful theaters, the 1903 Teatro Juarez. “;The theater was UNreal, too,”; says Jerome.

But the most unreal part was the crowd, perhaps excited because many of the concert's dancers were drawn from the 300 Mexican hula halau.

“;We felt like rock stars,”; says Koko. “;They mobbed the stage. So the promoter tried to sneak us out the back, and there were tons of people there, too. Security had to get us out.”;

The Sons will go back to Mexico, more cities next year. “;Next time, we're going to bring our own food, Spam and rice,”; insists Koko. “;We had too much tortillas this trip.”;

Dressed for the Spa

You never know what's going to turn out to be a great party. One was the opening of the new 17,000-square-foot, 14-room Moana Lani Spa. Not to be confused with the Mauna Lani Spa on the Big Island, this is on the second floor of the Moana Surfrider, where Thursday night waiters passed stuffed mushrooms and plastic flutes of champagne, and people lined up for chair massages on a lanai overlooking the beach.

Edgy Lee and a crew were filming for her PacificNetwork.tv. The staff of Modern Luxury Hawaii was there in their black cocktail dresses — well, not new publisher Buddy Moore, who opted for an aloha shirt.

Whatever anyone wore, they were overdressed compared with the spa staff, who wore fluffy white bathrobes. Even Pumehana Davis, playing her harp in a corner, wore a robe over her gown. “;What's it like playing in a bathrobe?”; I asked.

“;Hot,”; she said.

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