Greetings SideShow Lovers and Fans
Welcome to the first installment of the SideShow Bennie website newsletter. Check back here often as I will be updating it regularly and now that Best Buys replaced my lemon of a laptop computer with a spanking new one, I can make installments from the road too. I will be using this forum to plug upcoming gigs, regale you with adventures from the road, throw in the occasional rant about things that piss me off and just keep you up to date on the fascinating world of The Carnival Of Wonders
The Fringe was great, as always. This is my fifth year to perform at this internationally renowned performance art festival. I did six performances and there were great crowds at every show. They were properly shocked and amazed and very generous in a merchandise buying kind of way. I love Philadelphia!
Did I mention that I love Philadelphia? Philly has it all. A trip to Chinatown confirmed that when I was able to score a bag of, believe it or not, Hello Kitty Beef Jerky. How can any home be truly happy without a big bag of Hello Kitty Beef Jerky?
I had the opportunity to work with The Great Nipullini. (check out his website listed under Links) His powerful man teats are a thing of wonder to be sure. Using only his nipples, he lifts objects such as a mud anchor, a huge vice and a 16 lb. bowling ball. Impressive indeed. But his most impressive act took place at the Late Night Cabaret on Saturday night. I was host and MC for the show that night and after Nipullini finished his set, we went to the Cabaret bar together where he had me sit on a cart. He then attached chains from the cart to his nipples and towed my lard-ass all around the bar. Even the hard to impress were impressed. I hear he has since towed a 1500 lb. automobile down a Philadelphia street.
But the true highpoint of the trip, however, had nothing to do with the festival itself. It was the visit to the Mütter Museum (also under Links). This place is a national treasure! This is the public museum that is affiliated with the Philadelphia College Of Physicians. A museum of medical oddities. What's not to like about that? Museum director, Gretchen Worden, is a SideShow fan who attended one of my Fringe performances two years ago. She invited me to take a "Behind The Scenes" tour of this wonderful museum. This was the year I was able to take her up on the offer.
Well, friends, it was all I had imagined and then some. Rooms filled with skeletons, cases of fetuses in jars, the actual foot of a chinese woman who had her feet bound in that weird chinese custom, weird pharmaceutical promotional material, and dried genitalia galore. From man (and woman) and beast alike, more dried genitals than you could shake a dried genital at. The whole tour left me slack-jawed with wonder. Gretchen is an excellent tour guide, a marvelous raconteur and quite the charming host. I owe her one!
For all you Baltimore folks, I will be performing at the Haunted Woods at The Merriweather Post Pavilion for most of October. My first night is October 15th as the warm up act for the Alice Cooper show. You don't want to miss it so get there early.
That's all for now Kids. Thanks for checking out the site. Come back often and, if you haven't already done it, sign the guestbook!
SSB
Now the Mütter has on display for the general public things like a giant's skeleton standing next to a normal skeleton next to a dwarf skeleton (the dwarf skeleton was from a woman who had died in childbirth and her child was stillborn so they have the baby's skull in her hand. Just amazing!) a diseased colon as big as a sleeping bag, a wall of skulls, a case filled with objects that a doctor had removed from patient's airways over his 20 odd year career and the actual plaster death cast of Chang and Eng Bunker (the original "Siamese Twins") whose autopsy was performed at the college) along with a pan holding their preserved conjoined liver. I couldn't imagine, if these items were on display, what the "behind the scenes" tour would be like.
