Well, OK, not SpongeBob exactly. More like his starfish
sidekick. I always get a kick out of these stories about the guys inside the big rubber outfits at theme parks. I read
a book a while back about a guy’s experience at Disneyland as…Donald Duck I think it was.
And a book I
just read recently DisneyWar by James B.
Stewart, opened with him trying on a goofy outfit. In
this story we have the story of a guy at Paramount’s Kings
Dominion theme park near Richmond (in Texas, I think), who has signed up to play Patrick the Starfish, SpongeBob
SquarePants’ best cartoon friend. The job is not, we learn, glorious. Nor is it much fun at all. In fact the whole
thing is rather depressing. But it is funny since the writer, Peter mandel, is 46. We learn a lot about becoming an
"Entertainment Associate", the
corporate-speak, 1984ishly creepy term for the folks in the styrofoam rubber suits. We learn that you must be at least
16. We learn that kids are not really the cute little angels we expect them to be; in fact, they can be mean little
buggers. And in the end, we learn that wearing a thick cartoon character suit to entertain (sometimes) ungrateful
children on a hot day in Texas…well, I’d probably rather be a miner.