An Actor's Life for Me, Part 10

Posted by Trevor on August 4, 2009

Tags: Disneyland, Gideon, Pinocchio

It was the end of that long breakfast set. The Pinocchio unit was heading towards the exit of the Plaza Inn, like coal miners trudging back toward the light of day. Our cranky lead, Roxanne, had just given us her version of the character "break-time" sign. This was usually done by flashing a surreptitious hand sign based on the ASL motion "to break." However, "The Red Queen's" break-time sign was a bit more colorful, imaginative, and graphic.

It involved her pretending to pat an invisible child on the head, reaching an arm around to take an imaginary picture and then miming a swift ninja move as if breaking the kid's neck. I saw her doing this out of the corner of my half-closed right eye in a blur outside on the patio and I was shocked. None of the guests seemed to have noticed. It was rather startling. More so because of its affect on my fellow costumed comrades. Foul Fellow the Fox practically pelted away toward the door. The others suddenly came to life and were threading their way through the restaurant avoiding contact. I saw that Roxanne was already heading backstage for a cigarette.

As Gideon, the sidekick crazy cat, I had a very low status and was bringing up the rear. I was trying to give one particular table and its occupants a wide berth because, having realized that far from being thought of as a loveable kitty, comic relief or even a bumbling henchman, my character was actively disliked by many guests and even considered an evil villain. The others had just passed the long rows of smiling Italians, when the woman in the loud sundress, who had asked for our autographs earlier, grabbed Pinocchio's arm and my sleeve and pulled us both over to the far end of the table.

For a moment, I thought I heard music. Dark, melodious, and sinister music. The word "Don" floated through my fuzzy mind as I tried to focus on the man at the end of the table. A man in a dark suit. An elderly gentleman, clearly the patriarch, who could have played Geppetto's double in a live action version of the story. He was cajoling his grandson into eating his oatmeal by making faces and attempting to spoon it into his tightly shut mouth, all the while saying "Manga, manga." But the preschooler was much more interested in our looming presence. The boy was staring up at us with the look of a child whose enigmatic expression could either be awe, apprehension, or indigestion. He wasn't taking his eyes off the very large and imposing costumed characters roaming around the dining hall. The woman in the migraine-inducing dress, clearly the boy's mother, pulled Pinocchio and me closer to where the squirming tot was trapped in his highchair, his eyes widening with panic.

Pinocchio took me by the paw and brought me closer to him, so that he could "pet the kitty." Little Giuseppe, yes that was really his name, just froze. I almost laughed at the cliché. No one seemed to see the look of horror in the poor child's eyes. It was as if he thought I was going to bite him. When his mother tried to explain who we were, by saying in Italian and then heavily accented English, probably for our benefit, "He is Pinocchio, the wood-boy. You know!" He smiled, but when I took a step closer, at Pinocchio's insistence, "Momma" said, "and that is the bad cat you hate!" Just then Don "Papa" stopped his clowning with the spoon and looked right at me and said, "Bad pussy-cat! Shoo!" The boy came to life in an instant. "Ba-ca!," he spat at me, grabbing his spoon, which was filled with goopy mush, and with a force I would have thought beyond his years, flung it right at my head. It struck my costume with a resounding hollow thud, right in the tuft of fur sticking out like a widow's peak below my hat. It just splooged there in a squishy mess, and then the utensil projectile slowly followed the force of gravity downward, leaving an oozy slime trail of porridge down my face and across one of my lenses, effectively blinding me in my right eye.

The mother was scandalized. She leaped up muttering some Italian expletives that required no translation and couldn't be repeated on television. She was sincerely apologetic and tried to wipe the food splooge off with a napkin, which only smeared the mess around. Pinocchio was of no use because "he" was giggling uncontrollably and rolling around on the floor under the table, revealing a very high falsetto laugh belonging to a young woman. When the mother resorted to the age-old universal cleaner by "mom-spitting" into her napkin and then streaking it across my lens, it helped a little, and I caught a glimpse through that lens of the "Grand-Father" reclining in his chair and holding his grandson and smiling broadly, like a Don from a certain unmentionable organization. He was whispering something to his grandson in Italian which could have meant simply, "Good boy!" but probably translated to something along the lines of, "So too, should all villains be treated!" I followed Pinocchio out the door, making our hasty retreat. As we rounded the corner to go backstage, I heard Pinocchio whisper under her breath, "I guess some people really don't like cats, Pussy boy."

I managed to avoid the wrath of our lead, "The Red Queen," by the simple expediency of not passing her in the "smoking section" over by the tree near the vending machines, and instead taking my soiled cat costume back to the headroom the long way around. After assuring the stony faced wardrobe assistant that the mess was not a "protein spill" and relating the salient facts behind the child's oatmeal assault, I was given a dubious look, a bottle of cleaning fluid and a rag. But then I also got a strong talking to by the costume supervisor about avoiding small children during breakfast shifts because they were "very, very messy." I got the feeling that the wardrobe folks had no idea what we actually did out in the park and just assumed that we liked to cause more work for them. I ended up cleaning all the morning's mess off my cat head myself. I thanked them for the advice and the loan of the rag and then set off to re-join my unit over at the Village Haus break area. Another eatery, but this one was in Fantasyland. It was near "our attraction" too. Pinocchio's daring journey. So, people might actually recognize us as the G-rated versions of our characters, which would be nice for a change.

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