The Finale: How I Learned to Love a Loincloth

The Loincloth

The title of these entries, “How I Learned to Love a Loincloth”, was a cheap marketing strategy. You know: Somewhat obtuse, with a hint of sexuality. If I didn’t have a soul, I’d be in advertising. Or still in entertainment.

Before I launch into these entries’ namesake story, I want to explore – more in depth – other kid’s party experiences, but I realized as I began fleshing them out, they are better suited as bullet-pointed one liners. Here are a few:

• I once – at 29 years of age – portrayed Santa Clause, complete in shitty false beard and pillow added for belly, at a Christmas party in Los Angeles’ Korea town. I sat on a throne in a hotel conference room for several hours and watched the party unfold. Best piece of the night: A lip-synced version of “Men in Black” performed by two Korean pre-teens, dancing ala Will Smith from the music video.

• Hired by a South Central LA high school, donning masks and robes from hit horror flick Scream, another performer and I ran in and out of classrooms, terrifying the kids. We were walked to our cars by a teacher afterward, quote, “Just in case.”

• This job did have one or two perks: After playing Prince Stephan from The Little Mermaid alongside (an insanely smokin’ hot) mermaid Ariel, we stopped to grab food at a bagel shop. Having to change from her mermaid tail to shorts, Ariel – a part time model - stripped right in front of me down to a g-string, all the while holding conversation.

Okay, now to clarify the loincloth.

Back in 1997, Brendan Frasier was selected to portray the live-action version of the hit 1960s cartoon series, George of the Jungle (pictured). Wouldn’t you know it, a year later, children were anxious to have the idiotic but affable jungle dweller appear at their birthday parties.



If you examine the photo closely, you’ll see what George’s costume consisted of: A wig and a loincloth. And this was handed to me by the cranky Caribbean costume-giver-outer one Thursday afternoon.

“Where’s the rest of it?” asked I.

“That’s it.”

I held up the two, small pieces of leather held together by two tinier leather strands and stared at the wig. Perhaps this was payback for seeing Ariel in a thong?

Okay, so the “event”:

I don’t know if you’ve ever attended a Korean birthday party, but I’ll paint this picture for you if you haven’t had the pleasure: Imagine…all of Korea. Okay? That’s who shows up.

I remember shaving my chest for this (ugh - the second of two times I made that mistake) and trying on the loincloth, I saw that not much was left to the imagination on my wiry, 150 pound frame. Plus, the wig looked like something a sad tranny would have buried in the back of his/her closet.

60 dollars for an hour, I thought.

Now, if you’ve never worn a loincloth to a party with 400 people in attendance, I’ll spell it out for you: YOU ARE THE NAKED PERSON AT THE PARTY. The look I received from the mom answering the front door was that of abject horror. But what did they expect? You’ve seen the movie – this is the uniform!

I was ushered in through a living room FILLED with dozens of (what I’m remembering as) attractive Korean women of every age, all smiling and snickering. And this was just a warm up.

Coming to the back patio, I entered to a sea of black-haired, tiny people, all waving to The Naked Guy at the party. The kids (thank GOD) all rushed me, laughing, excited, and ready to play. As I waded through the crowd of the clothed, my ass hanging out for all to poke, the children's enthusiasm began getting me pumped. After all, George is supposed to be kind of stupid, and I was hamming it up and getting belly laughs from the kids.

We forwent my normal show, and instead opted for actual games, like basketball. I must have run into that post fifty times, staggering and acting dazed while holding my head, and each time, I was like Carlin at Carnegie Hall to those little guys and gals. GENIUS.

This show took place in August, when children’s outdoor parties tend to die off and the kids head back to school. I’d already lined up my first television production job that was starting the following month, so I knew (and prayed) that this phase of my “career” was coming to an end. And even though I was in the closest state to total nudity that I could be in, surrounded by complete strangers, I became blissfully aware that I’d miss these kids, these experiences, these lessons.

As I packed up my things, I was swarmed by kids and parents alike, grabbing handshakes and hugs from what seemed like one thousand hands.

And with that, The Naked Guy exited, having at last learned to love those dangling squares of fabric, Batman’s cowl, Superman’s tights, wearing clown white face, Santa’s beard, Hercules’ wristbands, and Barney’s head. And I know that these children, now full-blown teenagers or even adults, have memories of a birthday when one of these characters magically appeared at a party in their homes, backyards, and neighborhood parks. I’m honored and humbled to have been a small piece of every last one of them.

Note: I did leave out one detail: When I first entered and walked through the crowd? Someone did grab my ass, quite intentionally.

Part 4 of "How I Learned to Love a Loincloth"

The Non Believer


“What’s this?”

“I don’t know.”

She continued gathering my costumes - the Caribbean woman whose job it was to gather the performers’ costumes. Man, did she really hate that job. I don’t blame her. All she did was clean, steam, and hand out a warehouse full of costumes to a bunch of wannabe actors, writers, and directors.

I stared at and examined the striped pajama top and bottoms. And then the large, furry, yellow head.

I lifted the ticket and read. “It says ‘Bananas In Pajamas’. Have you ever heard of them?”

Caribbean Woman shrugged.

“I really don’t know. I’ve never given this out to anyone. It’s brand new.”

I consulted with one of the company’s owners, and she explained that this was a popular children’s show in Great Britain called – unsurprisingly – “Bananas in Pajamas”, and that it now was gaining popularity in the U.S.

“What do they do? Or how do they act?” I asked.

“They’re just super silly characters with English accents. Just be goofy with an English accent and you’re golden.”

Excellent. I was to be a golden banana. With a really shitty fake, British accent.

I do remember this weekend being insanely hot, because prior to this show, I’d performed in *another “head costume” (costumes when you have to wear a fake head over your own. Most companies pay a little more for this type of costume. This one did not.) and downed two big bottles of water afterward, and was still thirsty. Quick theorem I developed:

San Fernando Valley + summer temperatures + head costumes = possible renal failure.

I can still picture the back yard of this house: Concrete deck, swimming pool, and not a damned sliver of shade. Not a single tree in sight. God dammit, that pool called to me with its siren song.

“’allo, kids! I’m a Banana in Pajamahhs! ‘ow are we doin’ this ahfternoon?” I announced as I entered the party, feeling 100% of the dipshit I must have appeared to be.

I inquired (or “enquired”, as I was British, you see) as to the birthday boy’s whereabouts, and I was quickly led to a toe-headed 4 year old in short pants, playing by the pool. I knelt beside him.

“’allo, birthday boy. An’ what’s yooor name?”

I saw two little eyes peer through the translucent eyes of my costume. There was a pause. Then:

“You’re not real.”

He said it just like that. “You’re. Not. Real.”, as though he had never been more certain of something before in his life. I’d like to believe I gave him his first opportunity to feel true pride. I panicked, hoping none of the others heard.

“Of COURSE I’m real! I’m ‘ere, aren’t I?” (I picture myself doing some sort of clod-hoppy, stupid, bouncing dance to prove I’m a real…whatever I was.)

He stood, looked me dead in the eyes (again, MY eyes, not the costume’s) and repeated himself, like the bad guy in an awful action movie:

“You. Aren’t. Real.”

Regardless of the sweltering temperatures, I broke into a cold sweat. What the fuck do I do? I have to spend an hour entertaining a kid and his friends who will probably utilize the time by trying to yank off my head and screaming, “Faker! Faker!”

Resigned to my fate, I decided that honesty would be my best course of action. I whispered:

“Okay, you’re right. I’m not real. You figured me out. But,” I paused and pointed to the group of his friends getting situated for my show, “THEY think I’m real. Can you keep a secret and help me make them believe?”

This was a major roll of the dice. If he understands my point, excellent, I have a clean slate and can start over. But if he can’t comprehend what I’m saying, or if he simply calls bullshit, I’m fucked. In the ass. With a banana. Wearing pajamas.

A crooked smile crept across his face.

“Okay!”

He proceeded to grab my hand and lead me to the party goers, announcing that I was a REAL Banana in Pajamas, and that we were to do whatever I said.

I don’t recall how the rest of the show went, if I face-painted kids or opted for the crappy magic show, or if my kidneys shut down under the sweltering blanket of the sun, but I did learn that if you show a child respect, they might, just might, give it right back.

Or they could possibly tear off your head.



*I’ll let you in on a little secret: Those poor suckers you see in the head costumes? They can’t see SHIT. Especially tiny children that are knee to waist high. I’m sure I have trampled more children than Godzilla did Tokyo highrises.

Part 3 of "How I Learned To Love a Loincloth"

When “The Man” Comes To Town


Even if you’ve never visited, the phrase “South Central LA” probably puts a few drops of pee in your shorts.

Cue the, “Russ Has To Perform A Kid’s Birthday Party In South Central” theme music, please. Thank you.

To say that I was nervous would have been like comparing the tragedies of 9/11 to a blind date that ends with the two of you discovering that you’re cousins. I mean, yeah, gross, but at least you didn’t screw before figuring it out.

I remember pulling slowly into the neighborhood, searching for the address, wondering what the hell I was doing. Sixty bucks for an hour of work. THAT is what you’re doing my brain reminded me. You’ve learned to really like eating and having a roof above your head.

Stupid brain, always thinking.

I parked around the corner, as the house was in the center of the block, as I didn’t want to destroy the illusion. What illusion, you dare to ask? Let me tell you something:

BECAUSE SUPERMAN DOESN’T DRIVE A CAR - HE FLIES.

Yes. There I was, in South Central LA, dressed in a bright blue and red, skin-tight unitard and cape, wandering up a side street. The outfit was complete down to the curl of hair on my forehead (ah, the “hair days”), as the birthday boy’s mother had informed me that her son was insistent that the REAL Superman had a curl on his forehead. A few scoops of hair product later, and I had the sassiest forehead hair curl seen since Shirley Temple.

Not a very macho comparison, I know, but my internet is down, and that’s all I’ve got.

The kids were at the far end of the driveway by the garage, in a moonbounce, jumping wildly and screaming. What the fuck do I do? I kept thinking as I peered around the corner of the house. If Superman can’t fly or throw a car, there’s nothing “super” about him. I can’t shoot lasers out of my eyes or see through shit. I don’t even work as a reporter at a major metropolitan newspaper. I’ll just be some stranger in tights at your birthday party…

…UNLESS…

“Kids!” I yelled, as I ambled up. “Hey, kids!”

Ten or so 5 year olds came running to me, as I kneeled, slumped at the end of the driveway, my cape over my shoulder.

“Superman! Superman!” came the concerned chorus of soprano voices rushing toward my heaving carcass.

“Superman, what’s WRONG?!?”

“It was…it was…Lex Luthor…he put kryptonite in my bag,” I grunted, holding out my duffel bag jammed with party paraphernalia.

Good ol’ brain. Always thinking.

“No!” they yelped in unison.

They assisted me to the back yard, where I continued to stumble and groan. One boy pointed at the curl of hair I’d created on my forehead and screeched, “It IS him! It’s him!” The birthday boy had bought it. I was in. Because, as I’d been learning, if the birthday child believes you’re the real deal, everyone falls in line.

Once the kids had “helped” me regain some of my strength, I asked if they’d like to play some games with me, since I can’t do my normal show of lifting cars and bending pipes (and seeing through their mom’s skirts). An enthusiastic roar leapt from their tiny mouths, and I proceeded to have one of the single most fun children’s parties of my short career.

They were captivated. Entranced. Eager to have a super hero paint their faces like a kitty, or Spiderman, or whatever – as long as SUPERMAN was drawing it, it didn’t matter.

Sixty minutes later, after wrapping up, I revealed that their having such fun really helped me regain some of my powers. I couldn’t quite yet fly, but I told them that I’d walk for a few blocks and give it a shot, and that they should watch for me in the sky in a few minutes.

As I walked more confidently (and more “Supermanly”) away, I thanked them, and that tiny chorus of voices all coalesced, yelping and screaming their goodbyes.

Dropping my bag in my trunk, I took a mental photo of the moment: The boarded up houses, the dried out lawns, stray mattresses on the corners, the general disarray of the neighborhood, and I remember thinking how much that single hour likely meant to that group of little boys. Even now, as I type this, touching those memories, I’m filled with emotion.

And I do believe in my heart, at least one of those kids was positive he saw a red caped figure flying above South Central that sunny afternoon.

Installation # Deuce

Los Angeles County – the area that the kid’s party company served – splays across Southern California for a staggering 498.3 square miles like a giant, polluted amoeba. This is slightly less than half the size of the entire state of Rhode Island. I’ve been to Rhode Island. It isn’t paradise (no offense R.I-ers, but c’mon…), but I’d rather spend a lifetime beneath an overpass in Rhode Island than try to cover the entirety of LA County in a single day by car. Which was expected of us. Regularly.

My 1971 VW Beetle was a $2,000 cash purchase, one that to this very day, I proudly crow about. It was in excellent mechanical and physical shape (come to think of it, back then, so was I). Each Thursday, I’d ritualistically putter over to the children’s party’s offices, pick up that weekend’s costumes, receive my marching orders (packets done up with the parents’/kid’s info), stuff the costumes (ranging from Batman, to a Power Ranger, to once, some kind of evil, menacing dinosaur that terrified every child I approached) into my trunk, and head back home to contact the parents.

Being the days pre-GPS, or even Mapquest or Google maps, or any other variety of online mapping system that leads drivers down the wrong direction of one way streets, I had to get in actual touch with my contacts to receive directions. I would then pull out my *Thomas Guide and begin the long process of figuring out whatever the hell a Laguna Nigel is, and how to get there from Pomona, wherever the hell that was. Depending on the number of parties stuffed into a weekend - a Saturday could sometimes be a 14 hour day - and the logistics of the locations, this mapping could take upwards of 2 hours.

To be fair, once we were asked to drive outside 20 miles of the immediate Los Angeles area, service charges were tacked on, in increments of $5, starting at 20 bucks. On a busy day with a shit-ton of driving, I could rake in 60 or more extra greenbacks. The strain of trying to navigate to these exotic locales, coupled with the stress of sitting in LA traffic, usually meant that money was to be spent on single malt scotch for that night, enjoyed while *sitting in my apartment, dazed, on the floor.


* A massive, detailed map of all of Los Angeles County. They are seriously about 800 pages thick. And nearly everyone's has the same tattered, fucked up pages (page 532 rings a bell).


*No one likes to see a drunken Batman.

My life as a children's show character, or, "How I Learned to Love a Loincloth"

Having grown up in suburban Chicago, circa 1975-1983, the timeframe when birthday parties seemed to matter most to me (save for the unavoidable liver destruction on my 21st and the thrill of purchasing an arsenal of handguns on number 18), birthday celebrations usually involved a group of sugar-wasted preteens running around a back yard, pausing only to shove squares of cheap sheet cake in our yowling mouths, only then to return to chasing one another and maybe, MAYBE, if the family was “rich” enough (in my case, this would be my best friend Timmy Mace’s parents. Looking back, the term “rich” meant they could afford to build a two room addition on their tiny, two bedroom house), we children might receive a little goodie bag, filled with more multi-colored sugary products, to help us come down from our respective highs until we faded like a lightbulb being smashed by a ballpeen hammer.

On my 5th birthday, Mom and Dad pulled out all stops and treated me and a small group of friends to a celebration at McDonald’s. This was pre-playland McDonald’s, so we were relegated to a large booth, enjoying such celebratory activities as “Squirming Around” and the ever-popular childhood game, “Being Good”.

And that was it.

Flash forward: Late summer of 1998, my friend Todd and I trucked his, my, and my then-wife’s belongings cross-country from Nashville to Los Angeles. Following a grueling 6 WHOLE weeks in our new city, I was shocked to find that my writing career wasn’t panning out the way I’d planned. Which is to say, no one knew that I existed. This is a phenomenon that is almost solely reserved to a move to LA in pursuit of a creative career: The more insulated you are, feelings grow that range between, “Oh shit, was this a major fucking mistake?” to, “Um, HELLO! I’M HERE! WHERE’S MY MOVIE DEAL?

In Southern California, as in space, no one can hear you scream.

A close friend of mine had displaced himself in Hollywood about a year prior and told me that on weekends, he’d bring in a fairly decent payday, for a mere 2 days per weekend, performing at children’s birthday parties. He regaled me with tales of hilarity: How he once purchased a six pack of beer dressed as Wolverine from X-Men and told the two kids behind him in line: “Remember: Wolverine says, ‘Don’t drink and drive’!”

Hungry for fame, and even more so, food, Todd and I signed up at the kid’s party company which consisted of 2 days of training (“How to Play ‘Parachute’”, and a handful of magic tricks a blind duck could figure out) and finally, at long last, an AUDITION.

Yes, welcome to Los Angeles, where the opportunity to make balloon poodles for a gaggle of three year olds requires an audition.

Thankfully, I was notified after my audition (which was comprised of each of we – the auditioners- doing a kids party WITH one another. That was a looong afternoon of adults face painting one another) that I was “qualified” and therefore, put in active duty. I use military terminology to describe the following 6 months because that’s what I was getting myself into: A full blown, fall-of-Saigon-style-finish war. My enemy? They stood 3 to 4 feet, blinked eyes filled with pie-plate-sized innocence, and were duly trained in the art of the stealth thigh-bite, the ankle-kick, and the cock-punch.

to be continued...

A wedding is a little bit like running an ultra: You prepare, you devise, you think, overthink, put in place specific plans, then dash them to the rocks and start over, you purchase things you may only ever use once in your life and question their reliability, you call on friends and family for support.

And that's the weeks/months leading up to the event.

Two days out, you're a trembling mess, overcome with anxiety, nervous excitement, your bowels stop doing their "normal" thing, and the day prio, you are in a zombie-like trance, unsure of your surroundings.

And then, the "big day" comes.

You barely slept the prior night but somehow feel strangely rested. You glance at the clothing you especially purchased for the day/evening laid out and step into the event's uniform. It fits like a slipper on a certain princess whose name I likely can't type because a certain animation company might sue me. You begin to realize all of the effort and time and energy you've put into it is about to pay off. And toeing "start line", your nerves cool, as the journey to the journey is over. Now, all you have to do is get out there and enjoy yourself.

To say that our wedding was one of the moments in my life that I will replay with joy over and again in my mind barely does it justice. Loved ones from around the globe all converged into one small building outside of Portland for our special moment. Humbled, Ann and I both took a step back and felt the blanket of love wrapped about us. In that moment, a feeling washed over me that I think we're lucky to experience: That love, collected in that one space? It's always there. Not just for that day, or for a few hours; it is real, and it is constant.

By the way, you also feel after the wedding the same way you would after running a race and giving it all you got. Effing WHOOPED, I tells ya.

Our friend Orrin was wonderful enough to surprise us during the ceremony with this mind-bogglingly sweet and hilarious video piece he edited together.

We have awesome friends and family. Doy.

Stomach somewhat queasy, 100% of the time?

Check.

Piles of post-it notes with to-do lists scattered across coffeetable?

Check.

Flashes of anxiety?

Check.

Planning a wedding is partially like putting together a massive party for everyone in your lives that you care about, where you will show and profess your love for one another. The other percentage feels a bit like walking into a parking garage and seeing that your car was stolen.

But we're excited to see our beloved family and friends on Sunday. And to vow to be partners, forever in this life.

Am I nervous about throwing a wedding? Absolutely.

Am I nervous about getting/being married to Annie? Not in the least.

I think that's the way it should be.