Confessions Of A Disgruntled Dinosaur

Greetings and salutations to all from your faithful feature freakazoid: CJ. I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween holiday season last month and is feeling appropriately apprehensive at this time about the upcoming, legitimate Holiday Season. This leads me to wonder: Does anybody actually do their holiday shopping during the 11 months and 23 days that are available before the last minute? I say the hell with that; I have more important things to put off doing. Anyway, Ive decided this month to present more anecdotal hijinks from my honest-to-goodness, 100-percent true real life, since I havent seen any films lately that merit my recommendation. Todays episode concerns one of my previous professions as a childrens costumed entertainer. I dont know how many of you out there have rugrats, or plan on having any in the near future, but if you do, youll end up spending time at childrens parties. And thats where I came into the picture...

It all started as a fluke, really. Maybe its because most of the birthday parties I went to were in the late 70s or perhaps its a socioeconomic thing, but I never went to a party with an entertainer during my childhood. I wasnt aware of how big a business it really was (I tend to think of it as a more recent phenomenon, myself). Anyway, a party-company owner used to come every night to the gas station I worked in while on his income-supplementing paper route. One night he offered me the gig. He mentioned that he and his wife had a company that provided costumed entertainers for various events, and they needed some help for the upcoming Easter season. All I had to do was wear a furry bunny suit and pass out some prizes and help with the egg hunt. The gig paid 50 bucks for each hour of work, so of course I jumped at the opportunity. After one non-paying audition with the hyperactive owner himself (we were Mutant Ninja Turtles) I was on my way to my first solo party.

Things got off to a bit of a rough start. The night before my first solo gig was spent in the company of much alcohol and revelry, and unfortunately I was a wee bit late arriving. As I flew through traffic, screaming obscenities at those around me as well as myself, I honestly thought the owners were going to let me go the first day. Luckily for me, many of their entertainers were either extremely unreliable college kids who had a habit of forgetting to show up altogether or total flakes who ended up in any number of unimaginable fiascos at or on their way to parties (like the juggler who got jumped by three rednecks at a 7-Eleven after standing up to their taunts about his tuxedo, or the Power Ranger who nearly paralyzed one particularly bratty 5-year-old disbeliever with a karate blow to the neck as proof of his super powers). I eventually found my way to the first location about 35 minutes late, but the rest of the day went rather smoothly and I was offered future work with the company.

Most gigs were Saturday or Sunday birthday parties for children. Being a bit too corpulent to play a convincing Power Ranger, I was relegated to costume, pirate or Gacy-like Tombo the Clown parties. About 90 percent of my gigs were Purple Dinosaur parties for children ranging from near infancy to around kindergarten age. My routine on these weekends was usually the same. Id drive to the owners house at least two hours before the first gig (which I learned to do after repeated experiences with confusing directions and/or maps) and there I would pick up the costume, the maps and contracts (sometimes I had to get payments afterward), a bag with games, simple magic tricks and facepaints, and the balloons for balloon animals. Then Id head out for a day of providing quality family entertainment. Most of the competitors companies rented out their costumed characters with an assistant who did most of the actual work, while the person in the suit just stood around waving or hugging the kiddies. The characters from my company came alone and did everything themselves. This may have been part of the reason the owners had trouble keeping employees.

While the rest of the characters were referred to freely by their unlicensed, copyrighted names with no fear of litigation, the creators of that popular purple PBS product had a reputation for lawsuits, so my bosses skated around the actual name Barney on the contracts and advertising. In fact, the company I worked for was the only one in the area still using the Barney costumes, which had discontinued production due to direct lawsuit of the manufacturer by the shows creators (they were so powerful they even got to the Hong Kong companies).

While these suits had obvious advantages for us, it did cause a few difficulties. When I started with the company, the two suits were already at least 3 or 4 years old. The plush, furry exterior was worn in some places (especially the bedraggled tail) and the foam-padded interior was virtually gone. The plastic basket and straps that you wore over your head to fit inside the giant headpiece (which closely resembled the inside of an adjustable batting helmet) were cracked and worn badly, too. Luckily for me, I adapted well to those defects with my more than ample natural padding and larger-and-thicker-than-normal-size cranium. The real problem was the indescribable stench (superwino times 10 is the closest approximation) of 3 to 4 years of dried sweat that began to seep from the costume as soon as it got a little warmed up. Despite the best efforts of an occasional sink washing in Woolite and frequent spritzing with perfumes, these two suits gave a whole new meaning to the word gamy. On more than one occasion, customers called to complain after getting up-close and personal for our famous end-of-party birthday picture, and mistaking that miasmic waft for a lack of personal hygiene on my account.

Of course, most people insisted on having their parties outdoors, even at the height of the Florida summer. The worst examples of suffrage from this effect werent actually from parties but at outdoor events, like the time I did A Taste of Sarasota, which was four straight hours outdoors ... in August ... with no breaks. At one point, I tried to take a break by walking into the park-style, open-air mens room just to get the headpiece off for a minute or two, but a lady with two toddlers followed me right up to the entrance and stood outside haranguing me after Id gotten inside.

That gig was still a walk in the park compared to the event I like to call, The Closest I Ever came to Dying in The Suit. This particular gig paid two hundred dollars for eight hours work at the grand opening of an optometrists office in Lutz. By work, of course, I mean meeting and greeting in the Barney suit ... outside ... in July. The tragic end result this time was partly my own fault. I didnt realize how far I was pushing the envelope with eight hours in the suit, and I didnt pace myself early on. I shared the bill with The Red Power Ranger and we both spent the first couple of hours jumping around rather animatedly (attempting to outdo each other) to the delight of the relatively large crowd that had come out for what was apparently one of the most exciting local events to happen in Lutz in some time. It seems that I was supposed to get 15-minute breaks every half-hour, but both the company owners and the people at the event forgot to mention anything about this to me. I did spend one brief 15 to 20-minute period inside in the air conditioned comfort of the optometrists bathroom, but every subsequent time I tried to retreat to that heavenly oasis I was immediately summoned back by the dreaded cry of, More kids for pictures, Barney! At the end of the day, I was experiencing double vision, extensive muscle spasms, laryngitis and mild dementia, and ended the last half hour of my appearance lying down across three folding chairs. I turned down a second identical gig which was scheduled for the next week and spent the entire next day in bed.

My first public event was a two-hour gig standing off a major six-lane roadway, waving at cars in front of a used car lot. It got a little hairy at one point when three drunken day laborers came up and tried to pour malt liquor in the mouthpiece. I tried to explain to them that Barney didnt drink OE; he was a St. Ides man. They either didnt understand or didnt get the joke, and one guy called me a purple pansy in Spanish and shoved me with a stiff forearm to the chest. This took place about 40 feet in front of the car lots entire staff, who were keeping cool in the shade and waiting for that next big sale (apparently I wasnt drawing in too many customers). Since it was the first time I was ever attacked in the suit (but not the last), I had a moment of panic in which I imagined the news story played out for the evenings viewers: Costumed entertainer hospitalized after being assaulted in front of local business ... story at 11. I quickly wiped that scenario out of mind and shoved the guy right back as hard as I could before turning back toward my current employers and heading straight for them. As I sprinted onto the lot (or as close to sprinting as a guy in a huge purple dinosaur suit could manage) I turned back to see the guy had gone right down on his ass, but got up laughing as the three headed on down the road. In subsequent years, I learned that the worst place to be was in large crowds, especially large crowds with access to alcohol, since these were ripe conditions for Barney-hating cheap shot artists. I was never seriously injured.

For the Barney birthday gigs, the best audience for me was 2 to 5-year olds. Any younger and they were completely unresponsive. Unfortunately for me, I had more than my share of parties that ended up being a birthday party for a one-year-old (sometimes with no other children in the room). Theres just not much you can do to entertain a one-year-old. In those instances, I spent the entire agonizingly slow hour dancing and saying Super Dee Duper over and over and over. Another problem with parties for babies and really young infants is that some kids are scared shitless of the suit. I would always plead with the parents not to force the kids on me, but rather, let them sit as far back as they wanted and join in when ready. (I do remember incidents at several Latin parties where people would thrust screaming babies right in front me, holding them out like a sacrificial offering unto the Great Purple God.)

The older end of the age spectrum was even more difficult, because you had to deal with the disbeliever crowd or, even worse, the A.D.D. crowd. Trust me, theres no faster buzzkill at a childs party than one kid beating the shit out of another. Kids are great at copying each other and the resulting tears can be contagious, and you end up with half the room bawling. Often times, even the parties for younger age groups were tainted by a precocious (what a euphemism that is) 8 or 9-year-old who spent the entire party sharing with all the other children the scoop that you were nothing more than a cheap imposter in a smelly suit.

For that right age group, though, parties were a snap and flowed like water as long as you made sure not to step on anybody and remained vigilant in defending your genitals, which, due to my short stature, are placed right at face/fist level on a typical three-and-a-half foot child. The worst thing that could happen if you let your guard down and took a hit to the nads would be to make too much of a visible response, because that tended to invite immediate heightened interest in the area and subsequent mimicry of said activity. The real key overall to whether things went well or not was how much the parents participated. Some of the worst gigs were ones where the adults remained aloof and carried on their own social event, with little or no visible interest in the kids party.

In the five years I worked for the company, I had only one party (and about a dozen public events) where I lost my cool. It was due to not one, but over a half-dozen disruptive 8 to 10-year-olds at a pool party who hadnt been allowed to swim before my arrival. The hijinks started with the ever-popular nad shot, as well as several ass punches and pokes suffered for my status as an impostor. That was followed with cake icing and other food items, as well as some bodily secretions, being smeared on my nether regions and tail without my being aware of it, until it was far too late to stem the overwhelming tide of nine-year-old hilarity. It ended with a couple of kids exhorting their group to push my face into the cake and/or throw me into the pool. I had to draw the line somewhere, because I was out there all alone on this one. I stayed in character as I said, You cant do that to me because Im much bigger than you, and if you try, Ill throw your ass in the pool and hold your head underwater. Of course some of the parents, who never stopped any of the escalating attacks on me, heard the entire thing and called to complain immediately after I left (they were also among the few who complained about the reek of the suit).

All in all I enjoyed the job well enough, but dont think for one nanosecond that I continued for any reason other than the obviou$. Trust me when I say this: Even the best moments are something to be endured for the guy in the suit. My previously mentioned flaky coworkers quickly put me in the foulest of moods when I heard them say things like, I would do this job even if I wasnt getting paid. In my expert opinion, that was either brown-nosing or latent pedophilia. If you spent one hour in one of those suits youd probably understand my cynicism a little better; those kinds of people dont belong at birthday parties -- they belong in a halfway house.

Celluloid Junkie