Sidewalk Superheroes

Today sucked a bit less than yesterday, which was good. After about fifteen minutes on the boulevard today I wanted to go back home crying, but I’m sure a big part of it is because I’m really introverted and shy and groups of catty sluts like to gang up on me when I’m alone. (“How can you be introverted with a mouth like that?” you may ask, to which my answer is, “Words are my defense.”)

Before I launch into today’s craziness, let’s take a moment to relax and enjoy the random bits of beauty in Hollywood:

Hollywood & Vine

Wow. I’m so glad BatgirlAmidala has this wonder-writing power. I just want to get back to the boulevard and the craziness! Right now I’m sitting at my family’s dining room table, on my laptop, wishing I could speed this vacation along. I know, family is important. I missed two auditions last week though. BUT I got put on hold for some work in January on an internet commercial. I shall say no more… don’t want to totally jinx it. Well, since I have no news to add… I’m going to add pictures!

Screw you, Joker! I’m in charge now! See how high I can kick?! (more…)

Meow. Just want to introduce myself here. I am CatwomanByDay. The best damn Catwoman you’re ever going to find prowling Hollywood Boulevard. 😀 That said… hello! I’d like to thank my partner-in-crime, BatgirlAmidala, for starting up this blog and filling it with our backstory. She is a writing machine!! But that’s good, because I am out of town for the holidays and living vicariously through this blog. I’m going to be practicing with my bullwhip, and getting some really sexy photos taken of me in my costume while I’m here on the east coast. Also adding some finishing touches on the costume – new gloves, some white stitching… it’ll be real good.

So, now I’m going to sit back and wait for the latest update from Batgirl, because I hear there’s a load of weirdness going on tonight. 🙂

And now we’re caught up. Today was my first day of work since Sunday, when Davy snapped and got all obsessed. Now Catwoman is back east for the holidays, and I work alone. :/ Well, there are other people around, but trust me, you feel a lot safer when you have one person always watching your back.

Today was also the first time I tried out my new Batgirl costume. It came in the mail Tuesday, and it took me two days of sewing to make it wearable. Here’s the mask, before I made it better:
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I’m going to mix Saturday and Sunday together, mainly because I can’t remember everything. I went to a party Saturday night and got drunk, stayed out ’til 5, then got up at 7 for work. I did remarkably well for usually having to have at least 4 hours of sleep every night, but as you can tell, my memory suffers.

So last weekend it was fairly busy. Still slower than other years, when the economy was better, but like every other part of Hollywood, there’s always something going on. We don’t talk to Superman as much now, because already it seems that he doesn’t work. I mean, he pays his rent and bills just fine and has plenty of cash left over to buy all those collectibles, but now he doesn’t even really pose or work the boulevard. He’ll just show up, pull a book or DVD from somewhere (seriously, I don’t know where!), and will show random people. He’ll talk about being on Jimmy Kimmel, make lewd comments to passing ladies, and sort of hurt our business in general. *sigh*
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I need to hurry up and get to the present! Stuff keeps happening, but if I don’t post chronologically, nothing will make sense. So I’ve discussed two weekends ago, our first as Catwoman and Padme, and the week leading up to this past weekend, where the Batdrama began. Let’s go to Friday, where things began to pick up again.

By this time Bat M was truly insufferable. We would somewhat work with him — well, he hovered near us all the time, so we couldn’t really help it, and even when he was mad at us, he couldn’t stay away for more than five minutes — but as soon as Bat A showed up, we were off. We began to be less subtle about it too, which may sound mean, but if no one catches that you’re being subtle, why bother? Besides, he kept following us anyway. It got to the point where Bat M would corner us somewhere and be so involved in whatever it was he was talking about — his past life as a well-paid mechanic, his hatred of Bat A, how he and Bat T were cool with each other, even though we’d never seen them exchange a word — that we began to text each other. He didn’t even notice. I even managed to shoot this with the camera on my phone and send it to Catwoman right in front of him: (more…)

So in my last entry I sort of glossed over last week. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I’m afraid of being long-winded, even though there is a lot to talk about and I’m sure it’s highly entertaining to some of you out there. Admit it, you love to laugh at other people’s lives. Anyway, while the last week was pretty low key business-wise, and we usually only stayed a half day, things were beginning to brew below the surface.

Take, for instance, the beginning of the Batdrama. From what I’ve heard this has sparked up at odd times before we came on the scene, but it’s new to us and involves us, which makes it more melodramatic. I wasn’t doing so hot as Padmé by myself, though in the latter half of the week I began to get chummy with Storm Trooper and Vader and they invited me to work with them. I didn’t want to just start hovering nearby and poaching pictures because they have a good thing going already, and I don’t want to be one of the crap characters. Yoda does that, I don’t. Anyway, they’re usually only around on weekends, so I needed a backup. I also needed something warmer, because it’s December and even in Hollywood it gets frosty. I decided to order a Harley Quinn costume because I love Harley and have always wanted a costume of hers, and I might as well use this job as an excuse to get or build all of the costumes I’ve ever wanted. She fell through, sadly, though maybe that worked out for the best (you’ll find out why later). So I ordered Batgirl. (more…)

First off, let me just say that my partner in crime, Catwoman By Day, is finally here! Now I can give her a name and quit calling her my partner, ’cause that sounds a little more intimate than we really are. Anyway, fast forward to the weekend after my last story. We hadn’t seen each other during the week because we had other things to do, but Catwoman and I talk all the time through email. It’s like a non-committal chat for us. Anyway, we’d sent pictures back and forth of the costumes as they came in — in her case, piece by piece — and we were really feeling it. This weekend would be good.

I showed up at her place early with a t-shirt and jeans pulled over the costume, because it’s pretty revealing and it was a cold morning. Besides, no free shows to the truckers on the freeway. From there we carpool over to Hollywood & Highland (H&H), because we’re poor and cheap and it’s better to split parking. The regulars recognize us right away, which is nice, and promise we’ll do loads better with these new costumes. And we do! I’m still lagging a bit, because a lot of people don’t recognize me as Star Wars or think I’m Leia. Plus, Catwoman can work with Batman, which the tourists love. And the Japanese businessmen are obviously turned on by the bondage aspect of her costume and the whip, so they want her by herself, even though I’m in a torn shirt and wielding a gun. Perverts. (more…)

It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, our second day on Hollywood Boulevard and the day of the Hollywood Christmas Parade, which would step off at the corner of Hollywood and Highland. We showed up a bit earlier, since the characters we had met the day before said that mornings are usually the best time for making money, and wandered around a bit. Still dressed as Holly and Eliza, we earned a lot of admiring looks and loads of people sniping pictures when we weren’t looking, but still no one seemed to want to really photograph with us. We were cool, but we weren’t that cool. Still, business was improving from the day before, and there was still a lot to look at and absorb.

We spent a lot of the day just walking up and down the block, from Highland to Orange and back again, trying to grab the attention (and hopefully business) of all of the tourists and extra locals hovering about. There was supposed to be a big block of entertainment right in front of the Chinese Theatre from noon until the parade started, but it ended up being a load of crap Disney kids bands gyrating obscenely and trying to make it big. It was appalling, honestly, and the music was terrible. I saw a few teenage girls walking around with posterboard and glitter signs for one of the bands and considered asking them if they’d been paid to wave them. I just couldn’t believe anyone would take that god-awful drivel passing as music seriously. It also pulled out a lot of kids, and kids don’t know who Audrey Hepburn is. We did get a few moms who loved our costumes and forced their kids to take pictures with us, which wasn’t too bad.

But with crowds come the crazies. While the day before had been mild, even for a weekend, the draw of thousands of extra people with money and the news vans filming all over the place, the weirdos began to show. There was a relatively harmless older fellow who played guitar while whistling on the sidewalk, and while he was nice, he only seemed to know two songs. No one seemed to care for what he was playing, though, and avoided him. He started following us around, which further pushed business away from us. To make matters worse, Dollhouse Guy appeared. Apparently he is pretty well-known on the Boulevard, and he really is called Dollhouse Guy. I noticed the miles too big green jacket with that title painted on the back (in what looked like white poster paint) and wondered why. He and the guitarist got along and Dollhouse would make up bawdy lyrics to the two songs the guitarist knew. After we’d finally shaken them both, we turned around to find Dollhouse Guy, with a large dollhouse on his head, gyrating on the ground next to the stage set up for all those crap Disney kids. Oh, so that’s how he got his name. (more…)

Once it was decided that we would try our hand at the character job, we now had to decide how we should dress. Since we met through a mutual love of Audrey Hepburn, and we had just dressed as her (in two different eras) for Halloween, my partner in crime and I decided to try that. We figured that if Elvis and Marilyn Monroe did alright, then surely Holly Golightly and Eliza Doolittle would do fairly well.

We showed up in the early afternoon, and as soon as we stepped off the elevator at H&H, a man asked for a picture with us. Taking it as a good sign, we posed with him and he tipped us. And we hadn’t even really started yet! So we sauntered down to the Boulevard and suddenly froze, overwhelmed. What did we do? How did this really work? There had been surprisingly little information about all this on the Internet, and we hadn’t thought to come up here in advance and talk to any characters. As we crept closer to the stars on the sidewalk, a guy dressed as Darth Vader in tights came up to us and pushed back his helmet.
“Are you two new here?” he asked. We nodded. “Okay, welcome to the Boulevard,” he said, and shook our hands, introducing himself. He very nicely went over the rules; what line in the sidewalk delineated public from private property, and how we were only supposed to pose and photograph on the public side, and how we must do something to show that we were “off” when crossing onto private property, either by removing a mask or some other piece of the costume so we wouldn’t be approached. Grateful, we thanked him, and he moved off to take a break.

Clinging to each other, we slowly crept up the Walk towards the Chinese Theatre. In front of the Kodak Theatre there was a Jack Sparrow loudly heckling the tourists, shouting, “I need your money!” As we walked past, he called out to us.
“Excuse me, ladies.” (more…)