Personally, I would have saved the Bizarre Yogi Internal Floss for my encore.

Zamora the Torture King chose to open the show with it.

Hellzapoppin: A Sideshow Revue - also known as the Greatest Show in Hell - played the Scout Bar in Houston last week. Zamora the Torture King promised to start the show with something "that's like a punch in the audience's face - that leaves them gasping and covering their mouths with their hands."

So he showed the audience a long, thin piece of cloth. He swallowed one end, leaving a few inches sticking out of his mouth. Then he took a scalpel and made a small incision in his skin near the top of his stomach. He fiddled around in the hole with a tweezer and pulled out the other end of the cloth.

He started pulling on both ends of the cloth.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why they call this stunt the "Bizarre Yogi Internal Floss."

Naturally the audience was freaked out.

But, hey, it could have been a lot freakier.

Back in the old India, they used to do this stunt a little differently. The performer swallowed one end of the cloth, waited a couple of days for nature to do its thing, then pulled the other end out of a different body part.

That's not entertainment.

Zamora also lay on a bed of nails and let four beefy guys from the audience jump on his stomach.

He licked a red-hot iron poker.

He stuck a long, sharp needle - about the size of a bicycle spoke - completely through his arm. Then he wiggled it, which I thought was unnecessary.

Zamora is the best in the world at what he does. Granted, there isn't a long line of job applicants waiting to lick a red-hot poker.

I practically start crying when I sip chicken noodle soup that's too hot.

Hellzapoppin drew about 150 people to the Scout Bar. Master of Ceremonies Bryce "The Govna" Graves was disappointed in the turnout, but he's old-school … "the show must go on." The audience was treated to Frank Simon's balancing act, which was straight out of a family circus. He started with a toothpick on his nose and ended with a motor scooter and audience member on his chin.

Maryanne Magdalene, a Swedish femme fatale, walked up a ladder that had razor-sharp machetes as steps.

Graves ate broken glass. He also can pound a long nail straight up his nostril.

The show even had an animal act - Mr. Buggles the Wonder Dog.

Testing body's limits

Nobody could top Zamora, however. How do you upstage somebody who just hammered a nail under his tongue and out his throat?

I talked with Zamora before the show. Good thing, too, because after licking a red-hot poker, he might sound like "mmphlffgg flurgghh aarghh!"

Zamora's real name is Tim Cridland, and he's been performing feats of anatomical wonder for more than 20 years. He started testing his body's limits with his friends … just for laughs.

"I was doing some sword swallowing, and I had a friend who hung weighted objects from his body piercings. We decided to put together an act. We were able to hook on with Lollapalooza, which was just starting up in the early '90s," Zamora said.

While Zamora the Torture King sounds like an exotic name, Zamora is merely the name of a Northern California town near where he lived.

"I just liked the way it sounds," he said.

Zamora has performed with Ozzfest, Vans Warped Tour, KORN's Family Values and other traveling rock festivals. He's been the main attraction at Knott's Berry Farm's Halloween show. He is the only sideshow performer to headline a Las Vegas casino.

'More about science'

He doesn't have any problem with the term "freak show." It's just not an accurate description of what he does.

"A freak would be a human oddity. There is nothing aesthetically unusual about me. I manage to use martial arts, self-hypnosis and Middle Eastern philosophy to bury pain. I feel pain; I just don't accept it. UCLA did a brain scan on me while pain was being introduced, and it showed that I am able to shut off the part of my brain that recognizes pain. I'm more about science and anatomy than magic, or what you'd call a freak show," he said.

Emcee Graves said he discovered Maryanne Magdelene singing with a rock band in Sweden a few years ago. He was impressed by her stage presence, so he taught her a few sideshow stunts like fire-eating and sword-swallowing and brought her to America.

"She is the hardest-working woman in sideshows and the fastest learner," Graves said.

Although she can swallow three swords at once, the "Dame of Danger" gobbled only one Friday night.

"I can get anything down, as long as it fits," she said.

I asked if she could swallow a whole Hebrew National salami. She said probably not, but promised to work on it.

The biggest thing she's ever swallowed, so far, is hedge clippers.
