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Than you ever wanted to know. This page contains the
history and some of the experiences of Phoenix. Tread carefully.







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About
Born in Texas in the early 60's with the name Edward
Robinson, Phoenix was raised on a racetrack in Florida. He studied art and
drama and played drums throughout his school years. A member of the local
theatre troupe and an entrepreneur, Phoenix had his own traveling magic
show at the age of 14. He played both Riff Raff and Frank-n-Furter at the
Rocky Horror Picture show and performed at the Mark II dinner theatre.
Bored with life in a small town he GED'd out of school 2 years early and
ran away with the circus.
Circus Days. Starting with Ringling for his
initial training and going by the clown name "Dock Holiday" he quickly
advanced through the circuit until he was the Producing Clown for Allan C.
Hill's Great American Circus. At that time he was in charge of the largest
clown alley in the largest 3 ring tent based circus in the USA. He was
responsible for the daily operations of a working clown alley with an
average of 8 to 12 clowns. Designing and building elaborate props for the
clowns and many other acts he gained a reputation for good solid props and
one of a kind set pieces. After experiencing his second elephant rampage
he decided it was time to find a safer line of work than clowning in the
circus.
Step right up and drown the Joker. Taking his
make up and costumes and working a season in a Carnival Dunk Tank made him
enough scratch to build his own tank and customize an old U-haul to haul
it around with. He toured with two tanks, his own and the one owned by
"Smile-a-while" which he managed. Insulting people for 4 hours a day while
perched over a freezing pool of water. Oh what fun! "Drown the Joker" was
modeled after the Joker villain in the Batman franchise and was wildly
popular. It was at this point, "Doc" as he was known, took an interest in
the sideshow business. Selling the tank and truck he took a very
"hands-on" management position with Rick Cales Sideshows.
Alive and on the inside! After spending a short
time learning the care and feeding of an entire petting zoo full of
"freak" animals, he took the Petting Zoo and a "Zoma the Wild Boy" show
out on tour. Working in all aspects of the shows he acquired skills such
as sword swallowing and fire manipulation as well as the ability to talk
non-stop to a crowd. He did everything from painting banners to ordering
feeder mice for the snakes in the Xoma pit. He relished the freedom of the
traveling show and learned more about performing during this phase of his life than any
other time. Everyone should learn to shove an ice pick up their
nose!
When the kid playing "Xoma" quit, Ed was forced to don the
tribal make up and ripped up clothes and take his place in the pit. The
show must go on. "Xoma" was a wild boy sideshow in a box. The
character sat in an 8' x 8' plywood box with 4' high walls. People would
walk into the tent and up to the box to look over the top and into it.
Inside was Edward, with about 20 live snakes of various types, a couple
scorpions, some tarantulas and a Tagoo lizard or two. With a painted on
skull face he never spoke a word in the pit and played the wild boy part
with passion. With snakes in his mouth and crawling through his hair he
would scare people so bad they would run for the "Great Egress". He played
the Xoma character for a few months until the season ended and then turned
to the renaissance fairs.
Free Beer! Returning to his winter home in Fla.
Edward wrote a show for the Renaissance Fair circuit called "Lord Xavier's
Suicide Thrill Show" that highlighted his sword swallowing and fire eating
abilities. He made a quick video and booked an entire 8 month season in 2
weeks time. Working on the circuit for many years under the name Lord
Xavier he enjoyed top billing at many fairs and had his own fan club
called the "FoXes" (Friends Of Xavier's). Moving into management at the
smaller fairs for experiance he soon held management positions at several fairs.
He was Fair director at Kings Company in Ohio and Sight director at the Castle of
Muskogee amongst others. Choosing the Mount Hope Estate & Winery
as a home base he took the position of Production Manager and moved on-site where he stayed
for quite a few years. In charge of daily operations for the Pa. Renn.
Faire production department he was responsible for 12 stages with constantly running shows.
Over 600 actors and performers and a mansion venue that was open
year round for special shows. Building giant special FX stages and running
classes in stage combat and Pyro-techniques Xavier was kept busy 24 hours
a day. During this time he learned Falconry, Forging, period brewing and
several other Renaissance arts. He also started producing Fire walking
classes and demonstrations. After 6 very successful years he decided it
was time to take a new direction and went into haunted house and hay ride
design.
OOOOOOOOOOklahoma! Bouncing around the
country designing stages and rides Phoenix ended up in Muskogee Ok. as
site director of the Castle of Muskogee. This was a relatively new venue
and there was lots of building to do. New stages and period buildings.
Campgrounds and ride trails. The entire property was rebuilt for the fair
and Halloween shows. In charge of daily operations for the entire site
Phoenix found himself once again behind a desk. After the contract was up
he went to Las Vegas to build and fight combat robots.
It's robot fighting time. The show Battlebots
had just come on TV and Phoenix found himself drawn to it. Within 3 months
of seeing his first episode Phoenix had built his first "bot" and was
competing in San Francisco. He soon found himself working for Battlebots
training engineers, builders and regular family people to talk to the
camera and helped "dress-up" some of the teams. While building colorful
and crowd favorite robots, actually winning a championship eluded him
until he was invited to compete at Robot Wars in London, where the best
bots in the world got together. After losing his first couple fights he
managed to hit a winning streak and won through the Robot Rebellion
episode and had the honor of being a featured builder on Extreme Warriors
season two.
After appearing on all the major robot combat shows he
started producing his own event in Las Vegas called RoboJoust. RoboJoust
was highly successful with over 75 robots from around the world competing
twice a year. Gear head reality TV was just cranking up and robots were
fading out so Phoenix found himself a new career as a reality TV
personality. After a couple colorful and unforgettable episodes of Monster
garage he is now working his way towards bigger and better things.
Currently, Phoenix is living in Las Vegas while
running XE3 studios and Armamentarium Eugenius. Building art cars and
customizing bikes in his spare time, he is available for corporate
seminars, short term appearance contracts and Performance art
shows.
Final Word, by Phoenix Blaze Life is an adventure! I was born with the wanderlust and a
thirst for knowledge. I knew early on I was meant for the stage and had a
love of fire and anything mechanical. I have strived to use these
attributes to allow myself to travel and meet new people while paying the
bills. In other words I love to travel, I love to perform and I love to
build weird stuff. So I became a traveling performer who builds weird
stuff! Pretty slick huh?
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