Jim Hogshire and the SPD Epiphany

I met Jim Hogshire and his wife Heidi sometime in the early 1990’s. If I remember correctly, Mike Hoy of Loompanics tasked Hogshire with writing an article about our sideshow for the Loompanics catalog. Hogshire had published a particularly controversial book for Loompanics entitled Opium for the Masses, whose major premise was that people were [...]

The Lighter Case

Around Thanksgiving 1993 the sideshow was in Dallas, TX. It was kind of freaky, as it had recently snowed, and there were still traces of snow on the ground. It was a surreal setting for performing on stage and celebrating Thanksgiving.

Part of my act was lighting a string of firecrackers on my bare chest. I’m [...]

Aughts and Naughts

Here we are almost at the end of 2009 and there is no clear consensus as to what to call this decade.

The most common term that I’ve seen in my own un-scientific perusal of the Internet has been “the aughts”. I should like to argue that this term is exactly backwards, as a quick [...]

Bill Maher, The Who, and Smallpox

A recent article that appeared in Martin Gardner’s column Notes of a Fringe Watcher reminded me of an incident that occurred to me when I was in high school. This is a comment of mine that originally appeared on Metafilter.

I used to watch the national evening news on TV with my father virtually every [...]

Psychic Predictions For 2010

The following list is actually a repeat of a post I made to the JREF back in late 2007. Being that several of my predictions came true in 2008, I’m going to stick with a winning game plan. ‘Cause a winner never quits and a quitter never wins…

1. Cell phones with amazing new features will [...]