I came into class and saw what I thought was our substitute instructor cleaning up the stage wearing blackface. Really, I thought, isn’t blackface in poor taste even for a sideshow?
But he wasn’t wearing blackface; he had hair growing all over his face. He was a “dog-faced boy” and he was just there hanging out.
The class started with Dick Zigun the mayor explaining the finer points of snake
-charming.
“Don’t wrap the constrictor around your neck like a scarf because that’s how people die.”
The key to snake charming, by the way, is to pick out a song you like to dance to and build up your shoulder muscles because 13-foot-long Burmese albino pythons way 70 pounds.
Also, always wash your hands after handling a snake because they’re covered in salmonella and never handle any constrictor over 9-feet-long when no one else is around, it might strangle you to death out of instinct.
Next Donny V. taught us how to use animal traps on our hands and how to set off mousetraps with our tongues. The animal trap is one of those annoying tricks were there is no trick. The performer sticks his real hand in a real animal trap and it really hurts. Unfortunately, the audience won’t necessarily believe you.
While Donny V. was instructing the “assistant” on how to successfully avoid being pierced by the steel blades in the Blade-Box, one of my classmates, Johnny Sullivan the Stuntman, was offering a B movie role to another student if she taught him how to weld.
“Can I be in a B movie?” I asked
“Sure. What do you want to do?”
“I want to be a zombie.”
“What are you doing June 2nd and 3rd?”
Looks like I’m going to be a zombie extra in The Skeleton Key 2.
To see me swallow fire for the first time, click here.
