Name: A Carny Tells Theo About the Freak Shows
Uploaded: 2024-04-19T17:33:32.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Carny Tells Theo About the Freak Shows' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Carny Tells Theo About the Freak Shows' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-19. Transcript available.

why is your family so tied in just for doing it for so long right honestly and
um you know even
before my father you know i had i had um my grandfather around the same time i
guess well
yeah he was i had a great uncle or was he he was my father's great uncle i
believe
or cousin and he was already big in the in the circus business he was one of
the biggest freaks
in the world he was our most famous three-legged man frank lentini frank lentini
yep there he is
oh wow yeah he had three legs four feet two dicks 16 toes oh wow oh yeah two wieners
on him yep
oh my gosh two peepees dude i couldn't even you could serve dude you could
serve yeah it's almost
like you're like a damn soda fountain at that point you know leg dick leg dick
leg leg oh you could have
you're running in fanta you know wild and they both worked really yeah oh my
gosh and how did
y'all know that was it did they write it down somewhere yeah well because he
was so everybody
wanted to know you know so like when he was traveling the freak shows and he
was really well-spoken they
called him like the mayor of the freaks because he would go and speak for
everybody like when he'd be
like you know we want more money or we want better working conditions or
whatever he would be the guy
that would go talk to everybody because he worked for ring lane uh barnum and
bailey he worked for
all the all the big freak shows and circuses wow frank lentini was born in sicily
in 1881 he was the
fifth of 12 children yeah and they didn't his parents didn't really like him
that much gave him to his
aunt yeah they were kind of ashamed of him because he had three legs yeah just
different lengths now
that yeah that is a that's a lot to you know because then you're like um throw
at your hip like that's
gonna be crazy yeah it's gotta be tough on your joints a fourth foot that stuck
out of one of his
knees 16 fingers and an extra set of genitals wow running on that spare jenny
dude huh keep the lights
on bro uh his condition was the result of a parasitic twin yeah that was
attached to his body at the base of
his spine wow that was too they couldn't take it off because especially back
then i'm sure that but
they definitely it was too dangerous to try to remove he would go on to work
with every major circus
including barnum and bailey in his act he would kick a soccer ball ride a bike
and skate yeah
he'd kick it out of his third leg like hold the ball over a football and kick
it with his leg yeah
oh bro that's got to be so incredible huh yeah imagine running and you just
kick somebody with your
third leg while you're running dude imagine you could play footsie with buck
with two women under
the table i still have an extra leg in different directions yeah and one let
and one extra foot
to tap to the music you're listening to dude what a time brother his career spanned
more than 40 years
and he came to be known as the king in the circus energy for his hard work and
presence
he married and had four children wow yeah all the children came off fine he got
a lung failure damn
you think he got it he got one of his legs caught in something you know what i'm
saying just the odds
because every now and then i almost get one of my legs caught in something wow
look at that zoom
in on one of these photos please i love the one on the right where he's got
like the one in the and
he's got each other foot on a stool it's such a trip yeah it almost looks like
uh no let's go to the
other one that he was talking about yeah is that what you mean the black and
the leather yeah wow look at
those pants those pants have to be like what the are we doing he said he would
buy two sets of shoes
and he would give his uh fourth shoe the extra shoe to a buddy that lost a leg
oh so they all went to
use oh that's beautiful man yeah you just don't see that kind of stuff anymore
that's the toughest
part about stuff um wow unbelievable look at that dude there he is there's an
old man down there
yeah can we get one more picture of him frank lentini oh how wow i wonder what
would it be like
imagine you this had to be such a flex so you cross your leg and then you cross
the other one over
bro you must people must have thought you were jordan peterson no matter what
right that had to be so wild unbelievable what else use the picture of him on
the uh
back of an allison chains album was there yeah they have a three-legged dog on
the front
and he's the three-legged man on the back i think i remember that yeah it's
actually the best album
down in a hole is that them yeah i'd like to fly but my wings have is all
denied you know it
dude that's so incredible so this is a relative of yours yeah yeah he was um he
was my dad's either
great uncle or cousin i can't remember i i tried to like really narrow it down
but it's you know so
long ago and um my dad's not with us so i can't ask him anymore i'm sorry to
hear that man that's
all right um 23 and me though they might not even have these kind of yeah my my
brother actually started
doing that so i'm back to see with the 23 and me and like yeah he's got the
ancestry going on so he's
trying to like put it all together yeah yeah so i tried to find out some more
information about
him through that i know he had four kids um they all came out normal no parasitic
twins there wow so
yeah being a parasitic twin can you bring that up for me first of all i've
always thought twins should
have to fight to see who wins who gets to make the shots call the shots to stay
alive yeah you know
that's got to be tough and i'm not saying that nobody deserves to be alive but
it's just like
because it's kind of crazy when you meet one guy and then you meet and you know
they're kind of just
each half of a guy or whatever and you're like what are we doing here like at
least you two get
together and decide what you want to say and then come tell us you know exactly
because it's a lot of
extra kind of like back and forth you know a parasitic twin is a type of conjoined
twin where one fetus
stops developing but remains attached to its twin wow the other twin continues
to develop but is usually
born with the limbs organs or other tissue structures from its parasitic twin
still attached it's a very rare condition
gosh dude imagine two to see what is that sorry oh no that's another child oh
that's how it is uh
she looks like tila tequila a little bit i can see that you don't talk about
yeah
um doja cat i don't know that kid has longer hair than doja cat i think so
people like frank lentini
what was that gr that group was called what is it freaks freaks okay they were
the freak show the freak
shows and that was popular did you ever work with that um so occasionally the
carnivals would have freak
shows join up with us um but they were all you know corner store freaks they
weren't really great
like we had the we had the uh the rip off of the lobster man and i actually
think he was a relative of
the original lobster man but he had fake gloves that he would put on to make
himself have fake lobster
hands oh really oh yeah that's not real no we had a lot of that yeah yeah so it
was a lot of yeah
because they had like the freaks were like the bearded lady i remember you
would hear about
um what like the four-titted sister or whatever you they'd always have
something you know the lispy
jew yeah they always have something rolling the lizard man or something yeah
lizard man a real life
mermaid was the one they'd have a girl in a tank with like a fake suit on
acting like she was a
real mermaid yeah oh yeah the four-shouldered italian they'd have that guy yeah
um oh the smallest
horse i met the world's smallest horse one time we used to have that too yeah
tom thumb is the
one that i met i don't know the name of the one i had we had but yeah he was at
the fairs with the
agriculture he'd be there pay 50 cents and get to walk up and walk around and
see him go in yeah
they had the dollar they had i remember they had one dude at the fair in our
town it was like
if you gave him a dollar he would tell you if you were fat or not right yeah
like guess your age or
your weight or like stuff like that but this dude i remember you give him a
dollar and he just call
you fat oh really and then you just yeah he was like the fat dollar guy or
whatever that's like
yeah just walk off you're like jesus christ dude i think he was just out there
hustling people yeah
he might not even have worked with the with the carnival dude honestly that's a
new one that guy
could have been working different here's a couple of them right here general
tom thumb uh charles
sherwood stratton was actually a relative of pt barnum when barnum learned of
stratton's dwarfism
he sensed opportunity barnum took stratton under his wing and taught him how to
sing dance and
impersonate famous historical figures wow oh that was the lobster boy oh here's
lobster boy right
here as shocking as his appearance is grady styles real life story is even more
shocking styles condition
was known as ectrodactyl extradoc doc tilly i think you got it extradactyly
which causes hands and
feet to fuse in the claws yeah the condition ran in styles family in fact he
was the sixth
generation in his family to have it his father was already performing in the
circus when grady was
born so he entered circus life early as the lobster boy wow oh that was his kid
yeah pinching ass and
taking names that guy wow look at him and there's a picture right there of
bearded lady and lobster boy
they fell in love oh that's that's romantic a valentine's day love story huh
wow i wonder what
their kids would come out like huh yeah wow lobsters yeah it'd be interesting i
mean it would probably be
something yeah you'd see it like one of those fancy omakase places or whatever
you know i don't think
benihana would be running that probably not you know get you a cut of freaking
hair lobster you know it
might be who else did they have let me see a few more of them these were all
the freaks right yeah lionel the
lion-faced man born steven bybrowski in 1891 poland lionel the lion-faced man
endured a medical condition
known as hyper trichosis which is commonly associated with werewolf syndrome
for obvious reasons
in an odd twist of fate his mother was convinced the condition was caused by
her witnessing his father
being mauled by a lion when she was pregnant still that was a coincidence
albeit a crazy coincidence
wow i haven't heard of him unable to handle his appearance any longer she put
him up for adoption
when he was four years old oh he was adopted by a german entertainer who put
him onto the circus
circuit see and he made a life for himself we still we need freak shows it's
true huh that way
these freaks can make a living yeah they don't have and and they had i remember
what was that thing they
had a dime i want to think because they almost had one in the a dime museum can
you look that up
i thought you were talking about somebody that pays a dime dime museum and
freak shows from the
popular coney island amusement park in new york city to traveling circuses and
sideshows exhibits that
featured people with physical differences with some sort of the most prevalent
attractions in the 19th
and early 20th centuries wow dime museums often featured humans who were
considered different
for the public to view and experience yeah because i think they had some places
where you could pay a
dime i guess was the name i'm assuming from 1840 until 1940 freak shows were at
their height historians
typically marked 1840 as the beginning of the freak show era the museum
contained many exhibits of
historic artifacts and gaffes oh that was the year pt barnum began the american
museum a new york city
attraction that cost a dime to enter there it is the museum also housed many
people who are considered
to be rarities worthy of exhibition wow so you'd have other people included tom
tom tom there he is
a person with dwarfism the aztec twins albinos um and many other living curiosities
wow
dude that's almost like a deke fraternity somewhere you know it really is i
mean it's yeah it's different
but it's probably similar so you so did you ever cross you cross paths with
some of these guys but
it wasn't like yeah not like like i said though the the lobster man a boy that
was with us i had heard
i didn't really talk that he was a relative of the actual lobster man but he
had fake claws that he would
put on and uh we actually had one of the last living munchkin though that was
out there touring with us
at the freak show as one of the dwarfs and he was uh he was one of the original
munchkins
smoking bongs with him he'd have to stand up on the on a picnic table in order
to like hit the
bong would he yeah oh that's beautiful yeah he was like 70 years old hitting
the bong with us
70. yeah wow i think he was that old i was i was young but i'm pretty sure he
was up there and
he was a little little guy yeah he was in a munchkin from the original uh movie
wow wizard of
oz he was in wizard of oz yeah you smoke dope with the wizard of oz munchkin
yeah no way dude that's
incredible man it was pretty wild god dang that's lucky yeah that's crazy man
because just to be able
to get to do something like that yeah wow i'll watch that movie a bunch jerry
maron that was the guy
he or this was one of them the last surviving adult munchkin okay when did he
die what's it say that
2016. okay yeah it was probably him because he said he was the last one bring
up a picture of this
dude wow and there he is right there i was at the carnival so he could have
been bullshitting me too
yeah he could have been full of it could have just been a little dude trying to
get high
yeah well he he could have been a seven-year-old with a cane trying to
look at jerry marin right there on wikipedia he's huffing he's got a cigar on
him right there wow

A Carny Tells Theo About the Freak Shows

why is your family so tied in just for doing it for so long right honestly and
um you know even
before my father you know i had i had um my grandfather around the same time i
guess well
yeah he was i had a great uncle or was he he was my father's great uncle i
believe
or cousin and he was already big in the in the circus business he was one of
the biggest freaks
in the world he was our most famous three-legged man frank lentini frank lentini
yep there he is
oh wow yeah he had three legs four feet two dicks 16 toes oh wow oh yeah two wieners
on him yep
oh my gosh two peepees dude i couldn't even you could serve dude you could
serve yeah it's almost
like you're like a damn soda fountain at that point you know leg dick leg dick
leg leg oh you could have
you're running in fanta you know wild and they both worked really yeah oh my
gosh and how did
y'all know that was it did they write it down somewhere yeah well because he
was so everybody
wanted to know you know so like when he was traveling the freak shows and he
was really well-spoken they
called him like the mayor of the freaks because he would go and speak for
everybody like when he'd be
like you know we want more money or we want better working conditions or
whatever he would be the guy
that would go talk to everybody because he worked for ring lane uh barnum and
bailey he worked for
all the all the big freak shows and circuses wow frank lentini was born in sicily
in 1881 he was the
fifth of 12 children yeah and they didn't his parents didn't really like him
that much gave him to his
aunt yeah they were kind of ashamed of him because he had three legs yeah just
different lengths now
that yeah that is a that's a lot to you know because then you're like um throw
at your hip like that's
gonna be crazy yeah it's gotta be tough on your joints a fourth foot that stuck
out of one of his
knees 16 fingers and an extra set of genitals wow running on that spare jenny
dude huh keep the lights
on bro uh his condition was the result of a parasitic twin yeah that was
attached to his body at the base of
his spine wow that was too they couldn't take it off because especially back
then i'm sure that but
they definitely it was too dangerous to try to remove he would go on to work
with every major circus
including barnum and bailey in his act he would kick a soccer ball ride a bike
and skate yeah
he'd kick it out of his third leg like hold the ball over a football and kick
it with his leg yeah
oh bro that's got to be so incredible huh yeah imagine running and you just
kick somebody with your
third leg while you're running dude imagine you could play footsie with buck
with two women under
the table i still have an extra leg in different directions yeah and one let
and one extra foot
to tap to the music you're listening to dude what a time brother his career spanned
more than 40 years
and he came to be known as the king in the circus energy for his hard work and
presence
he married and had four children wow yeah all the children came off fine he got
a lung failure damn
you think he got it he got one of his legs caught in something you know what i'm
saying just the odds
because every now and then i almost get one of my legs caught in something wow
look at that zoom
in on one of these photos please i love the one on the right where he's got
like the one in the and
he's got each other foot on a stool it's such a trip yeah it almost looks like
uh no let's go to the
other one that he was talking about yeah is that what you mean the black and
the leather yeah wow look at
those pants those pants have to be like what the are we doing he said he would
buy two sets of shoes
and he would give his uh fourth shoe the extra shoe to a buddy that lost a leg
oh so they all went to
use oh that's beautiful man yeah you just don't see that kind of stuff anymore
that's the toughest
part about stuff um wow unbelievable look at that dude there he is there's an
old man down there
yeah can we get one more picture of him frank lentini oh how wow i wonder what
would it be like
imagine you this had to be such a flex so you cross your leg and then you cross
the other one over
bro you must people must have thought you were jordan peterson no matter what
right that had to be so wild unbelievable what else use the picture of him on
the uh
back of an allison chains album was there yeah they have a three-legged dog on
the front
and he's the three-legged man on the back i think i remember that yeah it's
actually the best album
down in a hole is that them yeah i'd like to fly but my wings have is all
denied you know it
dude that's so incredible so this is a relative of yours yeah yeah he was um he
was my dad's either
great uncle or cousin i can't remember i i tried to like really narrow it down
but it's you know so
long ago and um my dad's not with us so i can't ask him anymore i'm sorry to
hear that man that's
all right um 23 and me though they might not even have these kind of yeah my my
brother actually started
doing that so i'm back to see with the 23 and me and like yeah he's got the
ancestry going on so he's
trying to like put it all together yeah yeah so i tried to find out some more
information about
him through that i know he had four kids um they all came out normal no parasitic
twins there wow so
yeah being a parasitic twin can you bring that up for me first of all i've
always thought twins should
have to fight to see who wins who gets to make the shots call the shots to stay
alive yeah you know
that's got to be tough and i'm not saying that nobody deserves to be alive but
it's just like
because it's kind of crazy when you meet one guy and then you meet and you know
they're kind of just
each half of a guy or whatever and you're like what are we doing here like at
least you two get
together and decide what you want to say and then come tell us you know exactly
because it's a lot of
extra kind of like back and forth you know a parasitic twin is a type of conjoined
twin where one fetus
stops developing but remains attached to its twin wow the other twin continues
to develop but is usually
born with the limbs organs or other tissue structures from its parasitic twin
still attached it's a very rare condition
gosh dude imagine two to see what is that sorry oh no that's another child oh
that's how it is uh
she looks like tila tequila a little bit i can see that you don't talk about
yeah
um doja cat i don't know that kid has longer hair than doja cat i think so
people like frank lentini
what was that gr that group was called what is it freaks freaks okay they were
the freak show the freak
shows and that was popular did you ever work with that um so occasionally the
carnivals would have freak
shows join up with us um but they were all you know corner store freaks they
weren't really great
like we had the we had the uh the rip off of the lobster man and i actually
think he was a relative of
the original lobster man but he had fake gloves that he would put on to make
himself have fake lobster
hands oh really oh yeah that's not real no we had a lot of that yeah yeah so it
was a lot of yeah
because they had like the freaks were like the bearded lady i remember you
would hear about
um what like the four-titted sister or whatever you they'd always have
something you know the lispy
jew yeah they always have something rolling the lizard man or something yeah
lizard man a real life
mermaid was the one they'd have a girl in a tank with like a fake suit on
acting like she was a
real mermaid yeah oh yeah the four-shouldered italian they'd have that guy yeah
um oh the smallest
horse i met the world's smallest horse one time we used to have that too yeah
tom thumb is the
one that i met i don't know the name of the one i had we had but yeah he was at
the fairs with the
agriculture he'd be there pay 50 cents and get to walk up and walk around and
see him go in yeah
they had the dollar they had i remember they had one dude at the fair in our
town it was like
if you gave him a dollar he would tell you if you were fat or not right yeah
like guess your age or
your weight or like stuff like that but this dude i remember you give him a
dollar and he just call
you fat oh really and then you just yeah he was like the fat dollar guy or
whatever that's like
yeah just walk off you're like jesus christ dude i think he was just out there
hustling people yeah
he might not even have worked with the with the carnival dude honestly that's a
new one that guy
could have been working different here's a couple of them right here general
tom thumb uh charles
sherwood stratton was actually a relative of pt barnum when barnum learned of
stratton's dwarfism
he sensed opportunity barnum took stratton under his wing and taught him how to
sing dance and
impersonate famous historical figures wow oh that was the lobster boy oh here's
lobster boy right
here as shocking as his appearance is grady styles real life story is even more
shocking styles condition
was known as ectrodactyl extradoc doc tilly i think you got it extradactyly
which causes hands and
feet to fuse in the claws yeah the condition ran in styles family in fact he
was the sixth
generation in his family to have it his father was already performing in the
circus when grady was
born so he entered circus life early as the lobster boy wow oh that was his kid
yeah pinching ass and
taking names that guy wow look at him and there's a picture right there of
bearded lady and lobster boy
they fell in love oh that's that's romantic a valentine's day love story huh
wow i wonder what
their kids would come out like huh yeah wow lobsters yeah it'd be interesting i
mean it would probably be
something yeah you'd see it like one of those fancy omakase places or whatever
you know i don't think
benihana would be running that probably not you know get you a cut of freaking
hair lobster you know it
might be who else did they have let me see a few more of them these were all
the freaks right yeah lionel the
lion-faced man born steven bybrowski in 1891 poland lionel the lion-faced man
endured a medical condition
known as hyper trichosis which is commonly associated with werewolf syndrome
for obvious reasons
in an odd twist of fate his mother was convinced the condition was caused by
her witnessing his father
being mauled by a lion when she was pregnant still that was a coincidence
albeit a crazy coincidence
wow i haven't heard of him unable to handle his appearance any longer she put
him up for adoption
when he was four years old oh he was adopted by a german entertainer who put
him onto the circus
circuit see and he made a life for himself we still we need freak shows it's
true huh that way
these freaks can make a living yeah they don't have and and they had i remember
what was that thing they
had a dime i want to think because they almost had one in the a dime museum can
you look that up
i thought you were talking about somebody that pays a dime dime museum and
freak shows from the
popular coney island amusement park in new york city to traveling circuses and
sideshows exhibits that
featured people with physical differences with some sort of the most prevalent
attractions in the 19th
and early 20th centuries wow dime museums often featured humans who were
considered different
for the public to view and experience yeah because i think they had some places
where you could pay a
dime i guess was the name i'm assuming from 1840 until 1940 freak shows were at
their height historians
typically marked 1840 as the beginning of the freak show era the museum
contained many exhibits of
historic artifacts and gaffes oh that was the year pt barnum began the american
museum a new york city
attraction that cost a dime to enter there it is the museum also housed many
people who are considered
to be rarities worthy of exhibition wow so you'd have other people included tom
tom tom there he is
a person with dwarfism the aztec twins albinos um and many other living curiosities
wow
dude that's almo