Donny Vomit

As a contracted performer at The Coney Island Sideshow, Donny Vomit's job is to come up with new ways to gross you out.  He also juggles.


Chief: State your name and occupation.

Donny Vomit: Well my name is Donny Vomit and I am an Inside Talker, Sideshow Performer, a Carnie, if you will.

And what does that entail exactly? What are the day-to-day duties?

The sideshow business is very seasonal; I work from April to September at the Coney Island Sideshow. Working as an inside talker I host the sideshow, my job is to be the first person that the audience in is contact with. It’s my job to introduce them to all the other acts, as well as perform a few of my own. I spend the day running on and off the stage trying to make sure that everything runs smooth and everyone in the audience leaves a little freaked out.

That’s awesome. Is that a full-time gig?

Right now in the winter work is more scarce, I work more private gigs, host burlesque shows, and develop new acts.

How did you score that gig?

Working in Coney? I moved from Oklahoma to NYC on April Fools Day 2006, I came out to make it in the big city as a sideshow performer, I went down to the Coney stage and decided that I would give myself four years to make it onto that stage. Then trough a stoke of luck I ran into the former host of the show at a bar and talked his ear off about sideshow and performing, Lucky for me he was leaving the show and the needed a replacement, I went down to the Sideshow on a rainy day and met with Dick Zigun the owner of the show, I stood up on the stage with a small bag of tricks and went trough my routines, with shaky hands I shoved ice picks into my nose and slammed my hand into raccoon traps, he didn't seem too impressed but he asked me back...

So I start working as the host, I don’t even think I got paid for the first two weeks, it was still my audition period. Every day was "Good work today, you can come back tomorrow" It was like that for months until finally I got a contract and became a professional freak.

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Wow, it’s by contract? How long is your contract?

My contract runs the summer season, its funny having something that says that I am required to juggle chainsaws and hammer nails in my nose eight times a day.

What other kinds of things do you do to freak out the crowd? I'm still blown away that you juggle chainsaws. I remember hearing about that and losing it.

To be honest it is only one chainsaw, I am trying to work my way up to more if I can keep the one I have running. I have a huge range of stunts. I am most well known for my Human Blockhead, that would be hammering a nail into my nose, which I also do with a switchblade knife and a running drill, Animal Traps where I stick my hand and tongue into a raccoon trap, Straitjacket escapes I do once in a while, Electric Mayhem is one of my favorite new stunts, I stick electrical wires up my nose and out my mouth and attach them to a battery and light bulb then lift it all up with my nose, I still have my old Bed of Nails that’s a good stand by, I jump in Broken glass, hold on there is more....

I'm holding on, you take your time. This is totally insane and I’m not going anywhere.

I am getting into Sword Swallowing right now but can't do it without making horrid gagging noises, which isn't bad since my name is Donny Vomit. I just made a new set of Fire Eating torches and polishing that up. My favorite new stunt is with Eye Hooks, two hooks that you place into your bottom eyelid and lift things with. Oh and just the other day I learned how to catch a ping-pong ball in my mouth.

Sometimes it’s about the little things. I’ve seen the ping pong shows in Bangkok, is it anything like that?

Not yet, it’s a family show.

That’s right, I forgot, potential suicide show, fine, fine, a little pussy power and everyone freaks out. Fair is fair.

I only do a handful of these stunts on the Coney Island stage, I have to wait for the winter to do more crazy or new stunts.

Which leads me to the next question, what do you do with your time off from the sideshow? How do you spend the winter months?

Right now I am working on a side project, a side-sideshow if you will; it’s called the Scallywag Sideshow. Heather Holliday, from Coney, and I decided to put together a show where we can explore different ways of presenting sideshow stunts. Heather is the world's youngest female sword swallower and glass eater, we also have Siren the Mermaid, a steamy strumpet who is tattooed, well, like a mermaid. She is doing escape acts and the Bed of Nails, and this is all done with a great backing band, The Roustabout Band playing accordion, upright base, ukulele. Our acts are all stories; I do a medicine show pitch with the Blockhead, selling my cure for the common cold. Heather swallows swords to a children’s story about a girl who loves to eat silverware instead of treats. Its a great way to present old acts in a new way...

That sounds amazing.

The rest of winter is for also working on solo projects, friends have suggested that I start street performing with them, bringing chaos to the masses.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Where is the Scallywag Sideshow being put on?

Right now we are performing at bars and clubs in the NYC area; we want to build a show that we can take on the road. The Coney Island Sideshow is the world’s last stationary ten-in-one sideshow, which is great to work at, there is no better place to spend a summer freaking people out, but I have always had the itch to travel with a show.

There ain't nothing like the road. Any road. Does it pay the bills, this thing you love?

As the late great Melvin Burkheart use to say, "It's a hard way to make an easy living." I doubt that I will ever make a million dollars, but I get by.

The million dollars doesn’t matter if you wake up in the morning and don’t want to eat your service revolver. It’s those poor office-type bastards that will never see a million either, but work in constant misery I weep for. It’s fine livin, getting by.

I worked in the office mines, flipped pizzas, ushered at theaters when I was in college, and I never want to go back. I love performing for crowds and getting on stage, I am most comfortable in front of a mob of people. When people first meet me most of them don’t believe what I do for a living, the always say that I look like such a normal nice guy, but that’s how I get them. Once people relate you can get away with murder.

Oh, murder... so backing up a bit, what kind of shit were you into growing up?

Well let's go all the way back, when I was a kid my parents gave me an 8-track player but the only 8-tracks I had were Steve Martin and Robin Williams, so as a child I decided I wanted to be a comedian, I wanted to be Steve Martin. I was a pretty normal child, I liked to gross out my sisters, wanted to be a ninja and played with my He-Men like any other kid, nothing really stood out to say that I would end up driving nails into my head for a living. Watched a whole lot of musicals growing up Victor Victoria and Cabaret went over my head, but I loved them as a kid. I guess that’s where I get a lot of my theatrics. I learned how to juggle at an early age.

In high school I looked just like one of those Columbine kids, trench coat, hair down to my ass and a top hat to round it all off. All my friends were starting bands, but I couldn't sing or play an instrument so I needed to get on stage somehow so I stared eating light bulbs.

Nice. Tell me a little bit about your co-workers. And anything else you'd like to share.

Let's see, I have been privileged to work with some great sideshow acts, At Coney I work with Insectavora, she is hands down the greatest fire eater that I have ever met, she’s really hot! Get it HOT! Heather is cute as a button; any girl that looks like her and can swallow swords is going to go far in this business. I have had the chance to work with Todd Robbins, a seasoned vet in the sideshow world who has shown me how far you can take sideshow performing, But the performer that has influenced me the most would have to be Roc Roc It, You met him at the suspension party right?

Yep, he's amazing. A really great guy and surprisingly nice too.

Well, Roc is a street performer from Germany who worked with us at Coney last year. He is a great guy to bounce ideas off of. Him and I have an ongoing battle, the Straitjacket Wrestling match. We come on stage in Luchedor masks, Rocito vs. Vomito, we battle until one of us is free and pins the other, no choreography, no pulled punches, we just go at it.

The first time we performed it was at a tattoo convention in Philly, the act before us was using dry ice so the stage was covered in little burning pieces of ice. I body slammed Roc and broke one of his ribs. I won that match. We had a re-mach at a burlesque show where he let me have it and he retaliated, slamming me on my head. So now Roc is the new champ, but there is another rematch in the works.

I want to be at the rematch. You tell me when and I’ll be there

Well, if you are in the city on the 22nd of November, Roc is putting on a Knuckle Up Cabaret, and there may just be a match.

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What do you think of Jim Rose? Is he still around? I remember he got really big a while ago then I never heard anything about him again.

Jim Rose brought sideshow into the mainstream in the early 90's, for many people he was the first exposure to the sideshow stunts. I like a lot of new performers started off because of Jim's influence. He launched the careers of many well know sideshow performers such as The Enigma, The Lizard Man and the Torture King. I have never met the man myself and never been to one of his shows, but I recognize what he has done for the business. I hear he lives in Vegas now and is playing poker professionally.

That’s a nice life. As a final question; tell me a quick story about a time that you thought you were going to be killed or a time that you pulled of some shit you'd love at least one more person to know about.

I was working in a bar back in Oklahoma called The Deli, I had a full show put together complete with scantily clad ladies known as the Vomets. I had a large steamer trunk in front of the stage from which I was doing a chain escape. I was also doing a straitjacket escape. So during the show I proclaim that I am going to attempt to beat Houdini’s record time from escaping from a jacket, not only that but I would do it upside down, so I had a monster of a man strap me in and then was suspended high above the stage, I start writhing and struggling when I feel that I am falling, then I black out. From the audience point of view I am in the air one second then I fall, I disappear from view between the steamer trunk and stage, I don't get up, I am not moving. Recently, a fellow escape artist broke his neck from stage diving in a straitjacket and people thought that I might have suffered a similar fate.

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Si the Vomet ran over as I came to, I could still move but my back was killing me. I was lucky enough that when I was falling, my body was curled, my back scraped along the edge of the stage as I was falling, which helped break my fall instead of taking all of it on my head, I stood up from behind the trunk and then announced to the audience that I was going to continue to attempt to break Houdini’s time, but not only that, I would attempt to beat his time with a concussion!

Well I escaped, but afterwards I had a giant bruise across my entire back that looked like bloody hamburger. If I landed square on my head I could have killed or paralyzed myself. That was my sideshow brush with death.

Photos

Joseph Rossetti, Ed Zipco

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