Balloon Consuming

Earlier this week I attended the Creativity World Forum 2010. Strangely enough it was down the street from the ad agency where I work. I'm not saying it's strange that something with the word "creative" in it is happening in Oklahoma. Quite the contrary. It's probably more the words "world" and "forum" that just seem a little bit... er, out there.

But on the first day of the conference, I was greeted by these amazingly "out there" huge interactive balloon sculpture installations. They're part of a "Branching Out" theme by artist Jason Hackenwerth. You can even walk inside them. They are kind of insect/anemone like on the outside. Strangley suckle-ish on the inside. But, very, very neat. Kind of takes balloon animals to a whole new level.



So, one of Donny's tricks... or should I say sideshow acts (none of it is a trick really) is to swallow a balloon. Like this one. But usually longer, actually. It's a crowd-pleaser to say the least. Kind of pervy. Really gag-reflexy. He even did it once to Justin Timberlake's Bringing Sexy Back at a wedding reception.

It was Kathleen's wedding reception.

And she was booty dancing around him in a circle while he was doing it.

Sometimes as part of Donny's act he'll stick a deflated balloon in his nose, and then cough one end of it out of his mouth and then sort of pulley it back and forth. That one is just plain appalling. It's my favorite.

So from the Hackenwerth sculptures to hacking-up stunts, you can see how plain old balloon animals will just never cut it for me again.