Sidewalk Superheroes

Ooh, someone’s been making improvements around here! Okay, it was me. If you hadn’t noticed yet, or you’re reading off a feed and don’t drop in regularly, I’ve just added two new pages to the top bar.

24 Hour Party People should be pretty self-explanatory. Catwoman and I are officially offering our services as costumed entertainers to anyone who wants them. Go to the page itself for more details and contact information, but please note, we like to keep it PG. So no, we don’t strip or let you paw us. It has to be said.

Custom Costumes is all about, duh, custom costumes. Mainly, how you can get your hands on one of your own. If working here has taught me anything, it’s that the old adage, “If want something done right, you have to do it yourself” is so very true. We’ve gone through all the headaches and sweat and tears to get our costumes together, and now that we’ve done all the nasty work, you can reap the benefits! If you covet any of our costumes, consider putting in a request for your very own. As a bonus, it’s handmade by a superhero. Just please know that with any custom-built, high quality costume, it’s not cheap. You definitely get what you pay for, though.

Okay, just wanted to let everyone know about these additions, and hopefully they’ll help someone out. Enjoy!

This just came on my iPod, no joke. God, I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post this!

. . . 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!

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!