Sidewalk Superheroes

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.

I’m sorry it’s been a bit quiet around here lately. We haven’t really been out doing superhero stuff for a while, which is why the world is such a mess. All day Saturday was spent retouching photos for me, Sunday was family time, and yesterday Catwoman and I finally reunited for something we hope will be really worthwhile. If you follow us on Zannel (or read the tiny print on my widget to the right, or follow me on Twitter), then you know that we applied for street performer permits last week. This is what happened yesterday:

We really didn’t stay long at all, slightly less than an hour on the Pier. It wasn’t too bad, though because it was a weekday afternoon and ridiculously windy there weren’t a whole lot of people out. Still, better than the boulevard! There have been some days where we’ve stayed out for 4 hours and only made about $7 each, so we consider this an improvement. Also, no competition from other characters, the police are on our side in Santa Monica, and most importantly, no drama! Everyone just keeps to themselves. It was a little bit lonely and we did miss the few good characters we like (you know who you are), but seriously, there’s just been so much crap we somehow got dragged into the middle of that it was time to get out.

Today another piece of the Mystery Costume came as I was heading out to do some errands. Yay! Here’s the two major pieces that I have so far, I’m just waiting on one more, which is en route:

I wear a lot of yellow and black

After piece #3 comes, it’s a lot of cutting and sewing, and then it should be all set. Then you can finally see what I’ve been blabbing about all this time and hopefully be as excited as me! 🙂

Well, I’m not sure when Catwoman and I will work again. We’ve been pretty busy doing separate things lately and we haven’t been too good at synching up. If it’s any consolation I’ll be working with a really great local photographer soon who really wants to do a Batgirl shoot, so if worst comes to worst you’ll just have to look at some pictures of Batgirl hanging around LA.

For a second, I thought Luke Skywalker had mailed me my boots:

c/o Hoth

P.S. I know the creature’s name is spelled “tauntaun.” Humor me.

This afternoon Catwoman and I had a photoshoot in Santa Monica — actually, on, around and under the Santa Monica Pier. It was a really fun day today, and it didn’t feel like working at all. Except we didn’t make any money*, and we were sweating in a most unladylike way under all our latex, vinyl and PVC.

Between poses, or when only one of us was being snapped, the other was videotaping, so I was able to make two — count ’em, two! — videos out of our footage. The first is a straightforward “this is what we did” short:

While the second is a music video. Yay, music video! I’m sort of obsessed with making these right now, and Catwoman asked for one, so this is a sort of Best Of Sidewalk Superheroes (so far) compilation, with some new footage cut in, along with plenty of pictures from today. I don’t want to give away a whole lot, because these pictures are being taken for a reason, but consider this a tasty sample of what’s to come:

*Actually, we did get a tip. It just went to ice cream. We were asked for a lot of pictures and just posed, not expecting anything, and I’m glad we didn’t because there were cops patrolling that seemed a little wary of us until I made sure to mention we were just doing a photoshoot (covering our arses). Then the cop was okay and talked about Watchmen, heh. But we did get some good information while out there, and some great ideas, so expect even more cool new things from us in the near future . . .