BALLS!: Bowling with The Donnas

Words: Missbehave
Photos: Jimmy Fontaine

The Donnas are awesome. For cryin’ out loud, they’ve been around for 15 years, released seven albums, and unleashed their latest, Bitchin’, on their own label called Purple Feather Records. It’s particularly nuts when you consider that this most rockingest foursome (comprising singer Brett Anderson, guitarist Allison Robertson, bass player Maya Ford, and drummer Torry Castellano) are all hardcore besties from Palo Alto, California, and have been in a band together longer than they haven’t. I mean, they celebrated their Quinceañera in May. 

The Missbehave crew rolls pretty tight too, and we knew for months that the band would be descending on Brooklyn for their American tour. So in order to assert our own, more regional awesomeness, we hatched an intricate plot to challenge the troupe in some sort of activity. This is because we are aggressive like rappers and wanted to duel on our home turf. We’d considered paintballing, but would’ve gotten creamed because our Photo Director  Brooke is 11 feet tall and our Creative Director Sally is a literal cripple having broken her leg skiing. Stupid art department. We then thought of some sort of drinking game but remembered that the Donnas (especially that Brett girl) are supremely gangster at holding their liquor despite our Associate Editor Olivia essentially being a bit of an alcoholic. So we went bowling. 

At The Gutter in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we discovered that The Donnas suck at The Bowling. Brett, clad in a grey v-neck and Earnest Sewn jeans, dubbed herself “Billy J.” for her bowling moniker because of her love of Billy Joel and because, “they’re basically the best initials in the whole alphabet.” She laced up her disgusting borrowed shoes and promptly bowled a gutter ball. “Whoa, it was like there were magnets.”Allison called herself Lamar, because “that’s what I always wanted my name to be,” and looked positively fetching in a snug raspberry satin jacket and incredible super-fancy-looking feather hair thing. She also bowled a gutter ball, but gets one million radical points because even though we were sworn enemies that day, she saw us eyeing her barrette and whispered, “go get one, it’s from Urban Outfitters. It was totally cheap.” 

Torry’s fake lane name was “Maurice” because that’s what a supposedly “big” fan mistook her name as being backstage at a show one time. True story. Torry actually managed to knock some (3) pins down which gave all The Donnas license to start gloating and do the “Walk Like an Egyptian”victory dance. At this point, we felt the first flash of fear in our hearts. Maya had the best name of the evening with “Dickface.” This is apparently her nickname in all circumstances, which is awesome because when you scream, “Suck it Dickface!” after she catches that spare, you feel a little better ’cause it’s so amazingly absurd. Maya was wearing this beautiful Gothic Lolita-ish Marc Jacobs baby doll dress and is mad quiet. So is Olivia, so they paired off and that’s when Maya told her this story: “Once I found my dad’s gold tooth and thought it would be funny to put it in a bowl of popcorn to see if anyone would eat it. I never saw it again.” Which is a non sequitur except that it was a “bowl”of popcorn. Um…

Anyways, despite shit talking, zealous victory dancing, and Brett stealing Olivia’s highball of Maker’s Mark whisky, we managed to do BK right and murdered them. The Donnas, with the inclusion of their publicist Gina-Marie a.k.a. “Guns Marie,”scored a combined total of 302. The Missbehave crew racked up 393, with Alex, our Editorial Intern, bowling for Sally and basically most of the rest of us since we discovered she’s got this freakishly strong arm like the Bionic Woman. 

It was a really fun day. “This was the best interview ever!” exclaimed Brett, before we collectively decided we were starving and raided The Gutter’s vending machine. Amidst passing around ROLOs, Twizzlers, and Mr. Goodbars, we really hunkered into a lovefest and started to talk. We learned that The Donnas are total greedy food monsters and ingest most of their calories in candy and booze. We learned that one time Allison stood outside in the snow in Chicago for three hours because her mega crush called her and she couldn’t get any goddamn privacy on tour. We learned that The Donnas routinely get into dance-offs with their Swedish tour mates, The Hives, and beat them soundly every time. We learned that Torry gets very serious and impassioned when talking about their decision to leave a major label and start their own because, “after being in a band for 15 years, you see how much of your money they waste.” And we learned that no matter how much we adore a group of people, no matter how talented and beautiful they are, and no matter that their boisterous songs are chosen for our favorite movies and T.V. shows (Jawbreaker, Mean Girls, “Daria”), that it still feels incredible to trounce The Donnas at bowling. Even if they are famous, went to perform a sold-out show after, and probably forgot all about Missbehave’s teeny-tiny victory like five seconds later.   

Photo1: Brett Torry, Maya, Allison.
Photo2: Brett and her middle finger
Photo3: Allison with her stinky-ass foot
Photo4: Brooke the Amazon