OC Weekly

From the late 1990s until 2008 I was a regular contributor to OC Weekly, the Orange County sister paper of LA Weekly and The Village Voice.

I wrote a weekly film column until 2006, then I wrote weekly reviews of fine art until 2008. I've written various cover stories and literally hundreds of columns covering film, television, books, fine art, travel, music, politics and theater, as well as news stories, personal essays and cultural commentary. My regular column It's a Living, published from 2006-2007, looked at various Southern California people with unusual jobs. I also wrote the copy for the paper's 2007 wedding advertisement insert.


Idiocracy: My review of the Mike Judge film.

"Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor": Article about an exhibit at the Bowers Museum.

"Birth of the Cool" at the Orange County Museum of Art: Review of a large show of post-WWII art and artifacts.

Interview with the Hermaphrodite: Cover story about Lynn Harris, an OC beauty contest winner who was shocked to discover that she was not, technically speaking, a female.

John Waters: The Man, the Mustache: Interview with the director of Hairspray and other cult hits.

Suspicious Mind: Bruce Campbell and the King: Interview with the star of Evil Dead and other cult classics.

It's a Living: A series of interviews with people who have unusual careers.

The Art of Marriage Guide: The copy for an insert promoting local businesses.

"Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" at the Bowers Museum

Originally printed in OC Weekly, 2008.

When you're first confronted by Qin Shi Huang's famed, life-sized, terra-cotta soldiers, your Hollywood-damaged brain is tempted to see them as re-creations, as fiberglass props. They're like something from one of the Indiana Jones movies, sculptures guarding the ancient treasure, seemingly inanimate until our hero steps on the wrong floor panel, and then all of the figures suddenly creak to life, centuries of dust and dead bugs falling away as they reach for their stone swords.

They can't possibly be real, these warriors built to defend the glory of a man who has not breathed since before the time of Christ. And yet they are real, and they are here, next door to the Kidseum. Legendary fighting men who have been locked away for dozens of lifetimes while the world waged endless wars around them, they smell of dust, of history, of grandma's attic.

A whole platoon of these crumbling commandos, 14 men strong, has trooped into the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art for the "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" exhibition, bringing with them a full-sized horse and other animals—more than 100 objects, the largest-ever stateside show of artifacts from the First Emperor's tomb. Each figure is unique, constructed from modular elements like some kind of colossal, mix-and-match Lego kit. The figures are ranked, with the generals being the largest. They stand in rows or crouch low, ready for anything you've got to offer.

Once upon a millennium, they were all painted in lifelike colors. Today, those colors are long gone, and all that remains is the fiddly detail of their original sculpting: the rivets of their armor, the little ties in their braided hair (don't call 'em bows), the rusted remnants of chain mail, the individual hairs of their mustaches. And those eerie, serene little smiles. The smiles actually make the warriors far more creepy than they would be if they were snarling or (no pun intended) stone-faced. They relish your intrusion. They lurk in the semi-darkness, lit by spotlights that cast sinister shadows across their faces, making them look like they're quietly calculating your every weakness.

Qin Shi Huang became a king at 13 and declared himself emperor at 38, uniting China and, in the process, systematically killing anybody who got on his nerves. But despite all his power, there was one foe that Qin Shi Huang could never defeat: the Grim Reaper. He decided that dying would serve as the gateway to a new world for him to conquer, and he put thousands of men to work building an entire tomb kingdom with towering palaces, offices for important post-life business and, by some accounts, whole rivers of mercury. He was buried with more than 8,000 stone figures: horses, chariot riders and his terra-cotta terrors—many of them facing east, as though to hold back any invaders from the warring states he had conquered in life. He also had his concubines and some unlucky tomb builders buried alive with him, so he wouldn't have to worry about them giving away the secrets of his treasures. Even in death, Qin Shi Huang remained an ostentatious, world-class jerk.

Qin Shi Huang wished to build an empire that would stand for all eternity. Now his city of the dead has been plundered, his warriors dispersed, his dreams of universal conquest a footnote in the history books. But stand face-to-face with one of his earthenware soldiers, look him right in his tranquil, unblinking eye, and you will feel a little shiver of the fright the First Emperor was so desperate for you to feel.

"Birth of the Cool" at the Orange County Museum of Art

Art review originally published in OC Weekly.

Decades hence, when people try to go for that "early 21st century look," what will they zero in on? What style will make people say, "Oh, my God, that is sooo 2007"? Will they associate this era with the chintzy bling of hip-hop? Will they remember our time as one big Ikea catalog, stretching from sea to shining sea?

Modern America has nothing approaching a sole, unifying aesthetic. You're free to decorate your house or your body in almost any popular style from the past or present, and as long as you do a halfway decent job of it, everything's cool. This is a huge change from the America of, say, 1957, when men wore sharp suits and ladies wore big, fancy dresses, and everybody sat around smoking cigarettes in homes full of pointy furniture. Given the choice, we're all better off with . . . well, having a choice. But there's something to be said for everybody working within narrowly defined parameters. When people are stuck with one look, they focus on perfecting it, and they leave some fascinating artifacts behind.

"Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury," the new exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art, is a sprawling look at those post-World War II years when everybody was giddily looking ahead to what Disney's Tomorrowland promised would be a "great, big, beautiful tomorrow." As soon as you step inside, you're greeted by a black 1960 Porsche convertible that looks like something on loan from James Bond. It's startling to realize that people used to drive around in anything this beautiful. This car deserves to be in a museum - comparing it to a modern Lexus is like comparing the timeless sexiness of a Marilyn Monroe with the pricey blandness of a Gwyneth Paltrow.

The Porsche lets you know right upfront that the show takes a very broad look at the postwar era, from fine art to more everyday design. Frankly, the capital-A "art" has not aged all that well. Looking at a roomful of abstract, geometric paintings by artists such as Frederick Hammersley and Karl Benjamin, you could easily believe it was all the work of the same guy. (You could also believe these were tablecloths from Sinatra's penthouse suite.) Even the titles are functional and joyless: Opposite #15, By the Sea II. This stuff isn't just cool, it's cold.

Fortunately, the same cannot be said of the moody, black-and-white photos of William Claxton. Hot Dog Stand, Los Angeles, 3 AM captures a young couple, presumably on their way home from a nightclub. Dressed in formal clothes (you can even see the woman's hoop through her skirt), they lean together so he can light her cigarette. It's a moment of perfectly random, real-world glamor from a lifetime ago.

The disposable-pop product in this show is the stuff that's really endured: The cover for the Miles Davis album that gives the exhibit its title could've been designed six minutes ago, while the jazzy cartoons of Chuck Jones and the UPA studio (seen here on four flat-screens) will be delighting our grandchildren's grandchildren. We're also treated to a selection of architectural photos and magazines. Some, like Pierre Koenig's cantilevered house, prefigure the design trends of 2007, while others—such as John Lautner's Chemosphere, a spindly, octagonal domicile perched in Hollywood Hills—look like a sci-fi-movie version of 2007.

This show is worth checking out in its own right, but if you have a dad or a grandma around who was alive back then, be sure to take them along for on-the-spot commentary from somebody who actually lived with this stuff. Inspecting the hulking Quadraflex stereo speaker, my dad remembered seeing them in action, noting they were "big enough for a cat to live in." It brings the past alive, but now I can't stop measuring everything in cats. (My car could sleep eight cats.)

The America of today looks as cluttered and chaotic as a MySpace page, and one suspects the citizens of tomorrow won't get terribly nostalgic about us. When they step inside their holo-pods for virtual, retro dance parties with their buddies from Lunar Colony Delta, they'll probably twiddle the chrono-simulator knobs right past our era, taking them to a punk club in 1977, to a 1967 happening, and finally to 1957 . . . to witness the birth of the cool all over again.

Idiocracy

Review of the Mike Judge film, originally published in OC Weekly.

I sat through Mike Judge’s new comedy, Idiocracy, struggling to suppress my laughter. It was an evening screening, just a few days after the film opened, and there were only four people in the entire theater: me, a grim, sixtysomething couple, and a very old man who wandered out after five minutes looking utterly baffled, like he’d come there expecting to see D.W. Griffith’s latest. The film hit me with one hilarious gag after another, but every time I giggled, I honestly felt rude for disturbing the shrine-like quiet of the place. I kept imagining the sixtysomethings peering over their shoulders in the dark, hissing, “Listen, we came here to enjoy a comedy, so will you please knock off all that damn laughing?”

The film follows Joe (Luke Wilson), a career slacker working in a seldom-visited Army library. One day his truly remarkable averageness and lack of family ties get him noticed by his Army bosses, and he, along with a sleazy but winsome hooker named Rita (Saturday Night Live polymorph Maya Rudolph), are selected to take part in a cryogenics experiment that’s supposed to put them to sleep for one year. Of course, things don’t quite work out according to plan, and Joe and Rita are revived in the year 2505, where they discover that humanity has devolved to a truly wretched state.

A grimly funny sequence early in the film illustrates humanity’s sorry downfall by chronicling two modern couples: one, a pair of smart, strenuously polite yuppies, spends so long dithering about whether having kids would be a prudent idea that they never get around to actually reproducing, while the other couple is a pair of braying redneck beasts who breed like rabbits that have OD’d on Levitra. By 2525, the hillbillies have inevitably taken over the earth, and the lunky Joe and dippy Rita now find they are the most intelligent humans alive.

The film takes us on a tour of a vividly realized, nightmare America—or “Uhmerica”—where the streets are piled high with mountains of uncollected garbage, astonishingly crass corporate advertising assaults the senses (Fuddruckers has now dropped all pretense and just calls itself Buttfuckers, although it remains a popular spot for kiddie birthday parties), and the most popular show on TV is called Ow! My Balls! You know that snaggle-toothed trog on your block who spends every Saturday camped out in his driveway with his knuckle-dragging buddies, blasting hip-hop at unholy volumes from noon until the cops finally show up at 11 p.m.? Idiocracy’s future America has become nothing but that guy, from sea to oily, polluted sea, and it’s a hilarious, terrifying place, like one of R. Crumb’s cartoons come to grimy life.

Judge’s previous creations, which include Beavis and Butt-Head, King of the Hill and Office Space, have made him many millions of dollars and spawned enough catch phrases to fill a couple of chapters in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations; as you read these very words, thousands of dorks all over America are annoying their co-workers by muttering about Swingline staplers. But even most of Judge’s most devoted fans were unaware he had a new film in theaters because Fox dumped this thing like a radioactive turd, releasing it to but a handful of cities, with no TV or radio ads, no posters, no media press kits . . . basically, the only way you’d have known this movie existed is if you happened to run into Judge somewhere and asked him what he’s been up to lately.

Idiocracy is arguably as good as anything else Judge has done, it stars a bona fide A-lister, and it looks like it cost a bundle; after all, all those grimy, crumbling city streets and little doodlebug cars couldn’t have come cheap. So what gives? Why is Fox treating Judge and his film so shabbily?

With King of the Hill, Judge comes across as that rarest of creatures on the modern American scene: an honest-to-gosh compassionate conservative. Very occasionally the show degenerates into wearisome Republican propaganda, but Hank Hill is generally a quiet and reasonable soul who espouses the kind of folksy values that are fairly hard to fault—hard work is good for you, and all that. Idiocracy is a more vicious beast, and if you didn’t know better, you could easily take it as the work of some angry commie kid. The film relentlessly and savagely attacks corporate America: here, ill-tempered Carl’s Jr. vending machines snarl, “Fuck you, I’m eating!”, Costco stores are the size of Arizona, and Fox News is hosted by a shirtless himbo and a hot chick in a bustier who cheerfully and sexily lie to an endlessly gullible public. Idiocracy all but grabs you by the lapels and screams, “Stop buying all this McCrap and read a fucking book already!” No wonder Fox didn’t get behind this thing, not while the Rock has a new mind-rotter flooding the multiplexes.

There are a few moments in Idiocracy when some of Judge’s red state prejudices surface (even the otherwise kind-hearted Joe refers harshly to “fags,” for instance), but for most of its running time, the film is so wonderfully shocking and subversive, saying so many blackly comic truths about life in these United States, that you can hardly believe Judge is getting away with it. But then you realize that, thanks to Fox, the film only reached the tiniest fraction of its potential audience; it could well be that the only people who saw it last week were me, the two sixtysomethings and the Griffith fan. So just what is Judge getting away with, again?

Of course, Office Space was poorly promoted and tanked on its initial release, and it has since become one of those Spinal Tap-esque “cult” hits, where everybody in America seems to be a member of the cult. (Seriously, just mention the Swingline stapler at your office tomorrow morning, and half the people there will start mumbling about burning down the building.) Assuming Fox bothers to put this movie out on DVD, it seems inevitable that an audience will find it and love it. Idiocracy paints a grim picture of our future, but I’m willing to bet that this smart, angry little comedy’s own future will be a happy one.

John Waters: The Man, the Mustache

Interview originally printed in OC Weekly.

John Waters: Are you planning to record this?

OC Weekly: No, I’ll just be taking notes.

[Grumpy] Hmm. Well, okay. Then I’ll speak slooowly.

Okay. Nowadays, you can turn on TV any time and see all kinds of gross stuff. It occurs to me that we’re kind of living in a John Waters world, and I wondered how much of a part you feel your films have played in leading pop culture where it is today.

I think everything has come full circle. Now mainstream Hollywood is making gross-out comedies, and the foreign and cutting-edge people don’t anymore. I think I’ve always made foreign movies—in America. You have to understand, I was never that interested in gross. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that something like Pink Flamingos was gross, but . . . Well, no, I don’t think it was gross exactly; I’d say it was more surreal.

You have to remember that when it came out, it was just after Deep Throat came out and was a hit. There weren’t even any laws that said you couldn’t show somebody eating shit in a movie! There probably still aren’t because, good lord, who would want to copy us?

Things really have come full circle in all kinds of ways. I mean, in Pink Flamingos, we had the joke about selling babies to lesbian couples, and now today look at Rosie O’Donnell on the cover of all these magazines! It came true!

I was looking back at your films in preparation for this interview, and there’s a very definite change between your really extreme early stuff and the relatively wholesome tone of your work from Hairspray on. What led to the change?

I had to evolve. I couldn’t make the same film forever. In the case of Hairspray, I made a family picture by accident; it happened that one time. There are no more midnight movies anymore, so it’d be kind of dumb for me to make one.

Well, given how extreme a lot of the stuff out there is now, are you tempted to ever do anything really wild and extreme again?

Well, I think something like Cecil B. DeMented is pretty extreme—film terrorism is pretty extreme. I mean, I showed gerbils being shoved up the butts of major movie starlets! Maybe you’ve just gotten jaded; it takes a lot more to shock us today.

If something like Pink Flamingos came out now, in today’s climate, I think it would be huge.

When Pink Flamingos came out a while back, it was the No. 2 video. If I made it today, it would be released to 30 great art theaters around the country, and if it didn’t do well the first weekend, it would die. When it first came out, nobody came to see it the first weekend. It built very slowly over a year by word of mouth and wound up running for 10 years at the Nuart. Not that I think everything was so much better then. Today, the big studios are all looking for the next weird, interesting little film, but they weren’t back then.

Looking back on your films, are there any that you’re embarrassed about, any that just make you cringe?

Well, there’s that old cliché that my movies are my children, and mine are juvenile delinquents with learning disabilities. There are things in all of them that make me look back and cringe, but they were just the movies I made when I was the age that I made them. Obviously, if you look back at my first films, you can see I didn’t go to film school. Certainly, Mondo Trasho was too long, but it’s all a body of work—I’m not ashamed of any of them.

I understand you’ve recently been doing a lecture tour . . .

Well, I’ve been doing that for 30 years. It’s basically me doing my vaudeville act. I’ve spoken or taught at colleges, prisons . . .

Hang on! Prisons?!

Yeah. [Wistfully] I miss jail. I have a friend in jail, and visiting a jail is a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

How so?

The people look good, everybody has an interesting story, and even the guards, if they know you, can be very nice. Well, or they can be not nice, depending on their appreciation for your films! And there’s nothing like watching a movie in jail—in the gym. Ah, yes.

What could possibly be pleasant about that?

Well, it’s dark, it’s moody, you can have sex, it’s wonderful. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now they make you hang your head out of your cell and watch movies on video. So, no more movies in the gym.

[Still reeling from the last question] Uh. Okay. Your movies are known for their incredibly eclectic casts. Is there anybody working now or from the past that you dream of working with?

What, you mean including dead people? Well, that’s so broad; it opens up all of cinematic history. Jayne Mansfield, certainly. When I started with Divine, we said we wanted to base the persona on a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Godzilla. Who else? Anita Ekberg is pretty terrifying. She’s great. I’d love to get Meryl Streep, although we know it’s so unlikely that she’d go for it that we haven’t even offered. If you offer it to a star and they turn it down, the studio gets nervous.

Could you offer it to her privately? Mention it to a friend of hers or something?

There’s no such thing as a private offer. You have to offer it to them through their representation at their full salary. It’s very complicated.

I noticed, doing research online for this article, that there is no Johnwaters.com.

Thank God! I want it to be harder for people to reach me, not easier. Everything you find on the Internet is lies, so I hope you didn’t believe any of it.

I did discover Johnwaters.net, and the guy who runs that site said something about you hating the internet.

See, even that is a lie! I wouldn’t say I hate the net; I just have better ways to use my time. Although I do think the next depraved masterpiece will come from the Internet.

Have you ever been to Orange County before?

I don’t think so, but I have a friend from Huntington Beach I was thrown out of college with. Isn’t Huntington Beach near there? He was a surfer, and if you were into that, it seemed like the best place in the world to live. Actually, most of the surfers I’ve known have been criminals. Surfers are all criminals, or at least they’d like to be.

Really? It’s not like I’ve known a lot of surfers, but the ones I’ve known haven’t struck me as criminal masterminds.

I’d say watch your wallet. Or maybe they more want to be jewel thieves. Oh, don’t print that, that I said all surfers are criminals! But it’s true, the surfers I’ve known certainly had a criminal glint in their eyes.

You have one of the most meticulous mustaches I’ve ever seen. What’s involved in the maintenance of that thing?

[A little wearily] Oh, at this point, I could pretty much do it in my sleep. You just shave it from the top down, and then you do maintenance twice a week, and if you make any mistakes, you touch it up with Maybelline. If I ever want to disappear, I can just shave the mustache, and nobody will know me. When I reach a certain age, I plan to dye it blue. I’ve experimented, and it looks good blue.

Would this be just the mustache? Or would you dye the rest of your hair blue?

Oh, no. God forbid.

And what inspired the mustache?

Well, Little Richard, of course. Store detectives in old movies. [Getting enthusiastic] Hotel security guys in ’40s pictures! Pimps!

I see. It’s all starting to add up.

It does.

Suspicious Mind : Bruce Campbell and the King

Interview originally printed in OC Weekly.

You’ve surely seen Bruce Campbell in action, even if you don’t know his name. Over the past few decades, when Campbell wasn’t starring in oddball, low-budget genre pictures (the Evil Dead trilogy), he has shown up in supporting roles in more mainstream fare (Serving Sara), guest starred on everything from Ellen to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and starred in such short-lived series as Jack of All Trades. Campbell’s latest role - a geriatric Elvis Presley in Bubba Ho-Tep - is only the latest in the actor’s growing gallery of lovable maniacs.


OC Weekly: Was there much method acting involved in this? Did you study old Elvis movies?

Bruce Campbell: Well, you do the requisite research for this sort of thing, but I didn’t go back and study old Elvis movies or anything like that. The thing that taught me the most was this amazing documentary—I can’t remember the title of it—where they got a bunch of Elvis’ former bodyguards together in one room and had them all talk for hours. This was the Memphis Mafia, a bunch of real good ol’ boys. They really cut loose; they were cursing and crying, along with the good stuff they had to say about him, and it really gave me a much more complete portrait of the man than I think I would have gotten from something like Clambake. I also spent some time with an Elvis impersonator, apparently one of the premier ones in the country. That only lasted a while before he gave up on me; he said I was just hopeless.

What did he say you were doing wrong?

Well, these guys take it all very seriously, you know. I just wasn’t approaching it the right way, as he saw it.

Were you an Elvis fan before this picture?

No, I wouldn’t say that. See, I graduated from high school in ’76, and at that point, Elvis just seemed like this sad, bloated joke, not the sort of thing I would have been into at all. I’ve grown to appreciate him since then.

What’s the main difference between acting in the big mainstream stuff vs. the more quirky, low-budget things you do? Which do you enjoy more?

Well, I like to mix it up. If I didn’t, I’d get bored. The mainstream work pays for the other stuff, something like a Spider-Man can help fund my more quirky pursuits. Whatever I’m doing, I always try my best. Sometimes you can give a good performance in a bad film; sometimes you give a bad performance in a good film. No matter what the picture is, I’m always trying my hardest.

Why did you decide to become an actor in the first place?

Because it seemed like a job where you didn’t have to wear a tie.

Your fans seem like a particularly passionate bunch, sometimes frighteningly so. Why do you think that is?

Maybe because I’ve done a lot of things that were kind of skewered, out of left field. Not everybody likes that mainstream, Reese Witherspoon kind of movie, so when something more unusual and quirky comes along, some people will really respond to that.

That’s about it for my questions, except to ask: What’s the question you’re most tired of being asked in interviews?

That last question. No, I think that, like, 80 percent of the time in interviews, I can tell early on exactly where the questions are going. It gets very predictable, and I do get tired of the lack of imagination from questioners. The best interview I ever had was with this little Indian guy from some public-access TV station. He came in with his equipment, and he was fumbling around setting it up, and right away, I got nervous, thinking I was dealing with a rank amateur. But then he asked me the best questions—it was amazing. I had no idea where it was going next, and I really had to think about my answers. I thanked him afterward; it was just an amazing experience.

Do you remember any of the questions he asked?

Aw, jeez, it’s been a long time. Uh . . . I think he asked how I memorize lines. Just weird stuff like that, stuff nobody ever thinks to ask about.

Well, how do you memorize your lines?

Nope. That was his question. You didn’t think of it, so you can’t ask it.

Oh, please?

Nope. Too late. You had your chance, pal.

It's a Living: Robin Leach Impersonator

Tom Tully travels OC, LA and the USA impersonating former Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous host Robin Leach.

Do enough people still know who Robin Leach is to make this a viable career?

Well, the people I’m dealing with usually have a lot of money, so they tend to be over 30. Maybe younger people haven’t heard of him as much [laughs], but that’s not really my problem. Even if people don’t know his name, they know that voice. I don’t look exactly like Leach—I look like his son, maybe—but the voice is the important thing, and the tuxedo. I was a lawyer for three years in Chicago, mostly because of a promise to my dad, but I really wanted to be a performer. Now I do voice work in Hollywood and Sunday shows as part of the Off the Wall improv troupe at the Eclectic Theatre in Santa Monica. The demand for the Leach impersonation is seasonal. I’ll do three events in a row, then I won’t get hired for three months. It’s impossible to build a career around just this.

What sort of events are these? What do you do?

I do private parties, night clubs, a lot of corporate events, and I get flown all around the country. I’m there to make your party rich and famous. As people are coming in, I’ll be there to shake their hands. [Leach voice] “Hell-o! I haven’t seen you since that night in Montevid-yow! We’re going to have a whopping good time!” I have to get people talking, get people dancing, and then at a certain point I know when to back off. I’ve done bus tours for groups, boat tours, showing them all the glamorous local spots … or the most glamorous local spots I can find, which can be a real challenge sometimes. A while ago I was booked for a boat tour and I got to the dock and the pilot hadn’t shown up. I grew up around boats, so I took them out there on this little putt-putt myself and gave them the tour.


Wow. I thought maybe you’d stand there all night saying, “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!”

No, you really have to think on your feet. Sometimes I’ll get there and people will say, “You’re our entertainment for the night!” I’m not really a standup comedian, but I’ll have 20 minutes to come up with a whole routine. I’ll find out as much as I can about the guests, and I’ll present nefarious awards based on their quirks. Like, if somebody was caught sleeping at their desk, or if they got a double bogie golfing, I’ll give them some silly award for that. One time I did an event for a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who’d just been on TV; he was frantic to get everybody to watch the tape, but he couldn’t get their attention. Finally I told them all [Leach voice], “We’re going to need your attention over here, or the doctor is going to show all of your ‘before’ pictures!” Got a huge laugh. I’ll tease people, but you have to use kid gloves—no jokes about somebody being fat or whatever. Y’know, Leach never says a bad word about anybody.

Did anybody ever take offense?

I worked an event a while ago, a post-election thing, after a run-off—I won’t say where. I made a joke about them settling the election in the parking lot with mud wrestling. The mayor was a lady, and apparently she didn’t take too kindly to that. It’s a fine line.

Does doing that loud, high Leach voice all night blow out your vocal chords?

I’m also a singer, and I keep my voice in good shape. I practice an hour a day. You get into the routine so you can practice anywhere. I’ll practice while I’m driving, while I’m paying bills.

Are there stresses to this job that people wouldn’t imagine?

It can be a grind. You’re dealing with new people constantly, and you never know what to expect. People give you vague directions—“Oh, it’s right by the San Diego ballpark, you can’t miss it!” You have to be very clear about how long you’ll be there, or there can be issues when your time is up and they want more. I’ve had to be very insistent about when a gig was over. Sometimes there’s no place to get dressed before the show. I’ve had to change in the parking lot.

You couldn’t put on the tux before you got there?

No, you have to look immaculate, and the tux would get wrinkled while you were driving. Like Dean Martin said, always put on your tuxedo pants right before you go onstage! But y’know, I’ll tell you about the best gig I ever worked. It was an event in Palm Springs, me and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. We had to get the crowd dancing, so we got out there, and she really did look just like the young Marilyn. She had a fiancée, nothing happened between us, and I’ve never worked with her again. But I’ll never forget that night. I thought, “Wow, y’know, I’ve been flown out here to Palm Springs so I can dance with Marilyn Monroe... I have the best job in the world!”

Originally printed in OC Weekly, 2006.

It's a Living: Mortuary Makeup Artist

When your grandma died, it was somebody’s job to prepare her for that open-casket funeral. They painted her, powdered her and gave her one last makeover so she’d look her best for her date with eternity. Carrie Bayer, 36, makes corpses pretty at O’Connor Mortuary in Laguna Hills.

Is this something you wanted to do, growing up?

Bayer: No, I thought it was a really odd profession. But then a few years ago, I had a bad experience with a relative’s funeral. I wasn’t impressed with the way it was handled, and I thought, “I could do this better.” My husband was really freaked out at first, when I left my job in the merchandise buying office at Disney to go back to school at 33 so I could learn to do this. But I’m so much happier now, and he loves it. I was working at the Happiest Place on Earth and I was miserable, and now I’m working at the saddest place on earth, and I’ve never been happier. Working with the decedents is really . . .

I’m sorry, the what?

“Decedents.” That’s what we call the deceased people. I enjoy spending the time with them, and getting to know them in a way. I feel like I’m the last person who will ever take care of them, you know? It’s a big responsibility.

What sort of training is involved?

You study anatomy, chemistry, law, pathology, ethics—everything you might encounter in a mortuary. Most of the class drops out after the first month. Makeup is part of the curriculum. You practice on plastic beauty shop heads, or yourselves. That part is really fun! You study color theory, and learn about non-thermogenic makeup . . .

Non-thermogenic?

Thermogenic makeup is makeup for live skin; body heat breaks it down so it applies properly. But on dead skin, it just crumbles or blots. Non-thermogenic is what we use for the decedents; it’s specially made.

I’d imagine doing makeup on a dead person, there’s a lot of, uh, reconstruction involved.

Oh, yeah. We use plaster of Paris, wire mesh, cardboard . . .

Cardboard?

Yeah. If there’s been an autopsy, and they removed the trachea, we’ll put in a cardboard tube, like a paper towel roll, to reconstruct the trachea and give men back their Adam’s apple.

I delivered flowers years ago, and the mortuary visits were really heartbreaking. Does the sadness ever get to you?

It can be hard not to take the sorrow home with you. Sometimes we’re dealing with trauma, with suicides, with kids who have died. We had a rash of suicides, three young girls, from 16 to 21, who all hung themselves. There was no connection, but they all died within a month. Suicides are really hard. But I feel like I’m doing something right in this world. We’re there to help the families through the grieving process.

Is it ever scary? When you’re working on somebody, do you ever feel a “presence”?

Absolutely. I always feel the presence. Hey, it’s creepy working late at night, alone, locked in with corpses. A while back I was working late, all alone, and somebody coughed. I just about peed my pants. We have a walk-in refrigerator, and once I heard a thump in there, like somebody was knocking. There have been times when I’ve wanted to make absolutely sure the decedent was really dead. We have tests for that, like we hold a mirror under their nose to check for breath, or we give them an ammonia test, where we inject it just under the skin, and if it turns red you know the immune system’s responding.

Has anybody turned out to be alive?

Not so far.

I’ve heard trapped air can make corpses sit up, or sigh . . .

They don’t sit up. That’s an urban myth. But they do make sounds. And they’ll void their bowels, or their bladders. They’ll throw up.

Did you ever think, I’m making this corpse look too good? That they looked better than they did alive?

Sure. One time, the family thought we put the wrong person in the casket. I think what often happens is they’re used to the person being sick all the time—they’ve stopped wearing makeup and they’re in pajamas all day. So seeing them looking nice again can be a shock. We work from photographs, and we talk with the family so we get exactly the right shade of mascara and everything. If they wore a hairpiece, we’ll put it on like they would’ve wanted. But no matter how careful you try to be, they’re never going to look quite right. The person just isn’t there anymore, you know? It’s just their body.

Is there anything you’d like to say to the makeup artist who’ll work on you when you pass away?

Give me a nice smile. And lots of mascara. Let my freckles show!

Originally published in OC Weekly, 2006.

It's a Living: Costumed Character at Disneyland

Crystal Nettles worked in costume at Disneyland for five years, playing such characters as Pluto and Eeyore.

Is there a social hierarchy at the park? Like, the princesses in the parade are cool, and they look down on people in Goofy costumes, or maybe the costume people are cooler?

Well, they had a problem with the face characters—people whose faces are showing, like the princesses—thinking they were better than the full costume characters. But now, when they start, the face characters do a full day in a character suit, so they can see what it’s like.

Do you choose what character you play?

When you audition, they take your measurements. Then you’re assigned a character based on your height, and what suit looks good on you.


Are any characters considered really lame, and everybody is like, “God, don’t make me play that guy”?

Well, some of the characters hurt. Like, Winnie the Pooh has a really big, heavy head. Smaller people play him, because of his stature, and that head can hurt after a while. Other characters aren’t safe to take into certain areas: you’ll get beaten up.

Beaten up, literally? Where would that happen?

Well, like areas that are really crowded with kids. You take certain characters in there, and they’ll go crazy. Usually it’s just that they’re overzealous, they jump on you or push you down. And because you can’t see well—like with Princess Atta [from A Bug’s Life], you’ve got like a three-inch mouth hole to see through—you can run into people. Sometimes teenagers will get violent; they’ll kick you. It happens all the time, and it can get really bad. I’ve known people who were on disability because of injuries they got. Certain characters really get kicked around.

Which characters?

Well, Winnie the Pooh, and especially Eeyore, for some reason.


Why would anybody beat up Eeyore?

I know! He’s so depressed already. People are evil. Wait, no, don’t say that I said that. I’ll sound mean.

No, you’re right. Beating up Eeyore is evil. Everybody says Minnie Mouse is played by a guy. Is that true?

Not usually. You need somebody with slim legs for that costume, and guys have bigger calves. It’s all about the height, so it’s more likely the female characters will be played by women and the taller male characters will be guys. But it varies.

You know about the “furry” subculture, right? People with a fetish for cartoon animals?

[Laughs] Yeah.


Do any of them work at the park?

Well . . . there was one guy who, uh, led people to assume he was into that.

How?

Apparently he wore a dog collar, and a tail sometimes. But he wasn’t really blatant. He didn’t have, like, strategically placed holes in his costume or anything.

What about the guests? Did anybody ever try to pick you up?

Well, when I did face work, sure. That was mostly just husbands, goofing around. But there are season-pass holders who will basically just come there and stalk you.

I’ve heard stories about the costumed characters pinching or groping people. Does that really happen?

We have very strict guidelines about when and how we can touch people. They have to approach us; we can’t just go up and hug them or whatever. There was a photograph where one of the face characters was tickling a kid, and because of the angle and because when you’re tickling, y’know, hands go everywhere, it looked bad. So now there’s no tickling. If they want a picture with us, we can put an arm around their shoulder, but—you can lose track of how far those giant fingers extend, and it can look like you’re touching the chest. A lot of times, people see us as a free ticket: they’ll tell the park we hit their kid, or did something else we didn’t do, and they think they can get a free ticket that way. Usually the park goes along with it, because they want good publicity.

How do you cope with the heat in those suits?

There’s no cooling system or air conditioning in the suit, so . . . you learn to deal with it. Some suits are better, like the Buzz Lightyear suit has a big chest plate that acts as a vent. And with Eeyore, if you move up and down fast, you get a breeze that way. But on a 100-degree day, we’re roasting.


Do people faint?

Sure. Usually people know they’re dehydrated and they make it backstage in time. But once Frollo, the villain from Hunchback of Notre Dame, fainted in front of the guests. Everybody had to surround him with laundry bags from backstage—so the guests couldn’t see—and remove his costume.

I imagine you’d get a lot of rashes from those suits. Lots of fungus.

Well, I didn’t completely trust the detergent they use . . . if they were using detergent. And the costumes weren’t washed every day. So I didn’t take any chances. I wore the full under-dressing, padding and gloves. I didn’t want any part of the suit touching me. But I was breaking out all the time anyway. That’s why I finally left.

Do you miss the job?

I loved my time there, honestly. I’d like to go back and maybe work seasonally. I do really miss the kids. But I don’t miss the drama.

Originally published in OC Weekly, 2006.