nailed v3 issue 1

I got a call a couple of months ago from my sword swallowing pal Dan Meyer with an interesting proposition. Dan is the head of the Sword Swallower Association International (www.ssai.com) He had been approached by representatives from The Discovery Channel about participating in a documentary on the subject of, what else, sword swallowing. They were looking for someone who was learning to drop a blade so they could follow them around and film the process and the progress. Dan recommended they contact me as I have been working on the art for some time. (as a little aside here: trying to shove a 2 foot long piece of steel down your gullet is possibly the hardest thing I have ever attempted to do. It just ain’t natural.)
Phone calls were made, arrangements arranged and before you knew it, I was ready for my close up Mr. DeMille.
The plan was; the four person film crew would come to Nashville (from New Zealand no less) and film Dan and myself in our home town and then follow us to the Second Annual Side Show Gathering in Wilkes-Barre, PA on Labor Day weekend for a mass sword swallow. Hopefully, I would be able to drop a blade by the time the big gulp rolled around.

The film crew, director Roz Mason, technical advisor Paul Trotman, and the last nameless, cameraman D.J. (affectionately known as “Deeg”) and sound man/assistant director Erroll spent a week in Music City following Dan and I around and filming our every move. I was beginning to feel like SideShow Anna Nicole Smith with my very own reality show. They filmed Dan and I having instructional sessions. They filmed Dan at his day job. They filmed me in Nashville’s Centennial Park playing a little music for possible use on the soundtrack. They filmed me in performance at 12th and Porter. Photos from that show are posted in the photos section. They filmed on a lonely country road on the way to The SideShow Gathering in Wilkes-Barre, PA. The police showed up. The police left. Life is good.

Finally arriving at the SideShow Gathering was a grand treat in it’s own right. An amalgamation of the creme de la creme of the side show industry, all conglomerated in one location for the weekend. There was The King of the Side Shows, Ward Hall, The World’s Greatest Showman, Bobby Reynolds, Shocked And Amazed magazine publisher James Taylor and his cronie and able assistant Kathleen Kotcher. Performers included Time “The Torture King” Cridland, Erik “Lizardman” Sprague, George “The Giant” McDonald, and Harley “Professional Lunatic” Newman. I was lamenting my lack of a quotation mark name until I got together with The Great Nippulini, Mystic Marlow, Tyler Fyre, and Insectavora. Then there were the familial groups like The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and The Crispy Family Circus.

It was an amazing experience getting to see each of the acts, and others, work their magic on the audience. It was a chance to meet old friends and make new ones. To see the acts I had only heard about and for the other performers to see SideShow Bennie’s Carnival of Wonders.

All the while, I was still being filmed. There must be miles of tape at this point, all leading up to the big swallow on Friday night. Did I get a blade down? Did I fail miserably? I suppose, like the rest of the world, you will have to wait until spring, 2004 to find out. Oh, don’t think for a minute that I won’t announce the time the documentary will debut the minute I have an air date. So check back often to find out.