The first thing Steve Starr did on stage was swallow a light bulb. This was not an act of suicide or a radical protest to stop wasting energy. This was entertainment. Starr, a professional regurgitator, came to the Great Hall in the Memorial Union at Iowa State University on Wednesday, April 16, to showcase his unique talent. Starr grew up in Glasgow, Scotland in a children’s home where he taught himself to hide his pocket change from everyone else by swallowing it. He then started swallowing various items as parlor tricks, and for purposes sometimes devoted to crime. After twenty years of refining his act, Starr went to the Carnegie Hall of regurgitators: the Great Hall in the Memorial Union. All of his swallowing tricks involved a vehement slap on the chest and a startling shriek as a sound effect. His first act of swallowing was a light bulb. He claimed that “the show can’t start until I am able to swallow this.” He put the light bulb in his mouth, held the microphone to his mouth and made a great sucking sound. A slap in the chest was followed by the sound of gurgling. “The worst part of the entire show was the gurgling.” junior Josh Brown said. “It sounded like a sink draining.” Starr then slapped himself in the chest and two seconds later he spit a light bulb into his hand. His next trick required audience participation. After he grabbed a reluctant member of the audience, he was fed ten coins which he swallowed one by one, dish soap, and lighter fluid. He used the dish soap to clean the coins, and blow bubbles, and the lighter fluid to spit fire later on in the show. He then brought up all the coins but one. “He said it went too far down in his stomach, so he swallowed a real sized pool ball.” Brown said. “I thought he was going to choke and die, but he swallowed it whole, brought up the coin and then the pool ball. It was simply amazing.” One regurgitating trick that is somewhat popular (due to its use in the show Jackass, among others) is the swallowing of a fish, regurgitation of it, and placement of the fish back into a tank to swim around. Starr did this with a twist. He swallowed two fish, one large and one small, at the same time, and then he swallowed a film canister. He opened the film canister, put the fish in the film canister, and closed it, doing all of this in his stomach. “I wouldn’t have believed it if he didn’t have someone from the audience mark the container. He seemed aware that his act was hard to believe so he always had someone in the audience make sure it was real.” Brown said. Steve Starr is an inspiration to this generation. In a world full of people who do not want to do anything but want to be famous, they can do what Steve Starr did: Swallow a bunch of stuff and make gross noises