My adventures with Fire: Yes, I am that crazy.

When I was a senior in college, an old man who was a regular around the theater department came up to me and said "you should look at this. I think you'll find it interesting." Without question he was a sweet, interesting, eccentric old fellow and far be it from me to turn him down. It was a course catalog for an absolutely wonderful place in Oakland called The Crucible, where a person can go to learn all kinds of industrial arts; welding, glass blowing, neon sign making, even bell making just to name a few! I swear, if you're interested, they teach it. As I scrolled down the page, fire performance caught my eye: I had just been thinking about how cool it would be to learn how to do that! Kismet exists, let me tell you.
I signed up for the class entitled Fearless Fire Eating, in which a person puts a lit torch in their mouth and extinguishes it. Easy, right?
Uh. Yes. Of course.
What I didn't know is that there's so much more to it than that. It's not just extinguishing a flame, it's learning to understand it, and overcoming fear of it. Or, as my teacher explained, "All you have to do is overcome thousands of years worth of evolution and common sense that fire can hurt you." Simple.

Here's probably where I should point out that I was learning all of this from an experienced instructor, and you should never, ever, ever do this unless you have at least the proper fuel and proper safety measures in place, such as a fire extinguisher and wet towels handy. Learning this from a seasoned professional isn't a bad idea either.

First we learned how to construct the torches using aluminum rods and kevlar. Next came body transfers, where a person literally transfers lit fuel from the torch onto their body. If you were to google my real first and last name, this would pop up in the image screen:

The mask is added (poorly) for effect, but note the look of sheer amazement; that's the look that happens when you realize something really, really cool (in this case, human skin is fire resistant). 
Then we moved on to the fire eating itself.
It's that where you're leaning and tilting back and the flame is literally in your face, moving towards you that's the hardest. But once I did it, I was hungry for more and not content to stop there.
That's when I noticed that The Crucible was offering a Fire Breathing course.

Oh yeah. That's the stuff.

It's a popular fixture at parties. I'm not sure when I would actually use it in real life, but it's nice to know how to do it.