Sorry, I’m listening to Pulp right now, and my music tends to influence my writings. Anyway, I’m supposed to be working right now, but I made the mistake of letting my toddler nephew stick his dirty fingers in my mouth Christmas Eve, and I’ve been fighting off some sort of illness ever since. While I took some Emergen-C yesterday morning when I got up to cook the turkey I didn’t eat (I’m a veggiesaurus), it’s still lingering and standing on a very windy street corner all day wouldn’t be the brightest thing I’ve ever done. So here I am, hanging new Audrey Hepburn posters, wearing new coats, and listening to new iPods. 🙂

So let’s talk about characters getting beat up. I think Freddie Krueger getting jumped happened shortly after I left, and I feel so awful about it. Not that I could have done a damn thing against a group of guys, or even really one, but when it’s someone you know, it makes you feel that much worse. I don’t know the guy terribly well but he’s always been so nice and friendly. He kept stopping by Tuesday to ask how things were going and to compliment my costume, and then that happens … I guess it was bad enough that Denim has stopped to consider if it’s worth it to keep doing this business. He’s probably one of the most successful characters out there, if not the most, so for him to shy away, it must be getting bad. This is why I leave before it gets dark, especially now that Catwoman’s away and I don’t walk out with anyone else. Yes, the underground parking is as safe as any, and there’s a few employees on every level, but really, what are they going to do if they see some dork in a Halloween costume getting tackled by a group of testosterone-challenged troglodytes? Laugh, I bet.

A few years ago I worked Knott’s Scary Farm’s Halloween Haunt, and I was a masked monster in one of the mazes. It was a great job, really fun, and I’m a night owl anyway, so getting off work at 2 AM or so was fine by me. Plus, I got paid to scare people! How great is that? I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the people I worked with were entertaining and surprisingly nice, just like the H&H characters. But there was a huge problem there with monsters getting jumped. While it’s never been proven, at least as far as I know, there was always the rumor that Power 106, a local hip hop and rap radio station, would give out a load of free goodies to anyone who sent in a video of themselves beating up a monster. While we were safer inside a maze, with security stashed throughout and not a lot of room for shenannigans, I did have a group of guys grab me and run off. Thankfully security caught them and they were thrown out of the park, but my manager still told me to walk to the car with a large group because these asshats with nothing better to do than beat up people in costumes had been known to follow characters to their car for a further beatdown (and maybe a free carjacking). What is it with a person in a costume that causes this blind rage?

Further working against us is the bias most H&H employees seem to have against the characters. I guess it’s the few crazy and bad ones, the ones who get arrested and beat up other characters, but security isn’t really on our side out there. All they care about is keeping us on the public side of the walk, laughing at us, and maybe catching a shoplifter if it doesn’t cut into their gossip time. I’m sure they’re not all like that, because I don’t want to generalize for fear of being pigeon-holed myself, but I haven’t yet met a guard that’s really had our backs or said, “Hey, if anyone starts to mess with you, find me.” I know I wasn’t raised like most of the knuckle-draggers out there, but I was raised with the Golden Rule, and also to put others before myself. If you do something for someone, it’ll come back to you in a good way. Also, if it’s in your power to help, why wouldn’t you? Doesn’t a part of you sink when you stand by and watch something bad happen, when you know you have the power to change things? Doesn’t it haunt you? It haunts me.

Last Sunday, a woman talked to Denim and I about character work for a while, and as it was starting to get dark, she asked if I carried mace. I said no, and she said, “You’d better get some, baby. I wouldn’t come out without it!” I thought it was a bit of an overreaction at the time, shrugging it off as, “Oh, she doesn’t know, it’s not really that bad.” But if the men are getting jumped more and more frequently, what’s to stop even one guy from grabbing a thin little thing like me or Catwoman and mugging us, or worse? Maybe that woman was right. My fists and feet can only do so much. Watch out, all you assholes with nothing better to do. Mess with this girl and you’ll get an ugly surprise, and I won’t stop ’til you’re permanently scarred, so your outsides finally match your insides and the whole world can see what kind of person you really are. You make the first move, and I only move in self defense, so the law’s on my side as the victim. You’re only getting your just desserts. And I’m a very loyal friend, too, so if you mess with one of them, you’ve messed with me.