To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People August 23, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/08/23/reitmon Going gets strange, strange get going Hottest sideshow on earth packing it in; one Fat Lady eulogized eggsactly the way she would have liked; is that a gun in your paw or the new NRA-sponsored Milkbone? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter So it's come to this. Jim Rose, world-renowned purveyor of all things freaky whose "Secrets of the Strange" sideshow (Organ origami? Bring the kiddies!) is currently the hottest thing going at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, is fixing to pack up his creepy circus tent and go home. "It's been a great run," the ringleader of the repulsive told Reuters last week, "but I think I've reached the end of the line." Could it be that the real world just got so overtly weird, the super-strange sideshow-man just couldn't compete? After all, what can Rose's fascinating freaks past and present -- the Amazing Mr. Lifto (who hangs weights from various body piercings and whose member, billed as the "world's strongest penis," is known to stretch longer than two feet to touch the floor); the strip-light-swallowing Regurgitator; the Human Pincushion (no eye should be put through this kind of torture); and the Hungarian worm-eating, upside-down blood-drinking, midget motorcyclist and his lovely wife Bebe, whose private parts breathe fire -- offer that we haven't already seen on the evening news? But Rose, who rose from the West Coast underground by doing unspeakable things with razor wire, light bulbs and broken glass, says he got the courage to walk away at the top of his game from none other than just-retired tennis pro Steffi Graff. "Steffi had just quit the day before [she came to see his show in Edinburgh], and I mentioned I had been thinking about it," Rose related. "She told me to give it a lot of thought, and I have." Anyone out there have an opening for a razor-eating, fire-belching, multiply pierced human blockhead? - - - - - - - - - - - - A woman of ample proportions and simple tastes "Her favorite meal was boiled eggs." -- Critic A.N. Wilson, eulogizing "Two Fat Ladies" cooking show co-host Jennifer Paterson at her funeral last Thursday. - - - - - - - - - - - - What's up, doc? It's official (although not very convincing): That wascally wabbit is not a misogynist pig. (Porky, on the other hand ...) The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council has ruled against a woman claiming that an animated episode of "Bugs Bunny and Tweety" -- in which Bugs turns an evil witch into a beautiful female bunny and blurts, "But aren't they all witches inside?" -- is "offensive not only to women, but it gives a wrong idea of women to impressionable children -- women are evil inside" and demanding an apology. Bugs' blast, said the council, was a mere throwaway line and not at all negative or degrading. Perhaps the carrot-chomping fellow should put the whole mess to rest by borrowing a line from the unrepentantly witchy Jessica Rabbit: "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way." - - - - - - - - - - - - The grass is always greener ... "This time I get to be Thelma instead of Louise." -- Susan Sarandon on playing the more impetuous part of a pair in the upcoming coupla-gals-take-to-the-highway flick "Anywhere But Here." - - - - - - - - - - - - Drop the weapon, dogface! The heck with those dog-bites-man and man-bites-dog stories. A dog-shoots-man news story has just barked its way out of Germany and into the (very reliable) British tabloids. When forester Ulrich Meissner stumbled across Bodo, a 6-year-old hunting hound, whimpering over his dead master Helmut Olpp's body last week, he knew a certain four-legged creature -- who instantly tried to sit on the weapon -- had done the dirty deed. "The dog was shaking, nervous. If an animal can be said to look guilty, then it was this dog," he told the press. What's more, while Olpp's fingerprints were the only ones found on the gun, which was fired from 15 feet away, too great a distance for police investigators to rule the death a suicide, other evidence pointed unmistakably to the woebegone whelp. "The dog did it. I don't think there can be any doubt," said a police spokesman. "There was a smudge on the trigger which matched moisture from his nose." Still, it looks like the itchy-trigger-snouted pooch will escape punishment for his currish crime against the man. Olpp's widow, Regine, considers Bodo's transgression "just a tragic accident," for which his obvious grief is payment enough. "The dog knows he will have to live with this, just like we will have to," she said. Geez, what does a pistol-packin' pup have to do to get a couple of nights in the doghouse around there? salon.com | August 23, 1999