With the ability to press his soles to his cheeks, turn himself into a human dart board, and dislocate his shoulders to escape from a straitjacket, Matt Alaeddine’s resume reads more like a medical examiner’s report.
Couple that with his sizable mass — well over 400 pounds — and the city comic and contortionist has found a ticket around the world, securing him a place in the infamous Jim Rose Circus. Founded in the ’90s, the circus features extreme, often masochistic onstage acts involving everything from sword swallowing to genital lifts.
Alaeddine is one of three Edmontonians in the American troupe of pain-loving freaks. The roster also includes his friends Ryan Stock and Amber Lynn Walker of the Discovery Channel’s Guinea Pig fame.
Alaeddine, 30, started doing contortion as a street performer at the Edmonton Fringe Festival about 10 years ago, and it will likely be part of the act at this year’s Fringe, when he, Stock and Walker stage a show called Sick.
When performing his contortions, Alaeddine stuffs his rolling hillsides into a gold nylon suit labelled “one size fits all” that he bought from the women’s section of a hipster-friendly clothing store.
“You go to work every day sitting at a desk. It’s not for me. I mean, some people, they just want to get out there and climb and mountain ... I’m not going to climb a mountain. Comedy is my mountain. Contortion is my mountain,” Alaeddine says.
“Obesity! It’s working for me,”
Over the years he’s gone by many stage names, including Fat Matt and Powermann. He says he’s the world’s fattest contortionist, though that isn’t a label in any official, record-breaking capacity — not that an official label matters, really.
What he does, most slender folks would struggle with, if not find impossible. Seriously, stop reading this for a second and try to put the soles of your feet to your cheeks.
We took Matt Alaeddine out on the town one Friday afternoon to surprise random people with his unique abilities on the street. He took his show to Edmonton city hall, where he met a group of schoolchildren, and to an LRT station, where bleary-eyed commuters were delighted with his antics.
