Sidewalk Superheroes

We didn’t work very long today, so there’s not too much to report. Our unseasonable heat wave in January is coming to a close (rain on the way!), and even though today was a holiday and everyone’s buzzed for Obama’s inauguration tomorrow, there just wasn’t a lot of business going around. Sniping and slack-jawed staring when we explained how things work, but not a lot of shots. Still, we got good tips.

It’s the fake tits. Catwoman and I are slender ladies naturally, which means we’re also not stacked naturally. But though we have everything else going for us, we usually don’t do super well at tips, and what every guy working the boulevard tells us is that we need to work the boobs. The plain Janes with crap costumes do well because they flash their tits. So we did a little experiment, accentuated our chesticular area, and the tips went up per picture. Good to know . . .

Also, our sugar daddy from yesterday, the one who wanted a giant photo with every character and would pay at least $5 per person, never showed today. Damn. Well, at least I got a fiver from him yesterday.

Also, some pseudo-drama for your entertainment. Besides Confessions of a Superhero, a newer documentary called The Reinactors is due to come out on DVD soon, and the film crew has been trying to interview some of the characters from the film for some DVD extras. The characters, however, are asking for more money. They were burned pretty badly with Confessions (and are currently in a lawsuit over it, from what I’ve heard) and aren’t making the same mistakes twice. Also, some of them are SAG and union, and aren’t there rules to be followed? Eh, anyway, the film crew came around casually carrying a camera, and asked Superman how he was doing. Superman said, “Fine, but if you want me to talk to you, I’m going to need more money.” They kept walking. Heh. I suggested to Wonder Cat that the filmmakers just collect footage of all the characters holding out for more money, and make a montage of it for their stupid DVD. From what I’ve heard, the Reinactors made the film festival rounds, much like Confessions, but it was so bad no one picked it up, so the filmmakers are pushing the DVD to try and recoup their losses. I’d watch out of curiosity, but it just seems like they’re rehashing Confessions to me. I don’t know.

Also, we were talking with Jerri Blank today, and some interesting news came out. Well, we actually just asked her to keep an eye out for Superman while we ran to eat a candy apple (parking validation, I swear), and she asked, very concerned, if he was trying to seduce us.
“He does that, you know,” she said, looking worried. “He tries that with all the young girls out here. He’s very smooth that way.”
“Eh, that’s not going to be a problem,” Wonder Cat said bluntly.
“Well, he’s married, you know.”
“Oh, we know that,” I said.
“Well good, he didn’t tell me for years. I had to make myself fall out of love with him when I found out about her. I really loved him. I thought I’d marry him.” She then went on to talk about their love affair, and how quickly he can get out of his costume. It was very disturbing, like hearing about relatives having sex. Not quite as bad as your parents talking about screwing each other, but definitely aunt and uncle level of weird.

I sometimes feel that the one small square block of Hollywood is a 24-hour crazy zone. Even when we’re around every day, we still miss things and don’t know the whole story. It’s a little irritating, as if your favourite soap opera ran sixteen times a day and you can just never keep up. But it’s life, so I can’t even TiVo it. Hah, like I even have TiVo. Anyway, I’ll try to remember everything that’s happened today, but I always end up forgetting something. Before I get going, though, here’s some gratuitous eye candy for ya:

sweets for the sweet

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I’m working on the next video (so much to sort through!) but while you wait for that, I thought I’d share some photos!

First, the photo Batgirl mentioned, in the stairwell. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough light and it was a little blurry. 🙁

Now, a picture of Batgirl and her new boyfriend. Or wait… girlfriend? I can’t tell.

I got a photo with a birdy today too, but Batgirl took it with her camera and we haven’t swapped photos yet. 😀

Superman certainly has a way with the birds…

Someone decided to be creative at the smoothie place:

OK, that’s all for now… have to keep you coming back for more, right? 😉

I think I’ve been forgetting to mention that Superman’s finally back out on a regular basis. He seemed to have gone MIA for a bit during the holidays, or only stopping by to talk. On my last day of work last year, he walked by in street clothes, the only time I’ve ever seen him “normal.” It was very unsettling.

Anyway, yesterday was a pretty okay day. It was Catwoman’s first in her warm weather costume, Wonder Woman. I stuck it out in my PVC Batgirl, because damnit, I just fixed her up! Heat wave be damned, I’m going to use her before summer comes in. But at least Superman had a great suggestion for a cool costume for me: Zatanna Zatara. *sigh* I know I’ll have to explain this one:

chick in a box

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. . . said the Caterpillar to Alice. Anyway, I’m uploading video to YouTube for Catwoman and uploading some pictures to Flickr (have I really already uploaded 75M this month?), and Numb3rs is on in the background. It opens with a tour group boarding a bus in front of the Chinese Theatre with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator in the background (I missed it, so I don’t know if it was one of our girls, or some paid extra), and they somehow manage to drive west and past the Kodak Theatre. The Kodak is just east of the Chinese Theatre, so the bus either circumnavigated the globe in about a minute, or they circled the block for no reason. Honestly, the writers live here, it’s one of the most famous city blocks in the world, and they can’t get it right? Maybe I just complain too much. Plus, they called it the Bodak Theatre, so someone was too cheap to get permission to use Kodak’s name. Huh.

Anyway, here’s some snaps of me improving Batgirl 2.0 and making her rock.

black and blue

I took off the bat logo from crap Batgirl 1.0’s costume, and the trim was blue. It would have looked funny, and Batgirl is black and yellow — unless we’re talking Yvonne Craig’s marvelous purple Batgirl, which is what 1.0 was supposed to be — so I took a Sharpie to the trim. It worked surprisingly well; it didn’t bleed onto the yellow, really, and the colour held pretty well. It still looks a bit blue-black in sunlight, but another going over should take care of that.

ready for her close-up

cape town

The cape that came with 1.0 was okay, black and yellow cheap satin, but it was sewn together in the stupidest way possible. There was a slit in the back with a useless tie back there, since they were lazy and just sewed the cape to the costume, and the black and yellow were just basted together with a sloppy overlock stitch. So I took it apart, sewed up the slits in back, sewed the two colours together properly:

moody bat

and sewed the tie on properly so it looks like a real cape:

the feeling is mutual

I also took in my catsuit a lot to make it good and snug, but I forgot to take pictures of that. I do have pictures from today’s work, though I’m not in them because I was snapping them, but it’s getting late and I need to shower. Tomorrow’s another long day!

Hello, there. Well, I’ve been quite busy lately, and finally have something to show for it. We have a brand new domain for the blog, and eventually instead of having it forward to WordPress, the blog will actually be ON the website. Just need to figure out how to do it. But anyway… welcome to www.SidewalkSuperheroes.com ! Also, I started a YouTube channel specifically for our videos, at http://www.YouTube.com/SidewalkSuperheroes. That way, if you subscribe to the video updates, you won’t end up getting my random audition videos or anything like that. Just Superheroes. Batgirl just re-uploaded the first video to that account, plus a new one! I know I’m a little behind with the videos, but I wanted to do it right, and not rush. Plus I have been encountering a bunch of computer/internet problems. So yes, this is the video of last Wednesday… enjoy. 😀

In other news, as you might have read, we are already planning our warm-weather costumes. I didn’t think we’d have to worry about it so soon but the temperature has been in the 80’s and black vinyl is NOT the most comfortable thing to be standing outside in! So I’ve decided that I’m going to be Wonder Woman. I had a short conversation with Superman about what I should be, and he pointed out that there weren’t many Wonder Women out, and that I would probably do well. So the costume is being put together, photos to follow soon… I know I still need to post my Catwoman photos, but I’m still waiting for them to be retouched. They look awesome as they are, but my friend John is amazing with Photoshop and does all sorts of cool things with the colours…. it’ll be worth the wait.

In an attempt to have something fresh up every day — or nearly, I’d like to have some life — I’m going to start sharing more behind the scenes. More costume building, more headaches, more desperate searches for supplies, more obsessive film watching and detail picking. More craziness. It’s only fair I give you the full scope of the mania of boulevard life.

Anyway, today I resolved once and for all to never get another store bought costume. I would like my summer costume to be Princess Leia’s slave costume:

slave Leia

I know there’s a “licensed” version out for sale, and really, I don’t know why they bother licensing those pieces of crap. I would be embarrassed to have my franchise tied in with such shoddily made, overpriced knockoffs, but maybe that’s why I’ll never mass produce my creations. Anyway, I was thinking that I might do my now usual routine of buying the one time use costume, wearing it until it literally falls off of me, and then making a better version. But why do I do this? It’s such a waste of money. I went to a nearby Halloween box store to try on the slave Leia costume:

the knockoff

And that’s when I found out they don’t have dressing rooms. What a stupid concept. I must remember it if I ever open a store that sells clothing. The girl was nice about it, though (not that it was her fault anyway), and took me to a nearby mirror and helped me slip the bottoms over my jeans. I guess the next time I want to try on anything, I should go out wearing a leotard. Just in case. The sample set was a small, and it fit fine over my pants, which probably means I could go extra-small. Yes, hate me, I’m teeny. I just had to sort of hold the bra part over my chest to get the general idea, since the rubber bits wouldn’t lay right and the velcro in back didn’t go small enough to enclose my pretty sunken chest. Eh. I thanked the girl profusely and took off, and that’s when I made my resolution. It’s just a lot of hassle and far too much money for some piece of crap. Roughly $60 for smelly, warped rubber and two drapes of fabric to cover my arse and hoo-ha? Eh.

The only bugger is that I’m not a master of resin casting. I searched a bit online and found some people who cast and sell the resin (what looks like metal on her costume) pieces, but it’s between $200-300 for unsanded, unpainted pieces, and another $100 for the creator to do the dirty work for you. And then there’s shipping. That’s still just the resin pieces, which means I have to fabric shop and match the bra to the boots I would inevitably have to cut up, which is more money. It’s crazy. But I’m lucky and have good geek friends, and one of them set me up with a local lady that will hopefully work out great. I’d love to have a really good slave Leia costume, because I know it’d kill during the summer and be very cool to wear (though I’m going to have to buy stock in sunblock), and I just like the kink factor of having a roleplaying costume around. Guys apparently really dig that sort of thing.

Besides the money factor, I’m paranoid about not being toned enough. A friend of mine resolved to practice yoga every day, and I decided to join her. Not just for moral support, though I do that because I’m a good friend (I gave up red meat as a sign of solidarity with a friend ages ago), but also because I want to be really toned for this costume. Everything will show, even when I make a special pair of underwear so my bits are covered and I don’t get arrested, and my abs in particular could stand to be more granite in appearance. My butt, while getting the Most Improved award last year, could also stand more toning. So there’s all the work that will have to go into the slave Leia costume before I finally get around to wearing it sometime in July (since I’m aiming to spend the entire month of June in Scotland). Wish me luck!

I may have waited a bit too long to catch up; now I can’t remember what happened which day. Not that very much happened, really, but if you’re a stickler for detail, I’m afraid you’re out of luck today. It really is getting quite dull out on the boulevard. Maybe it’s because we’re only there during daylight, around lunchtime, or maybe it’s because we’re still adjusting to the loss of Denim and Bat A, but we’ve actually been begging for something, anything to happen. Well, at least there’s pictures.

who died?

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Hey there. Catwoman and I have been busy working this weekend, and we have a few stories and pictures (Superman Returns!), but I’m not going to do them yet. We went out with Photographer Friend and a couple of his friends, and, well, I didn’t get home until 5 AM. I have no idea what happened to Catwoman, I sort of left her to her own devices. I also can’t believe I’m awake right now, I should still be out cold. But no hangover and no regrets!

Anyway, maybe tonight I’ll get all the pictures uploaded and my brain will be working normally so I can remember what all happened. I just found a note I wrote to myself that says, “My left is drunk! -me,” which tells you what state of mind I was in a few short hours ago. It was actually supposed to say, “My left foot is drunk!” because I was wearing little black flats and someone dropped their beer, getting some into my shoe. I said, “My left foot is drunk!” and we all laughed because the rest of us were just as drunk, and I thought it was so clever I wrote it down. Now you see how stupid I become, and what a recovery it will be.

In the meantime, I did get a new toy to play with, and it came in ahead of schedule, always a nice surprise:

ignore the mess

work in progress

I just threw it on as soon as the package was opened, it’ll look better on the boulevard. And I did cut off the tag afterwards. Okay, I have to eat. I’m starving.

He’s so cute, a Triscuit! Apples on the table, peaches on the floor, step back, baby, I don’t love you any more! Weird what playground games will stick in your head. Anyway, I don’t really have a boyfriend, though I do have a new crazy admirer to replace Homeless Boyfriend, wherever he may have gone. I think he didn’t like Padmé as much, so he stopped kissing the ground when I walked by. That, or he was finally committed. Anyway . . . I don’t know if I mentioned this before, and I’m too lazy to go digging back through the old posts to see, but there’s a new Michael Jackson on the boulevard!

I'm white!

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