Halloween and a show

For Halloween I dressed as a "potato-enhanced human". I duct-taped four potatoes to my back and wired them to each other and to my fingertips, scalp electrodes, "virtual reality" sunglasses, and earbuds. The flux capacitor on my back was the idea of my friend Dave who helped wire me up, the idea being that I traveled here from the distant potato-future.Dave went as Ash from Evil Dead/Army of Darkness, he of the chainsaw-hand. I actually went with Sarah to pick up the chainsaw a week earlier.

Dave's girlfriend Sarah went as swan-dress Bjork (sewn by herself... she's really good).

You can make up your own story for what my costume is exactly... Primarily I was thinking that I was augmenting my senses with the powerful potato senses, but there's additional possibilities. Mainly I was just going for a combination of creepy and absurd... people have probably noticed that I like that combination.

In honor of my costume, I'm posting the song "I'm A Potato" by Devo [download]. Potato-humanity was a recurring theme in Devo's music, though the relationship to my costume is mostly coincidental.

We went out to a dance party at the MOCAD and then to the Old Miami where a punk band, Circus Boy, was playing. I really enjoyed their set (though the strength of the Old Miami's cocktails had a good deal to do with that). They were these old punk veterans in their 40s and 50s, just kicking out the jams, sans bullshit. I did a lot of hollering and dancing around.

Throughout the night I got a lot of questions about my costume and a few requests for photos. It was nice. Especially the girls who felt up my potatoes.

Luckily the potatoes were still edible after the night was over. Even more luckily, I had homemade chili and cheddar cheese in the fridge.

Saturday night I played a little party at Linder co-op in Ann Arbor. It went well, people were cheering and bobbing their heads and dancing a lot, and afterwards I got a lot of enthusiastic compliments. One guy in the audience DJs on WCBN (U-M college radio) and wants me to play on his radio show.

I was painfully nervous before the show, though it was considerably better than my first show. During the show I decided to ignore the audience most of the time and just play for myself... it felt better that way, compared to previous shows where I was too caught up in the effort of putting on the show which detracted from me feeling the music. It's funny, before I started actually doing this, when I would picture it it seemed so easy. I mean, obviously I had endless reserves of emotion and nervous energy, I just had to do what came naturally, right? I didn't think about how nervousness and self-doubt could dampen my enthusiasm, or how the moods when one is fired up and feeling like a rock star don't necessarily correspond to the times when one has to play. So in fact it's not easy; it's a challenge -- which makes it more worthwhile, nontrivial. The main reason I applied to grad school was that I felt I needed a challenge. Anyway I still haven't put on a show that I'm 100% satisfied with, but it's improving.