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handa Inner circle Pittsburgh, PA 1357 Posts |
Do you have any interesting and unique Coney Island stories that you wish to share?
Thank you, Chris |
Todd Robbins V.I.P. New York 2922 Posts |
There are a ton of them. Tomorrow I will write up what happened when a perform combined the Electric Chair act, lighter fluid and the seat of his pants.
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Todd Robbins V.I.P. New York 2922 Posts |
So, a bunch of years ago, we had a guy who wanted to join the sideshow. We'll call him Jason. We'll call him that because that is his name.
Jason wasn't a performer, but we put him in the show because we were short staffed and he had a strong desire to learn. We taught him how to do a strait jacket escape and the Electric Chair Act. He had no real experience and didn't know how to keep his performance fresh. Since we were doing ten to fifteen shows a day, it didn't take long for his act to go flat. The Electric Chair Act is simple one. The chair does the technical work for you and all you have to add is showmanship. The act consists of bringing up someone from the audience, putting them in the chair and when you turn it on, voltage shoots through them. The voltage is low in amps, so it doesn't hurt a bit. It allows the person in the chair to light up florescent bulbs in their bare hands. For the finish of the act, you get them out of the chair, you turn it back on, touch a fire eating torch to the electified seat of the chair. The torch bursts into flames and to say, "You see, you really were on the hot seat." Okay, it ain't Shakespeare, but it got a bit of applause and would bring the act to a nice conclusion. Well, Jason's would just trudge through the beats of the act and it would end with little or no impact. So one night, he decides to add a little oomph to the act. I'm standing offstage watching him work and I see he has an idea. It is the end of the act and he goes over to my fire eating bucket and takes out the squirt bottle of lighter fluid. I'm thinking, "This is interesting." He gets the person out of the chair and pours lighter fluid on the seat of the chair. Not just a squirt of two, but an ample puddle of this highly flamable fluid. He turns on the chair and touches the torch to the seat. BOOM! A lovely mushroom cloud of flame and smoke erupts from the seat of the chair. I standing there thinking, "A fire extinguisher would be a good investment for this place." I look at Jason and see he has another idea. I don't know how I knew what he was thinking, but I knew it was, "If I sit down on it, the fire will go out." I jump onto the stage, and it was about at this time everything seemed to go into slow motion. Jason is walking towards the chair and I am yelling, "Nooooooooooooooo." He sits down on the chair and in a spit second the look on his face went from satisfied to quizzical to horrified. He jumps up. Now both the chair and his pants are on fire. And I'm thinking, "Maybe we should get two fire extinguishers." I look a Jason and see he has another thought. "If I drop my pants, the fire will go out." He does so. The good news is that the fire did go out. The bad news is that it revealed to all that he wasn't wearing underwear. And it was at that moment that Jason became a true performer. There he was standing onstage, in full light, in front of a full audience, naked from the waist down. What did he do? He took a bow. He then pulled up his pants and ran offstage, leaving me to deal with an audience that was on the verge of a riot. Some were laughing, some didn't know what was going on,some were ****ed off, and the parents were thinking of all the questions their kids would be asking them. I spoke softly, trying to gain some control of the situation, trying to get the show back on track and introduce the next act. Unfortunately, the next act was to be the snake charmer. I thought that after what the audience had just seen, the sight of a large snake would be redundant. So, I called out the Tattooed man, turned what was left of the show over to him and headed to the bar next door for a drink. |
handa Inner circle Pittsburgh, PA 1357 Posts |
As usual, I'm not disappointed. The combination of the teller and the tale definitely gave me more than my money's worth.
Thanks again, Todd. And thanks for a great week online! Chris P.S.--Kari just read the story, too. She laughed herself to tears, dubbing it a "two Guinness story." |
Todd Robbins V.I.P. New York 2922 Posts |
Thanks.
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