Las Vegas Sun

May 19, 2024

Crazy s#!t I saw with my own two eyes at McBride’s Wonderground

That’s a local event that you can also attend

Wonderground

Rick Lax

Buster Balloon, prior to his entrance into the Acme Jumbo Whoopee Cushion

Author’s note: when I attended Wonderground, modern-day shaman Jeff McBride’s monthly gathering of performance artists, I wasn’t on LSD. I wasn’t on acid or ’shrooms or any other hallucinogenic. Hell, I wasn’t even drunk. Yes, Magic magazine Editor-in-Chief Stan Allen got me a martini with one of his drink tickets ... but that was it. Just one martini.

Reader takeaway: This stuff actually happened:

• Buster Balloon crawled into a 7-foot-tall “Acme Jumbo Whoopee Cushion” and danced a jig.

• Magician Jimmy Fingers decapitated himself with a machete and stuck his bloody head onto the tip of his shoe.

• Artist Suzanne Lugano (who told me she met McBride at a drum circle in ’98) painted a nude model … three feet away from visibly uncomfortable International Brotherhood of Magicians treasurer Joey King.

• Contortionist Lady Labella, wearing a nude-colored bodysuit, wrapped her legs over her shoulders and under her armpits, spinning soft pink nets with both hands all the while.

The next Wonderground event will be June 17 at The Olive, 3850 E. Sunset Road. Doors open at 8 p.m. Come see the crazy s#!it with your own two eyes.

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