Sidewalk Superheroes

My mum woke me at 7:43 this morning with a phone call. (I told you I wasn’t a morning person.) She said that one of her co-workers in the office was watching channel 5, KTLA, and their morning show had just done a segment on the Hollywood Boulevard characters! I turned on the TV, but the damn digital box is still acting up (oh yeah, so much better when it’s digital — pah!), so I missed it. Apparently, the news crew had been on the street interviewing some characters, she didn’t say which ones, and they had been talking about the violence on the street and the tension between the characters and the rappers. !!! It’s about damn time! She also pointed out that someone specifically mentioned Batgirl and Wonder Woman. Oh?

I admit, I was a lazy bum and went back to bed. Where I had very strange dreams. I guess that’s what comes of reading Thunderball in bed. Anyway, I’m up for good and while I have a lot to do today (including catching Fanboys, heh), I did want to see what else I could find about this. I was hoping for a video clip, but it doesn’t seem that the Morning News section updates their website’s news stories as often as they should. I did a news search on Google for “Hollywood characters,” though, and this article came up. So it was the LA Times that finally woke everyone up. I’m supposed to be getting the Times everyday, but Monday through Wednesday seems to always be missing (stay classy, asshat neighbors!), so I don’t know exactly where in the print edition this story would be. But the URL says ‘print edition,’ so loads of people are going to know what the rappers are doing both online and in the rest of the world. I say good. It’s about damn time. And I’m sure the Times reporter even talked to the guy in charge of calling in his dogs to do the attacks! He’s always there, and he usually gets interviewed for things, and I’m sure he’d deny it until his teeth fell out. (Ew, I just remembered, that was my weird dream this morning. I was watching in the mirror as my teeth turned brown and decayed into nothing. Hideous.) So stupid. But because he technically doesn’t throw the punches or get the kicks in, he’s innocent — in his own eyes. I say he’s guilty as hell, because if it wasn’t for him and his “nephews,” none of this would have happened.

Bat A is quoted in the article, which makes me wonder if he was the one who finally got through to the press. I know he’s been adamant about getting attention drawn to this so someone somewhere would stop it, so I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s just sad that one of the female characters interviewed said that she was targeted for calling for help after an especially vicious beating. Seriously, assholes? You’re going to beat up a smaller woman for calling an ambulance? This is why we don’t have good Samaritans anymore! If they’re really that petty and stupid, then they deserve all the prison time they will certainly get, and a good daily ass-raping besides.

P.S. In the Times’s picture, it’s Cheetah Girl (that’s my favourite costume of hers), a Tinkerbell I’ve never seen before, and Bat M. I can tell because he’s always talking.

Later: I haven’t been home all day, but I’ve finally found the video for KTLA’s morning segment:

The LA Times article is also in the Top 10 Most Viewed Articles! Channel 4, NBC’s 5 o’clock news, just did a segment as well. It looks like all the major networks will be talking about this all day today, which is good! Channel 4 actually showed the ringleader, the rapper who calls up the thugs to do the beatings. They actually have a few videos up, including the YouTube clip that started it all, so click here to see it all. They interview Captain Spiderman, Superman, and channel 5 interviews Homeless Jack. Ick. That poor woman. In the background of channel 4’s videos you can see Dollhouse Guy, Dutch Marilyn, and Charlie Chaplin. Now you can see who we hobnob with!

So we are now in the process of giving the blog it’s own page on SidewalkSuperheroes.com , and you may be noticing that our site looks a little naked now… We should have it all remodeled fairly quickly, so hang tight! Never fear! It’s all under control!

If you have any suggestions for the site, we’d love to hear them. We have a couple surprises in store… but we want to give the fans what they want!

So this video pretty much catches us up… so it’s time for us to get out there again and film something!! Not quite sure when that will happen though, because of the weather and our schedules. I’m itching to really get some footage of both of us, and not just the other characters… but be patient with us. Neither one of us are documentary film-makers, so I’m sure we’ll get better at this. 😀 I do hope you enjoy this latest installment:

In other news, since it was raining today, I stuck around my neighbourhood, and went to yoga. Soon after I got back, I hear a screeching of tires outside. I have my curtains closed so I don’t see anything. But then I hear more cars. And then yelling. Somehow I didn’t put it all together. I thought “oh! Someone’s being arrested on PCH!” So I ran outside with my camera. As soon as I turn the corner, I see police cars blocking in a pick-up truck (with an ad for WestsideRentals on the side. ha) on my dead end street. The cop sees me and waves me away. They have guns pulled on the guy! They’re yelling at him to get out of his truck. I get a little video from my window by sticking my arm out, and then through my fence. But then I started worrying that I’d get shot. The dude was not listening to them. They did finally get him out of his truck, and sat him on the ground. Then more patrol cars came. Then a fire engine and an ambulance blocked my driveway. lol. But yeah. Excitement. And I was beginning to think that any time anything happened in my neighbourhood, I would be conveniently out of town, like the other times. So… yeah. I’m glad I didn’t miss that. Cause life has been a tad on the boring side lately…

Oh, wait, we’re not actually totally caught up with video. I’m going to make a special episode dedicated to Homeless Boyfriend next.

It’s still slooooooow going on the boulevard, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. We went to the Joker’s birthday party last night, and while I only had one weak mojito, I hate rum and I’m still burping it up. It’s disgusting. I blame it for my mind being stupid today, even though I did have quite a lot of Jack Daniel’s last night. At least seven shots? Quite a lot. And rum cake. Anyway, you already know that after I drink I’m stupid for a day, and my memory’s not so great, so I’ll try to remember any good bits that may have happened.

I don’t think I worked Friday. Did I? My dad had surgery for his cancer on Wednesday so I spent a couple of days hanging out with him, which sort of threw me off time-wise. We spent a lot of time watching movies on cable and talked about going to China, I remember that. Oh wait, we did work Friday. Today’s Sunday. Sorry. To make up for the swiss cheese memory, here’s the best picture ever:

the DC universe

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So I worked alone for about 2 hours yesterday. Wow. Was I lonely. 🙁 Normally I wouldn’t go out alone, but the day before, Superman (or, his wife/secretary) called and asked if I would be interested in dressing up as Wonder Woman at a birthday party on Wednesday. $90. Sure. Sounds good to me. I’ve never done a birthday party before, so some anxiety set in. But I need cash, and how bad could it be?

So I decided to just show up a couple hours early in Hollywood, beat the traffic, maybe get some new footage (didn’t. Boring day, other than the demon creature being out). So 3PM I was out there. I hung out with the Dutch Marilyn until she went on a break. Then I wandered back and forth for a bit. Superman showed up around 4PM, so that helped a bit. I think I made $17 in 2 hours. At 5PM I was shivering, and hungry, so we went to Café Audrey. I couldn’t resist. First of all, I wanted something a bit healthier than french fries, and second, I was curious as to what they might say, if anything. There were two guys I didn’t recognize working the counter, and they seemed friendly . They gave me my 10% character discount, and a cup of water (because I guess Superman doesn’t have water at home??). There was a woman in there that we chatted with while we waited for the sandwich to be (grown, harvested, shipped, cooked…) made who gave me a little Audrey compliment when Superman mentioned that Batgirl and I dressed up like her a while back. She asked how we got into the boulevard work, but about a sentence into my explanation (which I always try to make as short as possible), her food was ready and she apparently didn’t care enough to hear the rest of it, and left. Eh.

So back to Superman’s place, where I met his lovely wife, Bonnie. If you’ve seen Confessions of a Superhero, you’d recognize her. It’s funny, I go in, and say hi like we’ve met before, and then realize that we haven’t! So I do a proper introduction. We all sit in the living room, Superman makes dirty comments about everything and talks about a wonderful song called Frosty the Pervert. We were not amused. We East Coasters (Bonnie and I) get on Superman’s case for thinking New York is not REALLY that cold (she’s from NY and I told her I was just there, and got some shots in my Catwoman costume and was FREEZING). Apparently he was there a couple years ago, in an unusually warm November.

Anyway, fast forward, I left at 6 to go get my car. I was the designated driver for Superman, Marilyn, and myself. We met at Supe’s place and made our way through traffic up to the valley. Snow White arrived a bit after us (we were all a bit late, due to traffic) with her balloons and magic show.

The party wasn’t that bad. Lots and lots of cake and Disney princesses on everything. We stayed a bit late to help clean up, and I came home and almost immediately passed out (after doing some online submissions – gotta get those done!). I have a feeling a couple other people might be calling in the future. Even though I really didn’t do much of anything! lol. Snow White was the busy one.

Well… I’m still kind of waking up right now… I think I covered most of the important points, but if I forgot something I’ll be back. 🙂

I sometimes feel that the one small square block of Hollywood is a 24-hour crazy zone. Even when we’re around every day, we still miss things and don’t know the whole story. It’s a little irritating, as if your favourite soap opera ran sixteen times a day and you can just never keep up. But it’s life, so I can’t even TiVo it. Hah, like I even have TiVo. Anyway, I’ll try to remember everything that’s happened today, but I always end up forgetting something. Before I get going, though, here’s some gratuitous eye candy for ya:

sweets for the sweet

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I think I’ve been forgetting to mention that Superman’s finally back out on a regular basis. He seemed to have gone MIA for a bit during the holidays, or only stopping by to talk. On my last day of work last year, he walked by in street clothes, the only time I’ve ever seen him “normal.” It was very unsettling.

Anyway, yesterday was a pretty okay day. It was Catwoman’s first in her warm weather costume, Wonder Woman. I stuck it out in my PVC Batgirl, because damnit, I just fixed her up! Heat wave be damned, I’m going to use her before summer comes in. But at least Superman had a great suggestion for a cool costume for me: Zatanna Zatara. *sigh* I know I’ll have to explain this one:

chick in a box

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