Sidewalk Superheroes

Well, the boulevard, and the pier, have been quite depressing lately. Unless we go out there and have a really good day soon, this might not last much longer. We barely break even on lunch and gas (and we’re not eating much, I swear! $2.25 pizza!). I don’t know how the other girls out there do it.

I’m almost willing to bet people snipe and decline to tip because they still think someone hires us to be out there. Which really makes no sense. I’ve never thought that. I mean, how would that be possible… have you SEEN some of those costumes? They’re about ready to fall apart. If I was going to hire characters, I’d make sure they weren’t embarrassing me or my business by going out like that. Plus, why would I hire 4 Marilyn Monroes? 3 Jack Sparrows? Doesn’t make any sense.

I love to dress up, and meet other people who love to dress up, and be able to walk around in public in costume… but not when I have bills to pay, credit cards to pay off… traveling to fund… I’ve got to be getting paid for my time. Batgirl too. We aren’t going out there just for the heck of it.

Honestly, I’m just not sure what the next step is. We’ve offered ourselves as models to photographers now, and perhaps that will bring in a little something. We’ve got some amazing costumes in our possession. I’d love to make use of them, and get my money back (seems like my costumes always cost way more than I think they will). I’m supposed to be signing with a new agent soon, but that seems to be taking some time, as well. I’ve had some good auditions, so we’ll see if they lead anywhere.

I AM happy though, because right now I have some free time to sew, and I’ve been wanting to do that for a while. Get creative, sew some new dresses… I want to totally revamp my wardrobe. I’ve been working on that for a while! I sat out by the pool today, and that was relaxing. I need to do that more often, because I worry too much, and work too much on the computer to keep the money coming in.

I’m debating whether or not I want to order a new catsuit. Mine has some issues, and the new one wouldn’t cost that much, but still… I’m wondering how much use it’ll get and if it’ll pay itself back. If money wasn’t an issue, yes, I’d get it. I love costumes and I strive for perfection. We shall see… Back to work now.

Though they mainly come through YouTube and rude people born without brain filters who just walk up to strangers and say any random, stupid thing that comes into their head, this is for all the complainers. The people who want professional, HD filming from two hobbyists, who want archive quality costumes on our shoestring budget, who want professional pictures and scratching of their fetish itches without offering anything in return, this is for you:

oh god

You could have it so much worse, so be grateful we’re sharing our high quality, sexy selves with you. For free.

(The picture above was taken from Holy Taco’s “The Worst Homemade Star Wars Costumes” list, which is definitely worth looking at. Go. Look. We’ll still be here.) And thank you to the few who have offered your help, expertise, constructive advice and have actually helped us along the way. It’s greatly appreciated, and maybe some of your class will rub off on the ruder people.

Hey, remember that one weekend where Catwoman and I were taken on a wild ride, ditched and shafted by a bunch of drunken morons who claimed to be in a band? A band signed with “a major label” who claimed to live in a $10 million house in Hollywood Hills and money to burn who said that $300 was a drop in the bucket to them? They still haven’t paid us. In fact, they’ve been playing the “let’s ignore them and see if they disappear” trick with us, so I guess a few hundred dollars really is a big deal to them. They must be afraid to break open their little piggy banks, aww. Anyway, after Catwoman kept emailing them (after sending an invoice and setting a deadline, after which there would be late fees), the dipwad in charge finally wrote back. It made me so angry, this self-righteous douchebaggery that trust fund hipsters own in spades because they’ve never wanted anything, that I’m going to pull out a very old trick of mine. You get to read Mr. Douchebag’s letter, but with a running commentary. Think of it as a literary Mystery Science Theater 3000. And if you’ve never seen that show, I weep for you. I really truly do. Anyway:
(more…)

I’m up way too early. I shot a student film last weekend and had to get up super early for that, 2 days in a row. But that was OK, filming didn’t take very long. Then on Tuesday I had a couple lines in a low-budget film called iCrime and was on set til midnight. “On set” though, was a backyard poolside party. Luckily they had heat lamps! I don’t know what we would have done without them! But I already had the sniffles at that point and allergy medicine wasn’t working, so…. on my way to feeling miserable. The next day I could barely get out of bed. I spent most of the day sleeping, and didn’t even get online. 24 hours without the internet!! Crazy. But I survived. But now after all that sleep, my internal timer is a bit off! Blah… so here I am.

Monday at the pier was interesting. I was very nervous, since as far as I know, no other costumed characters have been at the pier. Everyone seemed nice, and it was very relaxed there. We didn’t really speak to any of the vendors, except briefly to one on the way out. It was a little windy that day, which scared me, because I thought my little umbrellas and the empty water bottle (where is there a water fountain on the pier?!) were going to roll right over the edge and into the ocean. I think we need some kind of chain for our tip bucket as well. My bike chain is too springy and wants to keep the bucket right up against the railing. That bucket… pretty funny all the effort that went into making that thing. Do you think there’s much of a market for tip buckets? Because I think we could design a killer tip bucket. lol.

Yesterday Catwoman and I had yet another photoshoot, and we should have our pictures shortly. I think they’ll be really good. 🙂 I only got to see a couple on the camera’s playback screen when we were trying to perfect some tricky shots (and now my shins hurt!), but they looked good so far and I’ll be picking up the picture disc in a day or two.

Today I’ll probably be hitting the boulevard by myself and working with Super Guy, so maybe I can get some interesting stories to put up here. Tomorrow we may have another photoshoot, so it’s been busy lately!

Anyway, today I also received word that one of my photographs from the early boulevard days has been chosen as the official Hollywood & Vine representation on Schmap!! It’s a downloadable guide to Los Angeles with lots of text information and snapshots of all the cool areas, and mine represents one of the most famous intersections. Heh heh, I feel so cool right now. Anyway, if you’d like to see it, here it is. If you’re surfing on an iPhone you get a special link here, and I even get a cool little blog widget if I’d like. Hooray! I’m a published photographer now! Of sorts. 🙂

represent!

Just a quick note this morning, because I can’t remember if we’ve given you the links to our Zannel profiles or not. I just want to let you know that if you follow us through Zannel, you’ll get more updates (we take pictures with our phones and post them throughout the day) from us. The blog is hooked up to Zannel as well, so whenever there is a new entry, it will pop up in our updates. Go check us out:

http://www.zannel.com/Megami
http://www.zannel.com/Sidewalksuperheroes

Can you tell how slow it was yesterday? It was so slow, I actually got the video together on the same day. Yesterday was weird. Nobody wanted to pay for a picture. We even had a whole tour group pass by and completely ignore us saying “We do pose for tips!” and just hold their cameras up and take photos of us as they walked by. It’s like we were statues, or maybe we were invisible and they just wanted a picture of the Hooters restaurant across the street. No acknowledgment at all that we were living, breathing, human beings. What’s with people?

It’s strange. I know we haven’t been out in a while, but we were out twice this week, and once last week, and there have been several characters we just have not seen since coming back. Bat M showed up out of costume today (with a noticeable Batman-mask-tan-line) to chat us up. I saw the older Marilyn leaving as I arrived in my car, counting her cash. We haven’t seen Sexy Cop or Tinkerbell in a long while. It’s mostly the guys out there, except for the girl in a mask that we’ve never talked to. The other day we DID meet a new Harley Quin. She seemed nice, but she was hanging out with King Kong and he’s not really speaking to us anymore for some odd reason.

You’re probably going to think we’re all super-wimps, but it gets cold out there! And fast! Most of the characters were following the sun as it sped across the sidewalk until we were all in one area in front of the Chinese theatre. None of our costumes seem to be very insulating. I even had 3 layers under mine (thin! You couldn’t really tell), plus ski socks, and sometimes glove liners too. I hope it warms up soon.

I’m too lazy to think of a clever title this morning. 😛 But here ya go, new video!

Finally! The Oscars came and went, and after tomorrow, the boulevard will be back to normal. Well, as normal it can be for being Hollywood Boulevard. I’m actually not sure how long it takes them to pack up all those giant styrofoam statues, but the lightboard signs put up all around that block had said that the roads would be closed through Tuesday. So maybe Wednesday we can start making up for lost time?

In the meantime, I started making a pattern for the Mystery Costume out of newspapers, though I just now realized that I might have goofed and have to start over. Curse my unclear sketches! I knew this would happen, but I did it anyway. Boning always trips me up. At least I didn’t get very far, and I can pretty much use the two pattern pieces I did sketch and cut out to make the proper pieces. *sigh* It’s just so hard to make a corset on nothing but sheer luck. (Oh yes, there’s a corset.)

I’ve also been working on the site behind the scenes. Over the summer I geeked out and borrowed a Joomla! book from the library, and now I have it again and I’m using it. So far it’s a little weird, though I am really rusty on what little CSS I did know, but it’ll work out. This site will be so awesome! One day. 😉

P.S. Can I just say: Finally!

<3

I don’t think Batgirl has seen this yet… 😉

Catwoman and Batgirl accepting their Oscar