Weird Side Shows
You don't want to see!

John Kamakaze, Scotland's self-styled Prince of Pain, set a stomach-churning record a few years ago when he spent fifteen minutes suspended in midair by meat hooks imbedded in his back. He said it didn't hurt at all. "The only thing that hurts is a blister on my foot from walking around too much yesterday," he said, according to Reuters.

The Japanese seem to have the tasteless entertainment market cornered. On one Japanese TV show, women in bikinis crush aluminum cans with their breasts. On another, a young child was told his mother had just been shot to death. They wanted to see how many seconds would elapse until he started crying.

"This Ain't Your Mama's Charity Benefit" features HIV-positive performance artist Bud Cockerham, suspended by hooks, while passersby slice and dice the willing victim with a razor. After that, he's wrapped in a bedsheet, and the bloodstained sheet is later displayed.

Brad Beyers, the Human Toolbox, can

• Hammer a nail through his face and hang a wooden board from it
• Push an ice pick up his nostril
• Drill into his head with an electric drill: "I know when I'm going too far because ... I hear a crunching noise," he said as he demonstrated his sickening skills on the Guinness World Records TV show.

Director John Waters, who helps people to get in touch with their inner gag reflex by showing such things as people eating dog shit, once said, "If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation."

Wrestling or busting a gut involves two corpulent competitors trying to push each another out of a small ring using their bellies. A sport of sorts since Victorian times, it's making a comeback in die U.K., with stars like Mad Maurice, described as a man who could make his bellybutton sneer.

Most people think the frames in the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination where his brain gets blown away were pretty violent. Yet a major video outlet rated it only 5 out of 10 on a video violence meter. That was equal to the rating of that family holiday favorite, The Ten Commandments.

A showman in the last century who called himself "the Man with the Largest Mouth in America" repeatedly proved it by swallowing his entire clenched fist.