Quotes Media

Rob Hill: Sideshow attraction
BY JESSE CLAEYS
03/02/06

The details
What: Rob Hill Sideshow
When: 7 p.m., Saturday, March 4.
Where: Lewis Bowl Annex, 3828 Stadium Drive.
Cost: $5 at the door. 18+.

Rob Hill's mom thought it was just a fad.
She though her boy was just going through one of those rebellion phases, turning towards black clothing and ear piercings as a way to vent youthful frustrations.

She was wrong.

"My mom always said I'd get over it," Hill said. "Have I been rebelling for the last 11 years? This isn't rebelling. This is a lifestyle."

Hill, now 26, still wears all black, has amassed 32 piercings and, on occasion, will hammer a five-inch nail into his nasal cavity. He is not quite the little cowpoke his parent's envisioned.

Hill was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to a father who was a member of a theater group called Guns of the Golden West. The performance troupe would raid corporate parties and harass top brass while acting out skits involving gun fights, whippings and rope tricks. At the age of 14, Hill was taken in by the group and taught the art of precision whip cracking.
"I could crack a whip around someone's hand and yank a gun out of it. It was the start of my performing career. The thing was I got older and started going on the offbeaten path," Hill said as he sat at his place of employment, Maya Tattoos, Body Piercing & Branding in downtown Sioux City.

Wearing a black Kangol hat, a black button-up shirt, black shorts and 20-lace black leather boots, Hill said he began to take a liking to body piercing and the metal medallions adorning his body didn't have that cowboy look the Canadian group wanted. He soon parted ways with the Guns of the Golden West.

"But I still wanted to perform," Hill remembered, "and I wanted to pierce. The solution was I started performing piercings."
The Human Pincushion, a stunt where a large number of piercings are placed into the body as an audience watches, was the first trick Hill mastered. For a guy who now has 25 piercings in his face, it probably wasn't much of a challenge.

He soon moved on to sliding nine-inch skewers into his neck, lips and cheeks, lying on a bed of nails, fire breathing, glass eating and all those other feats one normally associates with sideshows and freakshows.
Hill wasn't born a freak, but he sure took the time to become one.

"I don't want to give too much away," Hill said when asked how he learned to do these stunts. "If you hang out with drug dealers, you are going to do drugs. If you hang out criminals, you are going to become a criminal. Eventually I started hanging out with performers, escape artists and those types of people."

Over the last four years Hill has stayed busy performing the one-hour, one-man "Rob Hill Sideshow" at music festivals, corporate events, backyard keg parties and countless bars and clubs. On Saturday he'll perform at the Lewis Bowl Annex and debut a grand finale that is not to be missed. Let's just say it involves two metal hooks, Hill's back, and a Ford F-150 moving across a room with it's engine off.

While all of the sideshow stuff is generally thought of as mindless acts fit for the television show "Jackass," a talk with Hill revealed brains behind the brash deeds. Hill came off as rather intelligent - he knows the history behind sideshows and can, using terms from any human anatomy textbook, explain how a five-inch spike can be safely hammered into anyone's nose or a four-foot sword can be swallowed without causing death.

"Not too many people can do this stuff, or want to, but it is about learning and knowing that the body can do it."
Hill holds a rather philosophical view of what he does on stage. He spoke at length about the mind's ability to control the body and how pain is something that can be controlled and tolerated with training and concentration.

"It's absolutely painful," Hill said. "Pain is an ongoing battle, but you can teach the mind to control the body and then not have the body react to the mind."

Regardless of the thought behind the show, at the heart of the performance is the shock value, the no one wants to see a car wreck, but everyone stops to look deal.

"The reason for the show is to show people things they have never seen. People go to be shocked, to see something different. Everyone enjoys seeing something they don't understand or can't explain.

"I've had people come up to me after my show and tell me they were so appalled by everything I did. They were so negative towards me. Then I asked them 'Why did you watch?'"

The stunts
Rob Hill knows the secrets of performing a variety of side/freakshow feats. Here is a list of some of the stunts you can expect to see at Hill's March 4 performance:
Animal Traps: Hill sticks his hand into a fox trap and his tongue into a mousetrap.
Bed of Nails: A cinderblock is placed on Hill's chest as he lies on a bed of nails and an assistant uses a sledgehammer to break the block. He will also lay on his stomach and have four audience members stand on his back.
Fire Breathing: Hill spits fire balls from his mouth in four different styles up to 20 feet high.
Fire Eating/Manipulation: Transferring and extinguishing fire with Hill's hands, arms, lips and tongue.
Glass Walking: Hill stands, walks and jumps on broken glass.
Glass Eating: Hill chews and swallows glass shards.
Human Blockhead: Using a hammer, a five-inch nail is driven into Hill's nasal cavity.
Propane Torch: A torch burning at over 1,500 degrees is extinguished on Hill's tongue.
Needles: Hill pierces various parts of his body, including his face, with needles.
Skewers: Hill's specialty, he drives nine-inch skewers into his lips, cheeks and neck.

Rob Hill: Sideshow attraction