I got the phone call from my friend Todd, asking if I was available to work a stilt gig at a club in Hollywood that night. It paid $150, 9 to 2AM, was I interested, etc. Even though I'm nursing a sprained foot, he'd technically had me at "paid," so I flew home to begin assembling costume pieces for the night. They wanted sexy and slutty, which happens to be the exact description of the only stock costume I have...
Todd gave me directions to look for "Donny" when I got to the club, but my phone kept cutting out during our conversation.
"Donny's a little (static,) Todd kept trying to say. "A little (statttttiiccccc!)"
"A little WHAT," I asked, wondering what Donny could be. A little neurotic? A little flirty? A little bit of a stickler for rules?
"Donny's a LITTLE PERSON!" Todd finally manages to shout into my earpeice.
Ohhhh...
Cue the Black Eyed Peas song: Tonight's gonna be a good good ni-i-ight!
After parking in the garage on Hollywood Blvd., I arrived at the historic, posh Roosevelt Hotel carrying my stilts in my arms. They immediately point me to the club downstairs. I walked inside, expecting to find Donny, and instead I am greeted by not one, not two, but FIVE Little People!
I introduced myself, hands were shaken all around, and then one of them volunteered to take me backstage to meet Donny.
My heart did a flip- there's MORE LITTLE PEOPLE!!!
I don't know why seeing them made me so happy, but let me share this visual with you: a group of Little People chilling in an empty nightclub is good. A LARGE group of Little People chilling in an empty nightclub is better!
I met Donny, who was as sweet as can be, and helped me find the tiny (no pun intended) dressing room, where I put on my wig, knee pads, stilt covers, and the rest of my costume.
"Oh, don't set anything down on that bag," Donny warned me. "It's full of birds."
Ohkayyyyy sure...
The floor was filled with balloons at this point, and it was getting really cramped backstage as all the little people were getting dressed in Oompa Loompa costumes. There was even a tiny Oompa-Loompa version of "The Situation" practicing his fistpump in the mirror- it was great. I'm pretty sure at some point he hit on me, which made me smile for all the right reasons.
I was ready to strap up and put on my stilts at that point, so I stretched them out from 3-feet to 5-feet, and then realized with horror: I WAS MISSING A WINGNUT.
Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap!
You really, really need all four wingnuts for stilts- they literally keep the bottom from falling out while you're walking, so your stilts don't trip you up or collapse under you. A small heart attack began ramping up in my heart- here I'd just met this wonderful family of midget entertainers, and they were about to hate me. Or think I was stupid. Or possibly both.
After explaining to Donny that I had to retrace my steps and search for the nut, (which, to his everlasting credit, did not freak out about) I ran out on Hollywood Blvd. to see if it had fallen out between the hotel and my car while I was carrying my stilts. I usually keep them in a bag, but I was in such a rush I'd just toted them straight from my trunk.
I was, at this point, wearing:
Ugg-style brown floppy house slipper-boots, fishnet stockings, a garter, a garter belt, a leopard print bathrobe, a lumpy unbrushed wig, kneepads, and big plushy white velour stilt covers which I had to hold up with my hands to keep them from dragging on the ground as I lurched down the sidewalk, scanning the pavement for my missing nut.
It's Hollywood on a Saturday night, and people were still staring at me- I will never again judge the whackos and their outfits I see on the streets- I have run a mile in their shoes and it's stressful.
To make matters worse, I couldn't find my wingnut on the street, or in my trunk. I went back, about to disappoint everyone and let down my friend who recommended me and burn bridges, when I gave my suitcase a random search. Magically, it appeared- it had fallen off in an open flap. Hallelujah praise the midget baby Jesus!
Scrambling, I threw on the rest of my costume and strapped up, and my friend Luckey ushered me out to the club, which had opened its doors moments before. She lead me through a pitch black stage and opened some red velvet curtains. As my eyes adjusted to the dim club light, from the stage, I see:
A hot chick in a sexy referee costume dancing.
A hot chick in a sexy maid outfit dancing.
A hot chick in a sexy nurse outfit dancing.
A person in a giant Panda Bear mascot costume dancing next to the nurse.
A guy in a hot-pink ape costume dancing his ass off.
A man in a chicken suit, dancing.
A man in a tuxedo with fingerless gloves and a ventriloquism dummy, sitting and chatting with a big guy in a tux.
...As I'm taking all this in, the man with the dummy stands up from where he's sitting and approaches me.
"Hi," I'm David, he says, shaking my hand.
"I'm Jaime- nice to meet you!" I say, still adjusting to the bizarre new environment.
Meanwhile, the DJ is blaring "Jesse's Girl," and "Hungry Like The Wolf," while we dance and dance in an otherwise empty club. Sur-fucking-real.
On both sides of the room, birthday parties are set up- one in a giant velvet booth and the other in a massive wrought-iron birdcage. I can see a harness of some sort... At this point I just sort of zone out and keep dancing, trying to ignore the searing pain flaring up in my sprained foot. Soon enough, the patrons began to trickle in.
I kept noticing the Stage Manager as she ran around, socializing and preparing everything on the stage for the variety acts which were to follow. She was very friendly and smiled at me several times. I guess I was staring at her a little because she was KELLY OSBOURNE. Random night job, I suppose, but she was very nice.
Slowly at first, then with a surge of importance, really expensively dressed people filled the club. And then it happened:
Somebody ordered a bottle.
The lights flickered and flashed- spotlights focused on the corner of the room, where a neon sign proudly displayed the words "World's Only Midget Bar."
The DJ stopped the music, played a brief intro, then announced it: "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, GIVE IT UP FOR THE WORLD'S ONLY... FLYING MIDGET BARRRRTENDERRRR!!!!"
To the song "Thus Spake Zarathustra," Steve, a Little Person dressed as an Oompa Loompa with a battery operated light-up harness and pants suit, was hoisted aloft and flown on a motorized track over the throng of partiers, until he arrived at the table which ordered a bottle. He is lowered to ground level, at which point he proudly delivers the vodka, or whatever they ordered, then once again raise back to the ceiling to swim gracefully through the air back to his spot at the bar. Steve repeated this process about a dozen times that night. It is his actual job, he is adorable, and he probably makes more money than I'll ever see in my lifetime.
At this point, it's time to start the burlesque shows which run every half hour, and are filled with variety acts. My new friend David begins to emcee the show, but first he is introduced:
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MR. DAVID ARQUETTE!"
Ohhhh. So THAT's why he looked familiar...
David emcees throughout the night, as the burlesque shows come and go. There is a burlesque magician, some amazing pop singers, some "Beacher's Babies" who dance up a storm, and a girl who performed a lapdance for the birthday boy, then did something juuust off stage in a bathtub which involved squirting a large quantity of what I can only pray was water. If you've been reading these blogs, you know why I was afraid.
A magician from Australia took the stage and began to produce pigeon after pigeon from a deck of cards. (These were the ones I'd been warned about.) He then tied a gray scarf to a black scarf, balled it up and produced a fat grey cat. My jaw dropped a little on that one.
The next act was also Australian- a handsome fellow I'd seen wandering around backstage in a towel earlier.
"So what's your act," I ask. "You just wear a towel provocatively?"
He laughed and answered in an adorable accent, "No, I'm the Shaving Cream Guy."
...The what?
The Shaving Cream Guy was onstage next- he proceeded to pour out an entire can of shaving cream into his palms, which he then used to coat his entire head and chest in white foam. Using no mirror and just his hands, he sculpted and contorted his face into the images of an old man, a monkey, a laughing skeleton, and a Faustian Devil, complete with horns. He was also jaw-droppingly amazing.
At one point, my friend Luckey came out in street clothes and a Bart Simpson rubber head. She's a professional dancer, and tore it up. We were also joined by a second panda (a smaller one) and an extremely overweight girl in jungle-print lingerie.
By this point, I'd seen so many titties with tassels, I didn't think the night could get any more provocative. Until the onstage pillowfight began, complete with feather cannon.
Luckey changed from her Bart costume to some sort of Pokemon character, complete with a tail and 8 hands flopping around as she whirled across the crowd.
Later, the girls came out wearing pretty much only the balloons I'd been tripping over backstage, and ran through the audience popping them one by one.
I was overstimulated, under-hydrated and beyond exhausted at this point- I'd had one 5-minute break, during which I stayed up on my stilts, but I didn't want to leave the club for a moment in case I missed something awesome.
That's when Paris Hilton stopped by to hang out and watch another round of burlesque variety acts. She stood right next to me, and I stared at her earrings and wondered how much steak I could buy with just one...
Just as suddenly as it began, the night ended- people started to filter out, and the club was sparse. The hot chicks were gone, the pandas were gone, it was just me and that weird thing with 8 hands and a tail, which brought me some Vos water.
If you don't know what Vos water is, it's because you're in a normal tax bracket- sadly, I couldn't even enjoy it because I was so busy gulping it down. I staggered backstage, where, as I unstrapped myself from my stilts, I noticed one of the Little People was wearing an ankle bracelet. Not the fun kind, but the Lindsay Lohan kind. Just speculating about how that got there filled my mind with tiny criminal possibilities...
All too soon, the night was over and I drove home, deliriously tired.
My cats greeted me at the door, and, avoiding tripping over them in the darkness, I stepped in a pile of cat barf.
In the shower at 4 in the morning, I contemplated my life.
As the barf, glitter and sweat washed down the drain, I thought:
Not too shabby.
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