The Jim Rose Circus

The Regal Theatre, 10 April 1998.

   I've always heard heaps about the Jim Rose circus, and I've been waiting for it to come to Australia for a long time, so when I heard that it was coming to Perth for a week of shows I was pretty happy.  For those who don't know, the Jim Rose circus is basically a freak show, with really strange people doing pretty bizarre stuff.

    I arrived at the theatre about 15 min early, and I was pretty surprised by the turnout, with the show being sold out for that night (and the rest of the week I think).  I had front row seats, and as I began to make my way to the seat   I started wondering whether it was really a smart idea to sit in the front row.   I then spotted the stairs leading on to the stage from the sides of the seats where I was sitting, and started to get a bit nervous.

  All of a sudden the theatre went pitch black, and a strange voice was played, sort of like a women's voice after sucking in helium.  The person went on about how they used to be a prostitute, and was really funny, talking about all these bizarre encounters she had in her profession.  Then the monologue stopped, and suddenly heaps of firecrackers went off, and a guy ran down the aisle wearing black and a face mask, revving a chainsaw as he ran past rows of people shitting their pants.  Fucking awesome way to start a show.

    Then Jim came on, and introduced Bebe the circus queen, who is actually his wife.  She climbed up a ladder made out of razor sharp swords, and then laid down on a bed of nails while some guy dropped a cannonball on to her stomach.   Add to this the fact that she was topless and it made for a pretty awesome act.   Next on was the Enigma, who some people might recognise from the X-Files, which him and Jim were apparently on a few years ago.  Anyway, he's a really freaky guy, and is covered in tatts from head to toe (even showing the audience his ass to show the full extent of his commitment to art), and he has also had coral implants put in his head, so that he has horns which actually grow out of the top of his head, which are excellent.   Jim told him that he had a present for him, which the Enigma seemed pretty happy about (although the only thing that he was saying was just a series of grunts and groans, so I could be mistaken).  Anyway, Jim pulled out the present, which was a live scorpion.  Jim then walked to the side of the front row, looking for someone who was obviously terrified, to confirm that it was a live scorpion.  After scaring the shit out of a girl a few seats down from me, he got back up on to the stage, and then let the scorpion crawl around on the Enigma's face and then put it into his mouth.

    After that, he got a girl up on to the stage and told her that he needed her help in feeding the Enigma.  She was absoulelty shitting her pants, and didn't look too happy when she found out that she would be putting handfuls of live insects (maggots, cockroaches, crickets - all live and crawling around inside a jar) into the Enigma's mouth.  He gobbled them up, and then let them hang out of his mouth like the true showman he is.  Then Jim pulled out a long plastic tube connected to a cylinder, like the one hospitals use to feed people who are unconscious.  The Enigma then put about 2-3 metres worth of the plastic tube into his nose and down into his stomach, whilst the cylinder was filled with stuff like Gatorade (blueberry of course), bong water, and the secret ingredient, ginseng.  There was about a litre's worth of stuff in the cylinder, and Jim pulled out a plunger and pushed all this liquid down through the cylinder, and into the Enigmas stomach.  After that, he pulled the stuff back out, pointing out that it had turned green because of the bile in the Enigma's stomach.  The Enigma then drank about a cup of the disgusting green stuff.  The Enigma also did some other stuff like putting a condom in his nose, and pulling it out of his mouth and vice versa, and did some sword-swallowing (I was actually asked to verify if the sword was real or not for Jim!).  He then lit a cigarette with sparks generated by Bebe putting a metal grinder to a steel plate over her nether-regions area (Fire in the hole!).  After performing these amazing feats, the Enigma stayed on to play the keyboards and provide a bizarre soundtrack to the night of freaky shit.

    After that was the Mexican transvestite wrestlers.  Jim described it as a 'no-holes barred' contest where the aim was to put a strap-on dildo inside the other's mouth for a 1-2-3 count.  Punching and kicking weren't allowed, but bitchslapping was perfectly legal.  This was fucking funny, especially because one of the wrestlers was the Armenian Rubber Man, and he was bending his arms to ridiculous angles, and then flailing them about like he didn't have any elbows.  The rubberman-wrestler won the bout, and then went on to fit his entire body through the head of a 1970s tennis racquet, which was pretty unbelievable.

    Next up was the female sumo wrestlers.  First off they came out and performed individual tricks, like having a cement block broken on the chest while laying on a bed of razor-sharp swords.  Then came the big matchup, with Judy 'The Bull' Jenkins facing off against Katie 'Piledriver' Wilson, with over 400 kgs. of flesh slamming into each other just metres in front of me.  The underdog Katie ended up winning the topless sumo bout 2-0, while Judy stormed off the stage, clearly not happy with losing to Katie.

    Between the acts, Jim was performing his own acts, like escaping from a straightjacket, swallowing razor blades and string and then coughing up the razor blades attached to each other on the string, and other cool stuff like this.   Although the stuff he was doing was really good, it just didn't seem quite as amazing as some of the other stuff the other freaks were doing.

  After the sumo match, Jim got another terrified female from the audience, and got her to break two glass beer bottles, and then stand on his head as he put his face into the broken glass.  When he was scanning the front row for someone to verify that the broken glass was real, he looked at me and said "No, I can't ask you again, where's some other jaded fucks who look like they've seen it all before?", which made me feel pretty happy.  After this trick, all the lights went out and then Jim warned the members of the audience that no-one had better leave the theater, as cannons full of live insects had been placed behind all of the doors.  The audience was told that these cannons would blast live maggots, cockroaches, crickets and spiders on all of us, and that members of the show would be walking around with snakes to harass audience members with.  A background tape was looping the phrase "don't fuck with Jim Rose" over and over again, and I could see people running around on stage, looking like they were getting some stuff ready.  By this stage me and the rest of the people in the audience were all shitting our pants, and wondering why the fuck we actually paid money to come to the show.  After a while I figured that they weren't actually going to blast insects on to the crowd, as they were dragging the threats out for a bit too long.  There were people from the show running around spraying audience members with water pistols, shouting "Don't light a match!", and there was one guy running around with a torch in one hand and a chainsaw in the other, which was fully scaring the shit out of everyone.

    The lights then came back on, and Jim introduced the amazing Mr. Lifto.  This guy came on stage, with carribeanas hanging from his ears, and laser-implanted quills moving on his forehead, looking like an escapee from some bizarre sci-fi movie.  He started by lighting about 100 firecrackers on his bare stomach, but stopped after about 40 because the explosions were blowing out the lit fuses of the other firecrackers.  After this Mr. Lifto managed to lift a liberty bell (like a bell with a handle, which you can pick up and ring), using only his genitals, (which apparently he had injured in Europe performing this feat), and then proceeded to ring the bell, which was absouletly amazing.  He then lifted a car battery from his tongue (with the live current passing through it), an iron from each earlobe (which were stretched almost 10cm by this awesome trick), and a cement block from his nipples - all at the same time!!!.

    This act was the last of the show, and the audience was then told that T-shirts would be sold on stage, and signed by all the members of the show.   Needless to say, I rushed outside to the nearest ATM and got out some money to get a shirt.  Although it was a pretty thinly-veiled money-making exercise, I still think it was pretty awesome, with all the people from the show signing the shirt and posing for some happy-snaps with me.

    All up, this was an excellent show (although only 1 and a half hours long), and it was well worth seeing.  I know that the circus is coming back to perth in July, but I'm not sure if it's going back across the rest of the country.  If you missed the show and get a chance to see it again, definitely do it, as it's one of the strangest (and best) things you'll probably see for a long time.  By far the best 'Good Friday' I've ever had.