Sideshow performer. Lately been working on putting mousetraps on my tongue. It's one of my tamer skills, but I just never really had the chance to develop that skill. It's also one of the more child friendly skills.
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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every sentence there makes me want more details
AMA I guess?
Done.
- How dangerous really is your job?
- What happens if you get injured? Insurance/etc.?
- What differences do you have when performing for adults vs. children? (since you mention child-friendly, I assume that means you don't do things that might scare them)
- What are your least tame skills?
- How did you get into performing in the sideshow? Mentors, training, string of coincidences?
- Favorite memory?
- Any frightening memories?
Sorry for the wall x)
How dangerous really is your job?
Very. The name of the game is risk mitigation. Most acts put only the performer at risk, but fire puts the entire theater at risk, which is why I carry insurance and follow strict protocol. I perform at a historic landmark so they don't allow just anyone to use fire there.
What happens if you get injured? Insurance/etc.?
I have a day job with insurance, but not everyone is so lucky and performers do get hurt sometimes. Injuries are bad because they mean taking time off to heal (a friend of mine is currently recovering from a broken rib and can't perform). Minor cuts and burns are part of the job, you learn to manage them and move on, so we're all covered in scars. Again, it's all about risk mitigation.
What differences do you have when performing for adults vs. children? (since you mention child-friendly, I assume that means you don't do things that might scare them)
Adult oriented shows often have more nudity/burlesque and more graphic acts, whereas kids get more traditional circus or campy horror. For example, children might see fire eating and mousetrap, while adults might get a bed of nails or human pincushion.
What are your least tame skills?
Tongue splits ALWAYS freak people out. So does anything involving a power drill.
How did you get into performing in the sideshow? Mentors, training, string of coincidences?
I started as a fire performer and got into it through fire eating. Eventually, one thing led to another, and I was invited to join Americaβs last permanently housed circus sideshow. Everything blew up from there.
Favorite memory?
Weβre a close-knit group, almost like family, which is special since we're a dying breed. My favorite memories are probably the things other performers have said about me while introducing me to the stage. We love to gush about each other.
Any frightening memories?
Earlier this year, one of my close friends tried to take her own life on one of my performance days. My phone blew up to the point where I couldnβt even see my GPS. My girlfriend stepped in to help thankfully. We got a group chat going, sent people to find her, got her to the hospital, and she spent a week in the psych ward.
After that, I hosted a fundraiser show that raised $1k to get her back on her feet. The event also brought a lot of people together.
If you read this far, here's my IG
That sounds less like a skill and more like a very unfortunate freak accident.
The skill with a lot of these things is knowing how to present it with confidence. Plus pain tolerance, technical skills, and theater skills.
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Body work on my car.
I'm poor as fuck and had tree branches fuck me up. Decided I'm not willing to deal with the bullshit of finding a new one, especially with all the bullshit privacy invasion on top of buying the damn thing.
So, I borrowed tools, looked shit up, and while the car isn't fully dent free or anything, it was good enough to replace windows and you have to get close to see the warping that's left.
Took my crippled ass damn near two weeks because I could only work maybe a half hour, 45 minutes at a go once or twice a day. And I wasn't working fast.
While it was much simpler than I thought it would be, those auto body pros deserve their damn pay. Shit is hard physically. Just replacing the side mirror had my back cramping and spasming for hours after, even with meds. And that was the easiest job involved.
Dunno that I learned enough to exactly say it's a true skill, since it really only applies to my car, and the kind of damage done, but the parts of the frame that were bent are back in line, and the dents that needed shrinking are damn near invisible, which I'm proud as fuck of.
The painting sucks though lol. Couldn't get a good sprayer on loan, and the one I could get was a bitch about not giving an even coat. The blending is not great. Visible from even a dozen feet away. A few drips too. But I ain't worried about that with a car that's damn near twenty years old.
Dunno what the hell I would have done without good neighbors and friends loaning me the gear. No way could I have afforded rental for the air compressor after the supplies cost, parts, and glass. Came out to a few hundred all told, but the estimate was damn near 1.2k
So assuming you saved $900, and you worked 45 to 90 minutes a day for two weeks, then your total work was between 10.5 and 21 hours, which maths out to between $42 and $85 an hour. Plus the convenience of dodging the modern disaster they call smart cars.
Amazing. I'd be content running into a car problem and fixing it for half the savings. Hopefully YouTube will serve me well when the time comes :P
What would you say was the hardest part (effort or instructional accuracy wise)?
Absolutely the hardest part was the shrinking. Most of the damage, I had access to both sides of the panel. Which means you can use a hammer and a block thing called a dolly. But you have to hold the dolly on one side and hammer on the other. Which is awkward as hell. It's slow work, or was for me; I suppose a pro can go faster. And you have to be careful because if you overdo it, you can end up hardening the metal and end up with cracks.
All the videos and tutorials say to practice on some scrap sheet metal, but I didn't have any, so it was trial by fire.
This was back in the summer, but my left shoulder is still being pissy about the positions I was in to reach the dolly to the middle of the roof and still see what I was hitting with the hammer.
Tbh though, it was much simpler than I thought. There's plenty of good tutorials out there,and the concepts aren't complicated at all, it's the skill that's fiddly and detailed.
Probably proper knife skills. I've always been pretty good with a knife, but I've been taking my time to really refine the skill as I do a lot of cooking for large groups so speed is extremely useful. I honestly learnt a lot of it indirectly by just watching how chefs use them, but for the theory and all that I started with Lan Lam's video on knife skills over at the America's Test Kitchen yt channel.
I'm about to be going to an event where I'll be cooking nearly a thousand meals a day for three days, so I'm going to be putting it to the test. The one nice thing is we'll have a team of volunteers to help with ingredient prep, so it should be okay but daunting none the less.
Took a wood shredder apart and back together after something got stuck inside.
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Learning the proper way to squat for my long femurs/short torso body. It makes such a difference in how and where I feel the muscle work. Knees over toes be damned!
It's places like that where "I don't know what I don't know."
- How did you realize you were squatting wrong?
- How did you figure out the right way?
e.g. dumbbell row-like exercises all feel odd and disbalanced to me but idk what idk (is it form? body type? ask a doctor/trainer? check an authoritative blog that isnt SEO-spicy enough for search engines?)
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I learned how to make my own GIFs.
I also learned how to upscale video, but Iβm not very good at it yet.
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I learned how to make a really simple PCB in KiCad a few minutes ago, by watching this video. The thing I wanted actually existed already and I could've bought it from Aliexpress, but I realized I could save about $40 re-drawing my own version and ordering from JLCPCB instead, so that's what I did.
Recently learned how to bend some notes of an harmonica. It's very complex to have the good mouth position, but it comes with practice i guess.
Do you actually bend the harmonica? Or is it just messing with the hole using your tongue?
I don't think bending the instrument is a good idea, i just move my cheeks, tongue and throat in a way that the air flux bend the pins to change the tone. More info here
That makes sense. Thatβs why physically bending my harmonica never worked! I still donβt understand mechanistically how moving your tongue in your mouth changes the vibration of a reed, but Iβll work on that part.
Edit: found it!
To break a tire nut that's really stuck on, hold the tire iron sideways to the left, support the iron with the right hand so it doesn't pull on the nut wrong and damage it, step on the iron's handle and lean on it until it loosens (usually with a loud snap)
If you get a + shaped tire iron, you can simultaneously pull up on one end and step down on the other, increasing your torque and keeping the nut properly engaged.
Probably rudimentary plumbing repair? (More specifically, replacing a bathroom sink faucet.) Via Youtube.
Nice! How long did it take, and did you hit any roadblocks?
Must've saved a lot of money there.
Well, the whole saga is longer. We got a bathroom redone and the sink never worked right. It dripped. I took the faucet apart several times trying to fix the drip, but eventually concluded the faucet itself was just cheap crap and couldn't be repaired.
So I bought a nicer one and replaced the faucet entirely. I was a bit intimidated by the prospect of replacing it ahead of time. Usually the drain and faucet "match". (As in, the finish of them matches and if the finish on the drain is a different style/color/etc than the faucet, it'll stand out.) And so they come as a set. But in this case, the drain that was part of the old/cheap faucet a) worked fine and b) was so similar in color/finish/style that you couldn't tell it didn't come with the new faucet. So I didn't end up having to replace the drain, which made the whole process considerably easier.
Oh, I did need to slightly modify the drain closure plunger to fit the old faucet's drain... lever... thing. Heh...
There was definitely a moment once I'd assembled the whole thing and was turning on the valves under the sink that I was a little worried it'd all explode and soak the whole bathroom. Lol. But everything's been fine for months now!
As for how long it took, probably three sessions of a couple of hours each to finally convince myself the old faucet was too defective to try to salvage. And then another thirty minutes to find a new faucet on Amazon and another three or so hours to replace faucet. And about the only roadblocks were the time I spent trying to fix the old faucet and the time I spent procrastinating before undertaking the actual replacement. Heh.
Coming out the other side of that experience, I do feel like I understand the sentiment better now that "if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." And I think it largely applies even if you don't have any particular amount of expertise. Someone who doesn't have to live with the results may not really care about something like a dripping faucet. If they can check the "replaced the faucet" box, they can say "job's done", charge the customer, and be on their merry way. (And I'm not saying I blame them, really.)
(Of course, that only goes so far. I wouldn't think you ought to DIY things that might be dangerous, for instance.)
I did this one a few months back with a kitchen faucet! Great learning experience. I even learned that German faucets, at least, donβt affix to the counter the same way as American brands.
Crocheting granny squares. My daughter got into crochet and I wanted to knit for a while so I asked her to teach me. After learning the basics I picked up what I need so I can make myself a blanket while commuting to work.
Butterfly stroke. Technique's still terrible but I cam clear, may be, 30 meters in one go. Because if the nerve problems in my leg, I decided to drop jogging and start swimming again.
Reading the Cyrillic alphabet.
It's not anywhere near as hard as it seems and there are so many times you encounter it.
What'd you learn it for (I personally don't see it often so you likely live near a Cyrillic-heavier region) and how? Also
I kept seeing more and more things in Cyrillic especially because of the war in Ukraine, so gradually learned more and more of it online, now I know at least all the letters used in Russian. Now I can read Cyrillic, although only very slowly, basically I do it like an elementary school child.
I live in Austria for context, no neighboring countries with the Cyrillic alphabet.
I'm in the middle of it right now but I've got an old plug in oil heater that I decided to pop open the cover and have a look-see before condemning myself to buying another for probably $100ish.
I am so far from comfortable working on electronics or woodworking or traditional guy stuff, but this radiator is old in the sense of it's built like a brick shit house and hooked up to a simple mechanical switch with 3 wires, one of which is the power cord that finally disintegrated from the heat.
It's so simply built even I can feel confident swapping out for a new mechanical switch and some new wiring.
Last two skills I've successfully learned:
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Giving subcutaneous fluids to my cat. Followed vet instructions and watched several how-to videos online for different tempered cats.
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Making macarons. Followed online recipes, tried some different techniques and troubleshooting through trial and error.
More recently, I have been trying to teach myself HTML whenever I have pockets of free time during the work day. I'm following the mozilla.org Intro to HTML as a guide.
I've been eating a lot of instant ramen lately and finally decided to get a pair of chopsticks and learn how to use them. I was using a fork before. The difference is incredible.
Yeah it just feels super different. Somehow it tastes different too.
It's like drinking water out of a red plastic/solid cup vs. a nice clear glass. Or eating sushi using chopsticks instead of by spoon or fork or something.
I wouldn't eat sushi without em :^)
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Last I learned about some local plants (like the stinging nettle) and which part is edible and most energy dense.
I got olama and WebUI working privately / locally and I'm able to insert documents into it with persistence and query them.
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I recently learned to whistle as well! (in my late 30s). I'm bad at it, but finally can make a recognizable tune.
More recently though I've learned to cut my own hair :)
I joined a climbing gym after learning how to climb, belay and rappel for a week. I love learning knots, so that's fun, but also all the terminology and techniques. Plus there's a whole social aspect to it (climbers tend to be pretty friendly). Turning out to be a healthy and exciting new hobby!
Also @fool I remember learning to whistle as a kid--my dad was slightly annoyed he had shown me how to do it because I wouldn't stop whistling the main themes from Indiana Jones and Star Wars
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I recently learned how to use DAX expressions in Microsoft Power BI and how you can use them in measures so you can do all sorts of changes to datasheets so that when you make dashboards and data visualizations, it all looks super pro without complicated workarounds to make your data present nicely.
My employer didnβt read the description of the training and just signed me and a whole bunch of other people up. It was a certification course meant to train for the final exam but most of my coworkers who were there hadnβt even opened Power BI up before. I was just at the right experience level for this course though, as Iβve used PowerBI at an end user level for a couple years now.
Generating good reports is a surprisingly portable skill across most white-collar jobs.
Executives especially love pretty graphs that give them a good sense of how things are working/performing.
I find it so silly. Compared to Excel, Power BI is so easy. Yet, fancy graphs that move other graphs when you click a specific bar is all any senior manager wants to see. They donβt even understand what the data is. They donβt even care! Pretty bars go brrrrrr in their minds. Whatever. I get paid.
Learned to throw my little cast net! Had it for years, never used it. The trick was watching videos on how to throw small nets. Don't have a fishing license, no idea what I'll do with this skill.
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I've recently learnt how to pronounce Irish slender consonants after basically years of wondering how to do it.
Love whistling. I learned it as a teen and drove my parents mad practicing.
While I am not inept in the kitchen, I only recently figured out how to get the classic French omelette consistently right. It's harder than it looks to get it looking flawless like that with an ultra thin exterior layer and perfectly creamy inside, and not ruining the structure when rolling it on the edge of the pan. I followed the instructions of the legendary chef, Jacques Pepin, in this video, and supplemented by the wonderful videos of chef motokichi (link). They make it look super easy because they are extremely skilled.
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