Sidewalk Superheroes

Wow. I don’t know if it was just a lucky day, or the planets aligned, or if the rest of the world stalks us, but yesterday was crazy busy and totally made up for the past two weeks’ worth of rain, illness, and crap in general. It was our first time working in, what, a week? And while we didn’t work too long on the boulevard, we had a spokesmodel gig last night as well and there’s just so much to talk about! There’s also loads of pictures, too, and a quick video I took with my new Flip camera:

Catwoman and I had been booked to sort of represent Zannel, makers of the widget at the top of the sidebar, at Twiistup 5 in Santa Monica. It was a little last minute, especially on Catwoman’s part, but I thought it’d be fun and I’d always wanted to go to a geek tech convention. I’d read about them a lot when I lived in San Francisco, because that was the home of the whole dot-com boom and is still a really tech-heavy city. I was a freelancer there for Sugar Publishing, among other things. Anyway, it had been raining on the weekends and weedays were too dead for us to warrant the drive, paying for parking, and then standing around shivering for about $6 each, so we were hard up for cash at this point. Catwoman wanted to go work Thursday morning, and while watching the news at my sister’s on Wednesday to look for news stories on the characters, I kept hearing it was supposed to rain Thursday through next Tuesday. Argh. She had heard otherwise, so I set my alarm clock and we were just going to wake up and see what the weather had to say.

The sun was nearly shining, so we met up at the boulevard. (Which was a good thing for me.) Now the Oscars are next weekend, right? A whole week and change away? Well, the bleachers are already set up and blocked off in front of the Kodak Theatre, and cleanup crews are finally getting around to repairing the pavement and scrubbing up the stars on the Walk of Fame. There’s a special unit of Oscar Security, along with the usual mall cops (for decoration only) and heightened police patrol. I’m actually a little grateful for this, because after seeing just how big the character beatings story turned out to be, I was afraid the rappers would start going after all of us in retaliation, especially since their old favourite targets aren’t around right now. (I don’t know if Freddie still comes out, but I haven’t seen him lately. Then again, I haven’t been around lately.) But for the first hour or so, no rappers. Then, when they did come, they seemed very tame. Both of the older guys (one of whom is the ringleader and responsible for the beatings) have new spiels for the tourists, which really pisses me off. I overheard it one of the few times they came close to the Chinese Theatre:
“Hi, how you doin’? I’d like to give you this CD, I’m not selling it.” Okay, they can’t say they’re selling it anyway. It’s illegal. But before they would just shove a CD in someone’s hands and say, “You like hip-hop?” Continue for the softer side of Sears:
So most people would at least grasp the CD to look at it, and then it gets interesting. “So like I said, I’m not selling this CD, this is a gift. Okay? I’m not asking for money or anything, but any profits we get off of this goes to a drug awareness program for inner city youth.” What the bloody fuck?!? Where did this come from? I didn’t believe it the first time I heard it, but they kept saying it. When asked for details, the guys would stay very vague, just repeating “drug awareness programs for inner city youth.” What I wanted to clarify was that “drug awareness” meant “turning kids on to that shit.” Because it’s usually called “drug prevention” for a reason, dumbass.
Later on the ringleader caught Catwoman and I as we walked past and demanded a hug from us. I don’t know what’s going on, but this makes me supremely nervous. I’d rather not be on anyone’s list either way, but I don’t like him singling us out. We’re not on his side, and I don’t want him using us as such. God, I just wish this problem would go away.

Anyway, I got there before Catwoman and talked with Charlie Chaplin about the news, and he told me that later that night, Superman and a few other characters had gone to the city council meeting and had asked that the character operations now be on a permit basis. This would filter out the homeless and beggar characters (goodbye, Miss Unidentifiable! Smell ya later, Homeless Jack!), and the price of the permit would offset the cost of characters having their own security. We would be paying the city, so we would suddenly be counted as real live human beings and be treated as such. I have no idea how that went, and most of the characters were miffed because Superman didn’t call them to come out in support, and was just a gloryhog in general. This is my surprised face.

Homeless Jack has also been lurking in front of the Chinese Theatre since the news crews came and the bleachers went up, so we had to deal with him. I don’t know why, but the Joker likes him, so if we hang out around him, that means we have to listen to Homeless Jack. I was nearly starting to feel guilty over so thoroughly disliking him — I’d once told Catwoman, “It’s bad enough that he’s homeless and seems to like it, but does he have to be a total asshole as well? There are no redeeming factors!” — but yesterday he was actually mocking us for having to pay bills and rent. Sure, sometimes it does feel like a stupid waste of time and money, especially if you’re not getting what you pay for, but I would never brag about being homeless, smelling like a week-dead goat, and sleeping in my tattered costume. I caught him writing on scraps of paper later, and couldn’t help but imagine that this was his diary and he was gloating over how much better it is to be a drug-addled slob than to be us. Then he used the diary as toilet paper.

Catwoman came not long after and we settled in to work. She could only stay until 1, so we could get in three hours of work. At first it seemed really slow, especially with half of the sidewalk at any given point blocked off. There was nothing there yet, but I guess since 9/11 the city has been über paranoid as far as security is concerned. Next weekend the whole block will be blocked off, which makes it not worth working at all. Hope it rains. So anyway, it looked to be another slow, not really worth it day, and I started to inwardly sulk that I could have been sleeping.

We start to get a few photos, and everyone’s tipping pretty well. It’s suddenly not so bad! Then we see a small film crew in front of the Chinese Theatre and decide to check it out. It’s the BBC (ah, the accents!), and they’re filming characters giving their Oscar acceptance speeches. The director wants Catwoman and I to do a joint segment.
“Both of us together?” I ask, just to clarify.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” he says oh-so-politely.
“Yeah, sure. Should we fight over it?” A glimmer comes into all the men’s eyes.
“Yeah, that’d be great!”
“This could be the Oscar for our film,” Catwoman laughs. I’m doing the screenplay and she’s doing the acting, and suddenly this gets really interesting. They line up the shot and the director says go.
. . .
Oh, like I’m going to give it all away! The video will be playing on the BBC next weekend, and for those of us unfortunate enough to not live in the UK (me), or who don’t have cable and BBC America (me), it will be on their website next weekend, shortly before the Oscars. Suffice it to say, the hair flew in our segment and we drew a good little crowd, and I’m sure there’s going to be pictures up somewhere very soon. I’ll post the link to the video as soon as it’s up. 🙂

Back to the story, the BBC guys loved it and tipped us nicely, and used us briefly with Superman and Who Dat fighting again. I think we got a few more pictures out of that, and the tourists just seemed so much more friendly yesterday. Guys kept telling us we were sexy, which was nice. And not in a lecherous, “I can barely keep from honking your boobs” sort of way, but in the appreciative, “Man, you are something” sort of way. Then it got slow again, so we went to get our parking validated and grab something to eat. I’m not supposed to skip meals for a few days after being bled by the Red Cross, so eating was important at this time.

But as we were approaching the Information desk to validate, Superman came running up.
“You need to come back. I’ve got some guy doing a TV show, eighty bucks a head.” He snatches the parking tickets from our hands, gets them stamped, and shoves them back in Catwoman’s hands. Good thing we remembered what time we’d each come in. He drags us back to the Chinese Theatre where a small group of characters is clustered around a guy with a paper planner in his hands.
“Here are the girls,” Superman said, and I struck my Batgirl pose. The man barely glanced up from his book.
“No,” he said dismissively, and waved us away. Catwoman and I traded looks. You know, that look. Superman kept railing on our behalf. Apparently the guy had seen one of the other Catwomen, the also black but non-scary Catwoman, and wanted her. That’s cool. But Catwoman also did Wonder Woman, Superman said, and if you were going to have Batman and Catwoman, why not Batgirl as well? The man looked us over again.
“No.”
“Forget it, let’s just get something to eat,” I scoffed, and we went and ate pizza. Superman later said that the guy had only wanted two girls, but it turns out that he wanted all the characters at the boulevard by 6 am on Sunday morning. So waking up at 4:30 to get ready, curl my stupid hair, and hang out in the rain for $80 wasn’t a huge loss for me.

While we were walking up Hollywood Boulevard to get our food, though, a guy jumped out of a cafe and grabbed us. He introduced himself as a producer and the AD for his current project, a reality show pilot for Danny Noriega (a top 24 finalist on American Idol from last year). Danny apparently liked to dress as a superhero sometimes, and they wanted to film the boulevard characters giving Danny an AI-style judging. Would we be interested? We said sure, but Catwoman was SAG and also leaving at 1, so she more likely than not couldn’t be in it. But we took his info and he took ours anyway, and off we went.

By the time we got back everyone else was leaving for lunch, and the film crew was already running late. I started asking the cool, non-beggar and non-asshole characters if they were interested, and suddenly everyone’s SAG and AFTRA and can’t do it. What the crap? Superman explained that someone called him for a film shoot a while ago and asked what the characters’ rates were, and he said they were all union scale. So he got all the superheroes unionized, and now no one wanted to do this pilot because they wouldn’t get paid. Not because it was non-union, because they’d all lined up to do the BBC gig for a fiver, and plenty of other things, but because they wouldn’t even get a dollar out of it. Annoying. Catwoman left, everyone else was demanding money, but Superman finally caves and Danny shows up, and we film a segment with him. They made me sing to him, which was embarrassing and nerve-wracking, because I don’t sing American Idol style at all. I was raised on musicals. So I sang the chorus for the Vaselines’ “Son of a Gun.” It goes, “The sun shines through my bedroom when you play, and the rain, it always comes, when you go away.” I thought it’d be cute to sing to a musician.

Then we took some pictures:

And another film crew was lurking about:

But it was already 2 or so and I was tired and little hungry again. I still had to go home and freshen up and get directions for that night’s gig, so I left. I came home, ate my leftover sweet & sour shrimp (mmm!), and had to take off again. We were told to be there no later than 5:30 and I wasn’t sure how traffic would be out to Santa Monica, because it’s usually pretty awful, but I got there a little after 5. Oh. Again, I felt stupid wandering into an airplane hangar dressed as Batgirl, but at least it was a geek convention and everyone seemed into it. I met up with George, our friend at Zannel, and I was kind of useless, just standing around waiting for things to start. But he gave me my Flip camera to start using on the boulevard, since I refuse to get an iPhone (I’m not an Apple whore!), and I started talking pictures and posting updates to my Zannel channel. That’s what I was there for! Well, that, and to talk about what I’m doing on Zannel.

They had to briefly clear the building for some arty press shots, and it was only when I was standing outside surrounded by 100 guys in all black that I realized how much I stood out. And they were all staring.

Catwoman showed up after 6, and we immediately hit the open bar. Well, to be fair, we had only wanted water, but the bartender was cute and really liked us, so we got booze. And he made the drinks ridiculously strong. She wasn’t looking, but I watched as he poured a good sixth of a bottle of vodka into the shaker he was using to mix our drinks, no joke. It was insane. Good thing Zannel’s table was also giving out free samples of homeopathic hangover cures!

For the rest of the night we mainly just wandered the room, handing out our business cards and Zannel’s postcards. We usually didn’t get far before being stopped for pictures or questions — or both — and I’m sure Zannel would have won for Most Intriguing Representation if they were handing out awards. The folks back at the table said it was great. So we ambled, entered some contests, lost our voices yelling over the music and incoherent mumblings the MCs insisted on doing, and was on everyone’s liveblogging feeds for Twiistup. I did a quick video early on in the night to break in the Flip, and then we sort of forgot about documenting. Until I found a Jarvis Cocker lookalike that I sort of fell in deep like with (though I was too nervous to ever approach him, alas!), and a solar-powered frog, and the bartender gave us “I Am Loved” water. We were also in TechZulu’s interviews, where they were kind enough to namedrop Zannel’s LA Stories and this website quite a few times. Then we got our pictures taken and printed instantly by the good folks at Cliques Photo Booth, which was cool:

I promised to name drop them because they were so nice, and do custom backdrops and all sorts of cool things for parties and meetings. Also, one of the photographers reminded me so much of Howard from The Big Bang Theory, which cracked me up to no end. I love that show, which probably helps to explain why I had such a great time at Twiistup. I begged to be sent to more geek conventions. Everyone there loved us, there was actually a lot of cute geeks there (besides not-quite-Jarvis), and one person asked if I was going to be my Mystery Costume. Awesome! So I’m not the only one who thinks I already look like her. 🙂 I started mentioning that I was making that costume, though for the geeks they get to know what it actually is, and there was a lot of excitement. I think it’ll go over really well. We also hyped up our costume building skills, and this weekend when I’m rained in, I’ll also flex my coding and web building skills to make this blog look much better. Guys really dig a well-rounded geekette, don’t they?