Space Cowboy’s got guts and he lets you hear them at the Laya Healthcare City Spectacular
SPACE COWBOY’S job is in the category of the less ordinary. He’s an extreme performance artist, which means he spends his days juggling chainsaws while blindfolded, eating broken glass and smashing cement slabs balanced on his head with a large axe. He says he gets inspiration for his acts – which have garnered him 34 entries in the Guinness World Records book – from daydreaming, visiting hardware stores and reading the newspaper.
“I’ve always been a fan of Ripley’s Believe It or Not and the Guinness World Records book. They’ve been a great source for me over the years from looking at all the old black-and-white photos of what people have achieved in the past. I like taking old ideas and modifying them to fit my personality.
“For example, I saw a picture of someone swallowing a neon light. I thought that was a great idea so I do that now with a 65-centimetre glass tube that has a neon light filled with mercury-compound gas and 2,000 volts of electricity. I swallow it all the way down my throat and it shines through my skin, but to make it new and exciting I attach a microphone onto the bottom of the neon so you can hear my gag reflexes and my heart beating as it shines through my skin.”
Space Cowboy adds that he saw the picture in a newspaper article about a man who died as a result – the neon tube burst inside him. Space Cowboy has had video x-rays done with swords down his throat. He has also spoken to doctors about the risks he takes and the physical reaction caused by gulping down so many big, foreign bodies.
“If you want to swallow multiple blades or the neon tube, the heart gets pushed a little bit to the side in order to get the straight passage all the way into the stomach,” he says. “I’ve got the world record for swallowing 24 swords at the same time. When I do that you can see the handles of the swords vibrating with my heartbeat. I use meditation and internal isolation to control the muscles of the insides. In order to swallow them at the same time I swallow hoses for three days so I slowly stretch my throat.”
One of the records he’s broken a number of times is the most weight dragged with fish hooks attached to his eye sockets. It’s worth a visit to YouTube to see his latest effort in which he drags half a dozen ladies and a cement slab on a cart.
“You start slow and build up,” he says. “I started with some fish hooks on a chain and just hooked them in and eventually put weights on the ends and started swinging the weights. At the start, I attached a pool ball; then went to a soft-drink can. Now I can lift 26 kilograms with my eyes, and the most I’ve dragged is 411 kilograms for 10 metres.”
He says his mother has to cover her eyes at certain moments during some of his acts, but stresses that all his death-defying stunts are calculated risks.
“I actually damage myself very rarely. I have had a few accidents. I’ve broken my wrist. I’ve had an arrow go right through my hand and out the other side when I was doing a blindfolded arrow catch. [In the act], my girlfriend shoots a crossbow at me and that went wrong once but we’ve nailed it now. I’m blindfolded, she shoots the arrow at me from between 10 and 15 metres away and I catch it.
Did the 37-year-old Space Cowboy stay with the girlfriend after she shot an arrow through his hand.
“Yeah. Now we have a child together.”
READ MORE: Laya Healthcare City Spectacular: Do you have what it takes to join the team?
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