The Phlegm Is Mightier Than The Sword

Over the past two weeks, I heard this joke three times:

Q: What do you call a sword swallower with health insurance?
A: A Canadian!

Ba-dump-ching!

In this week’s Show and Tell, I spoke with two American sword-swallowing couples about their experiences with horrific, uninsured throat injuries! Palace of Wonders employees and traveling side-show act Tyler Fyre and Thrill Kill Jill (above) and Centreville, Va. performers Charon Henning and Alex Kensington were kind enough to share their incredible injury stories (and their lame industry jokes).

Says Palace of Wonders museum director James Taylor,

Self-deprecation is a necessary element to the side-show business. Performers use massive amounts of double entendree, because that’s the way to make most of these acts palpatable to the audience: They make it seem funny so that the crowds can get past the hairs standing on the backs of their necks.

Neck hairs, step right up: Click here for a sword swallowing, fire breathing audio slideshow with Tyler and Jill.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under Arts, Fire, Games of Chance, Health, Hygiene, Nightlife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.