Why?:Am I a Power Ranger?
I remember sitting there, just off set. The garish, cheap, unbearably unimaginative set. I was sipping on cold vending machine coffee, sitting on a hard wooden chair, feeling the comforting hurt of a nail reassured me I was still alive, re-reading the stupid, shitty script that managed to be both patronising and naive at the same time, and wishing that the toy laser in my hand was real so I could kill everyone in the room and then myself, proving that nobody would miss this show by the fact our bodies would only be found years later by the new janitor being forced to clean up "that old set" before the health and safety people arrive. At this point I have to ask myself: Why am I a Power Ranger?
I mean I hate children. The more miserable their lives are, the happier I become. I certainly don’t want them squealing with joy. The only upside is that they may actually try this stuff at home, fall off the couch, and bite their own tongues off. Bright colours irritate my eyes, too. This set, being the unending rainbow of coloured-in cardboard that it is, could be the very last place someone with sensitive eyes would want to look, even surpassing West Hollywood’s gay community.
Where did I go wrong?
I'd like to be trite and say this was my pushy mother's fault. Or that my father molested me and crushed my confidence. But I can't. I was too good for Commercials. No way was I going to advertise pregnancy testing kits or laxatives. I wanted something permanent so I might get noticed. But no such luck. Children (or the smart ones) hardly even watch this shit as evident from the statement my five year old nephew gave when I tried getting him to watch it:
"It's not your performance, Aunty Grace," he assured me. "I just find that it's too condescending and tries too hard to make its misleading 'good will always defeat evil' point. And you have to admit, the special effects are lazy." He concluded by flicking the TV over to an old episode of Doctor Who. Cretin.
It's unfair to blame myself, though. And it really isn't all my own fault.
This is no kind of life to be living
I'm an actress! I shouldn't be living in this squalor. I should have my own trailer. No, a convoy of trailers, tooled with all imaginable fashions, a stylist at the ready, and a script that involves me kissing Brad Pitt! I should, by rights, have a mansion in Beverly Hills waiting for me when I get back from shooting scenes in Panama. But no. I have this.
I have a grubby apartment in the middle of a city that's too small to be worth mentioning. No stylist: just a one-piece costume that makes me look fat. A backstreet hairdresser that I have to pay for, and a script that involves my being half killed by dodgy pyrotechnics, then shouting "I've been hit!" as if it wasn't immediately obvious to even the stupidest of blind folk, all the while slapping frantically at [[the suit melting into me.
To make matters worse, I'm the blue one. I not only despise blue, I really hate people who pander to political correctness. The yellow and pink rangers are always girls. The red, blue and green (and occasionally black, from what I've heard) are always men. That's the way things should always be. Anything else just confuses the Republicans, most of whom send me angry, sexually repressed letters accusing me of lesbianism. Not that I find that offensive, you understand. I mean, if I did, the dykes might sue me for hate speech.
And they (the constant "they" I refer to being those high-up people who make all the decisions) released this "action figure" of me. It never fails to weird me out: seeing a little blue version of me being flung across the store as an enraged little boy screams at and then karate-kicks his mother, demanding that she buy him the pink one instead.
I should kill myself. But I'm operating under the presumption that there is something worse after this. I mean if I go to Hell I'll have to re-enact every fuck up outtake for all eternity. And all the children up in Heaven just love Power Rangers, where I'll get guilt-tripped into doing a stage show.
Well maybe I'm over-reacting ...
There are some limited perks to the job. For example the vague martial arts I get taught during the fighting scenes have been known to come in handy at various hen nights I've attended where horny dads came onto me just a little too much, around the back of those country clubs. The fighting scenes themselves aren't all bad either. Often they involve a group of heroin-addicted teenagers whom the producer pulls off the street like stray dogs, dressed as angry Oompah Loompahs. Then I get to kick them in the balls for several hours. Sometimes the cameraman forgets to hit "record" and I get to do it twice!
And the coffee so vaguely resembles coffee it comes free. Free stuff is always a plus, right?
Actually no. I always get sent leftover merchandise. The other four Rangers steal the most expensive stuff (promptly selling it on e-bay) and leave me with the tatty pajamas and bed spreads and the dolls without heads. It's awful. But they make good presents: you couldn't expect people to buy it but accepting it as a gift is only prudent.
Not that it matters
Very soon this season of Power Rangers will finish and I'll be out of a job, such as it is. The contract was meant to last a few years, but the creator has all the fidelity of a hair brush and so keeps moving on to new things. Namely, "Power Rangers: Chav Crushers!". Apparently set in England because British kids "love all this ironic American trash" – or so my nephew thinks.
So as soon as the season ends (the Power Rangers win incidentally, once again saving the world from recycled cardboard aliens. Which, I think, means there is a subliminal anti-environmentalist message buried in this landfill), I'll be on the streets. Maybe I can move into porn or something. It's usually the other way around (from porn to children's TV), but frankly I'm getting desperate. Or maybe I could sleep with said creator and convince him to make another six seasons and let me stay, with slightly reduced wages and a ten cent charge for coffee. Just because that would be easier.
