I woke up on Sunday afternoon and rolled out of bed in my shrimp costume. I was still alive. This is notable because I had received a death threat on Saturday night. A shirtless and heavily tattooed gentleman had approached me on the street and told me that “if [I] blew the trombone one more time [he] would wrap the fuckin’ thing around my neck.”
“Ok,” I assured him. “No more trombone.”
Once the sucker was back inside his ghetto den, I blew the raunchiest, most flatulent blast of trombone noise that I could… three times. He raced out of his house and chased me across the parking lot of a Mobil station, but I easily escaped in my shrimpmobile.
I woke up on Sunday and puked. Too much Halloween candy at the Poop Chicken Coop I guess.
Thoughts collected in weird clots in my small shrimp brain. I was dressed in a shrimp costume because it was Halloween. I smelled like the ocean because I was a shrimp. I was wet because I had spent the night riding around on my shrimpmobile in the rain. The trombone was an accessory to my costume and a source of late night aggravation. I couldn’t wait to get back on my bike, er, shrimpmobile and blast the trombone in the street again.
I went out for sushi because my bloodstream was jonesin for some amino acids. My sashimi cried out “cannibal! cannibal!” as I pinched it between my chopsticks.
“Shut up!” I said, and popped the shrimps in my shrimp mouth.
The wet ride on the shrimpmobile had left a dirty streak of tire splashes up my back. I affectionately referred to this as my “poop stripe,” you know, that strand of excrement on a shrimp’s back that you peel off before eating.
It’s true, a thousand corduroy half moons sewn to a union suit doesn’t automatically make the person inside such a costume a shrimp, but for the purpose of snappy answers to dull questions, I decided that this costume would represent a shrimp. Better yet, a giant shrimp.
With the wind in my scales, I rode up and down the streets and avenues of our fair city, entertaining trick-or-treaters with my lunatic tromboning.
I was lucky to have scored a ticket to a super secret special Halloween show. Butthole Surfer’s songs spilled auspiciously from the doorway at the venue. The show was in a warehouse on Warren Avenue. The warehouse was hauntingly decorated and people were adorned in strange, beautiful costumes. Imagine a shoebox, filled with candelabras and spider webs, now hang a disco ball in the middle and plug in a few spasmodic blue light bulbs. Take this diorama and make it big enough to hold a lot of people and that is what part of the warehouse looked like. The show was also filmed and projected onto a ten-foot screen in the next room.
The first band on the bill was “Covered in Bees.” Boo Deadswallows fronts this incredible trio. Boo Deadswallows has a unique grasp of timing, which allows him to deliver first-rate comedy between Covered in Bees’ macabre punk songs. I’ve seen Covered in Bees twice. They are excellent.
The second act was none other than Eggbot. Eggbot was dressed as some sort of demented clown, with a pointy little cap and bizarre clothing. It looked like he painted his face with cake frosting. Eggbot brought us into his world with songs like “Telephone Man.” I’ve seen Eggbot at least eight times.
The third band was Confusatron. Confusatron music invokes feelings of flying through space really fast in a small spaceship. Aggressive, with multiple abrupt changes, Confusatron is most notorious for playing Nintendo music.
The fourth band was Pigboat. This was the first time I had seen Pigboat whose songs sound like sprawling, dark machines.
Is this happening quickly? It was for me too. The bands were playing twenty-minute sets and threatening to go through the rotation again. I went into the room with the ten-foot screen to grab some snacks.
Ricky Boy Floyd is the front man in The Horror. Floyd bears an remarkable resemblance to Kurt Vonnegut. The Horror’s music is a dark opera. Ricky Boy Floyd is totally schizophrenic on the microphone, laughing, screaming and singing into his Gibbytron, which warps and delays his voice, sending it careening off on endless spirals.
The show was a fantastically carnal Halloween celebration. I had an amazing time. A total babe stuffed her email address down my costume. I still smell like Halloween.