Freak Show 101
at Coney U.
Metro Gnome By Gersh Kuntzman
Kids, don't try this at home.
Come to think of it, don't try it anywhere else, either.
But if you insist on swallowing swords, placing flames in your
mouth or hammering a nail into your nostril, the freaks from Coney
Island would love to enroll you in their new "Sideshow School",
a six-session tutorial on how to perform all the act at Coney
Island Sideshow without slicing open your throat, searing your
tongue or deviating your septum.
Think of it as a baseball fantasy camp for people who always wanted
to run away and join the circus.
"But this is better", said glass-eating legend Todd
Robbins, the school's dean. "If you actually ran away to
the circus, you'd be what the circus people call a "First
of May" and spend a year just taking tickets before they'd
teach you anything. But with us, you don't even have to clean
out teh elephant pen."
Robbins didn't waste any time taking his students out of the frying
pan and into fire-eating. Lesson One: Remember Bill Clinton.
"The most important rule is: Do not inhale the flame,"
Robbins said. "Inhaling is very bad."
With that, Robbins handed out a box of matches and told his students
to ligyht one, out it in their mouths and close their lips around
it.
"That's kinda counterintuitive," said Robyn Thompson,
a professional clown who hopes to use the sideshow class to expand
beyond kids' birthday parties. With a little coaching, Robbins
got Thompson through Lesson One.
|
Emboldened, she decided to try a torch - until she saw the resulting
fireball. Fire-eating would have to wait.
Next, Robbins lectured on a stunt called "The Human Blockhead."
Eventually, he will get his class to insert 4-inch nails into their
nostrils, but for now, a Q-Tip covered in antibacterial cream sufficed.
(Don't tell Johnson & Johnson.)
Alan Elsner, a bookish 40 year old, quickly graduated to nails.
"You know, once you get the hang of it, it's an easy stunt,"
he said, with the head of a nail sticking out of his nostril. "But
it's the coolest."
Having a sword sticking out of your mouth is cool, too, but it's
not so easy. Robbins handed out wire hangers that had been flattened
into the basic shape of a sword and told his class that the "trick"
to swallowing it is merely overcoming 10,000 years of human evolution
called the gag reflex. Everyone in the class failed, but Robbins
promised that if they stick teh hanger down their throats seven
times a day for a week, the throat will just open up one day.
The day's lessons completed, Robbins gave his students their homework
-- "Do try this at home"
-- and sent them on their way. Dick Zigun, who runs the sideshow
was impressed - to a point.
"Sure, we're training the sideshow stars of tomorrow, but what
I really need is a midget," Zigun said, complaining that Koko
the Killer Klown, the sideshow's popular dwarf, has gone AWOL.
"I wish Todd could teach them how to be a dwarf," Zigun
said. "But I guess it's one of those things that you either
got it or you don't."
--Gersh Kuntzman
|
