Jim Rose Returns With His Circus of the Scars : Sideshow: ‘I give it to you straight--live, real, raw and dangerous,’ says its creator. And it isn’t for the squeamish.

Jim Rose has frequently been compared to 19th-Century showman P. T. Barnum, but the analogy is an unfair one.

Barnum, after all, never stuck his face into a pile of broken glass and allowed audience members to stomp on the back of his head. Barnum never rammed a screwdriver up his nose nor hammered a nail into his face.

Rose regularly does all of this and more in his quest to thrill ticket-buyers.

As master of ceremonies for, performer with and namesake of the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, the 36-year-old curator of human oddities puts his mouth where the money is, even if it means chewing on razor blades or eating light bulbs.

And unlike Barnum’s celebrated “Greatest Show on Earth,” the Rose circus--which comes to the Coach House tonight--has no fakes or “grifts,” as they’re called in sideshow parlance.

“This is a sideshow like they had in purer times, before there were freak shows,” Rose said in a recent phone interview. “I don’t take advantage of deformed people, and I don’t have fake two-headed babies in a jar. It’s real stunts and daredevilry, along with science and martial arts.

“There’s no trickery at all. I give it to you straight--live, real, raw and dangerous, with comedy. It’s like the Three Stooges, only the eyes are really being poked.”

Actually, Curly, Larry and Moe would surely have broken out in a cold sweat even at the prospect of trying to duplicate a Rose circus stunt.

Among the show’s most notorious acts: a man who sucks a condom through his nose and spits it out his mouth--then reverses the process; another who jabs needles and meat skewers through his neck, cheeks, eyebrows and forearms; one who eats live worms, crickets and maggots (and displays the chewed-up vermin on his tongue before swallowing); and, in a performance that will have many a male onlooker grabbing his lap in a sympathetic discomfort, a man who swings heavy objects from the tip of his pierced penis.

No, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow is not for the squeamish or the narrow-minded. Audience members--men and women alike--regularly faint and vomit at these curious displays of mayhem that test the endurance of performer and spectator alike. Morality watchdogs have attempted to force the circus out of town the world over, but Rose’s legal team has yet to lose a battle.

“People ask me where I draw the line,” said Rose. “It’s simple--there’s no blood in this show. We’re professional people, we can do these things. We’re not crazy--we say that you shouldn’t try these things at home. If you’re the kind of person who lights trailers on fire after watching ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ don’t come near the Jim Rose Circus.”

The Rose circus has been increasingly popular since its inception in 1990. After stealing the show at last year’s Lollapalooza tour of alternative-rock bands, Rose and company appeared (in watered-down performances) on MTV and “The Joan Rivers Show.”

A videotape of the show’s highlights has been selling well at stores throughout the country. Rose attributes his popularity and success to a common physical awareness that binds all of humanity.

“There isn’t a subject in the world today that as many people have input in as the human body,” he said. “We all live in one, we have to deal with them everyday. You go to the deepest, darkest part of New Guinea, and what you have in common with all the tribes is the human body. It’s instinctive. That’s the reason you have to look at a car accident when you drive by. It’s a human in an unfamiliar situation.”

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Rose grew up fascinated with circuses, daredevils, monster truck shows--”insanity’s greatest hits,” as he calls it. He traveled the world in search of the odd and mind-boggling, and studied contortionism, martial arts, mind control and escape artistry as a member of Amsterdam’s Rondolini Circus.

His meetings with kindred souls--masters of physical and mental stamina in search of the supreme gross-out--inspired Rose to put together a show of his own, with a pointed philosophy.

“The pacing and the setup time of the shows I saw always bored the hell out of me,” he said. “There could be 20 minutes between acts. So I thought, ‘Why not put together the most bizarre things that have taken place in human history, add a few new ones, and throw ‘em all together at such a fast pace that you’re on the edge of your seat for two straight hours?”

Rose said he takes particular pleasure from unnerving jaded spectators who believe they’ve seen it all.

“They walk in, Western-educated, with a smugness that comes from living in the Information Age, and they walk out like little kids, because their eyes have been reopened. I’m telling you, it’s a fountain of youth. And it’s not just rock ‘n’ roll and college people. It’s business people. Microsoft people come to our shows.”

Not surprisingly, injuries are part and parcel of the game for Rose and his crew--he calls his life one of “thrills, chills and doctor bills”--but accepts and even seems to enjoy taking risks. Rose was recently hospitalized for bleeding bowels after ingesting five light bulbs over the course of a day (as opposed to the customary one). A month’s worth of shows had to be postponed.

But Rose shows no sign of slowing down, and in fact has been adding new, even more dangerous stunts to the Sideshow arsenal--many featuring Matt (The Tube) Crowley, who was a pharmacist, of all things, before hooking up with Rose.

“We love performing at the Coach House, and we’ve got a lot of stuff in store,” Rose said. “In Norway, we Superglued Matt’s back and legs to a board to simulate the commercial, and raised him to the ceiling. He fell off, leaving patches of skin on the board, and was knocked unconscious. The Torture King (another performer) had to give him the kiss of life. But he’s back on the Superglue horse now, and he’s going to do a Superglue escape at the Coach House.

“I’ve also got an industrial grinder colliding with a big sheet of metal, creating a large shower of red-hot, metal sparks. Matt has to stick his face into those sparks, and he’s not allowed out until he lights a cigarette.

“Forget everything you thought you knew about humanity--the fur is gonna fly at the Coach House!”

Somewhere, P.T. Barnum is smiling.

* The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow starts at 8 tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano in San Juan Capistrano. $18.50, (714) 496-8930. Rose and company also will appear for a public video signing at 5 p.m. at Tower Records, 23811 El Toro Road, El Toro. (714) 770-5242.