Hair-raising Heritage

By Rupert Bottenberg

Out-of-towners get ripped off all the time - serves them right for dressing badly, tipping poorly and talking to damn loud. Still, you gotta feel for Scott McClelland, proprietor, manager, producer and ringmaster of of the Carnival Diablo traveling circus sideshow - one of only three in the world today, and only one in Canada.

The thieves who broke into Carnival's creepy tour truck left the $3k video camera, but took a cheap plastic skull and a $50 carved wood head bone from Indonesia. Unfortunately, they also nabbed 3 shrunken heads.

"We're saddened by this," laments McClelland, "because these shrunken heads have value, not monetarily, but to my family. You see, my grandfather was the first and only sideshow owner in Canada, until I came along. His show was called Professor N.P. Lewchuk's Travelling Vaudeville show.. That's a mouthful."

THE BRAIN FROM THE UKRAINE

Lewchuk was one of the first Ukrainians to immigrate to Canada at the turn of the century, but elected to dodge a life sentence behind a plough and go into entertainment. At the time, that meant Vaudeville, and it's sinister sister, the sideshow. Lack of a solid formal education failed to hinder Lewchuk's rapid accumulation of Phd's from the school of life, graduating upon his passing in 1989, as a certified renaissance man of the fast-buck set. ... ..."He was a botanist, selling salves for eczema and tea's for bronchitis. He was like a medicine man, selling different nostrums to people who could not get to pharmacies." Mr. Lewchuk was also a clever chemist who in fact invented Kool-aid crystals, but failed to patent them and gave a free sample to the wrong people. There is an obvious irony to veteran carny huckster getting rooked by a couple of American scientists posing as a farmer and his wife. General Mills, You Suck.

ELEPHANT MAN AND MONKEY BOY

McClelland credits his grandfather with the time honoured " taught me everything I know." At the age of 11, Scotty accepted Lewchucks Challenge to pull off the oldest trick in the book - the Ancient Wonder of the Cups and Balls. He did, and that was the proverbial point of no return. At age 12, the boy had a solo magic show - Professor Crookshank's Travelling Medicine Show - touring across Canada, and has yet to clock in hour one at anything resembling a normal job. By 1991, though, McClelland, then 26, was tiring of his 15 year stage career. He decided to re-evaluate his life taking a four month trip to LaLa Land - LA. While he was there, he encountered possably the worlds highest-profile freak. "I met Michael Jackson. This was a turning point in my life, I was at a crux. What was I going to do? How was I going to take it to the next level? Michael Jackson reminded me that he was looking for the Elephant Man's skeleton. I went Fuck. I have the Elephant Man I have the only exhibit of the Elephant Man in the world. They have the bones at the British Museum - I've got the body. I've got the complete outer casing of john Merrick, made medically from his sizings. A complete reproduction with glass eyes and real hair. ' 'I thought, maybe I should look into the other side of my grandpas life. I did vaudeville for 15 years, maybe I should delve into my darker side - into sideshow."

PICK A PECK OF PICKLED PUNKS

"I returned to Calgary and on April Fools day 1992, I opened up to the world Carnival Diablo as a tourist attraction walk through museum." The dark side had taken over, as can be witnessed during the carnivals two week stay at La Maison Hantee' spook show resto on Bleury. Evil sells, kids - the superstitious town folk who claimed to see imps dancing around grandpa Lewchuks feet as he performed had become the Christians picketing the museums opening, providing McClelland with truck loads of free publicity. On display were 120 morbid family heirlooms. He falls into carnival barker mode as he speals me on " Some of the most astounding artefacts in Human History."

Dig this check list: " we've got, from the British Museum a mummy's head carbon dated at 1400 BC, the Original Feejee Mermaid, from the PT Barnum Museum. A hand of Glory from the 16th century. We also have a Jenny Hanivor Sea Fairy, And a pig with one head, two snouts and three eyes, a two headed calf, a two headed baby..."

With a Venue in Place and the stage skills -to -pay -the -bills, McClelland came back round to showbiz " Every night at midnight, I would do a show based on the power of the mind over the body. It was very metaphysical, very Cerebral, for the beatnik artsy fartsy crowd.

"Suddenly people were coming in bigger and bigger groups so I decided to expand. Now, my Grandfather had taught me to do physical feats, so I started to train people. I knew, through auditioning dozens and dozens of people, that certain people had it in them to be what they are today."

THEY'RE FREAKS - AND SO ARE YOU

The only sideshow trainer in Canada, McClelland has schooled 32 lunatics in his day. Among them are several who will be joining him for his run here in town, including Stevan Hart, The Scandinavian Giant, seven foot three with a size 22 shoe, there is also the troops female member Newt, who dines on glass and bugs before your eyes.

He didn't, however, train sword swallower Istvan Betyar. " He swallows Swords and puts a blowtorch out on his face. He taught those things to himself. Our other member is not so much performer as he is an integral part of being in Montreal, and that's Pierre. He is our Midget. He's like three foot nothing, a miniature man - and he is our translator."

Truth be told, McClelland has a far larger crew of weirdo's to work with. Drop your dosh at the door, and you are one of them. " seventy percent of the show is interactive. The first half is based on the powers of the mind and I will be focusing on the audience a s a whole. I am one of the first performers in history to actually put an entire audience under mass hypnosis. I will be doing that every night."

" Also, we're going to attempt to move an object with the power of the mind, using the audience as a collective. I can do this with over a 100 people." Sounds impressive though I would like to see McClelland try to move my cats with anything but the sound of an electric can opener.

Excuse me I digress. On With the Show. " We then have a 15 minute break, so you can decide weather you want to sit threw the carnage that's about to begin. You take a deep breath, and the sad thing is, you won't have a chance to exhale.

BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT

There has got to be some kind of sub rosa fuckery involved here, sneaky trick and slight of hand. The question, though, is this: do we really want to know? Do we really want to deprive ourselves of brief moments of suspended disbelief?

Think of all the great magic tricks forever ruined by that nasty little stool pigeon, the Masked Magician, who finked out some of stage magic's most cherished mysteries. There's a character who gets who gets McClelland's three -assed pickled goat.

"He said his reason for doing what he did was that he wanted magic to further itself, and stop using archaic old ideas. In doing so, he has taken most of the major illusionary ideas, and exposed them, meaning that any other illusions that would have been done in the future can't be done - because he has exposed the principles. I think it's a sad commentary on this information age. I don't think we need that much information."

Information all too often replaces imagination, and that's screwing with McClelland's stock in trade. " People are going out for these sensory like Phantom Menace, and the walk out going, 'That wasn't what I expected.' What the hell were they expecting, it's a 75 trillion dollar movie, and it is not good enough. Because of expectations are way out there. We've been seeing special effects how to shows and so on, so they are asking for things that are almost impossible.

"We're giving the audience a real, visceral look at life, this is not a trick. This is not a Magic Show. You are really seeing people eat glass, eat bugs, take darts in the back - you are seeing the real thing at the very moment you are sitting there. You are not separated, you're actually becoming part of a real, emotional event. And you walk away changed because of it."