Next, I assembled the cylinders into a stack like a pile of layers in a wedding cake. The flexibility of the structure was troublesome, but I didn't want to put any effort into crossbeams before I had to.

As luck would have it, I never had to.

Building a comfortable hat is a challenge in itself. Not wanting to craft them by hand, Stacy and I bought two straw sombreros. 

I trimmed a strip from each hat's brim...

...and pulled the Devo wireframe over the top.

It looked great! Well, it looked horrible, but I could see that the four steps were well-spaced and that the hat was reinforcing the frame of wire rings.

As a side-benefit, thought-controlling satellite transmissions were 60% less effective while I was wearing the hat, and I was able to NOT think about American Idol for almost 5 hours.

It was time to add a skin to the frame, which required some deft scissoring.

I could have used an inverted bowl or a compass to draw and cut nice concentric circles for these red paper rings, but I've found that my style is pretty refined, a five-step process you'll want to try if you build something like this at home:

1. Just cut them out by hand, eyeballing the shape.
2. Throw those away.
3. Eat something while watching the clock.
4. Try cutting rings out more carefully, just eyeballing them.
5. Make them fit by taping them on, and trimming off the excess.

The sides were easier. I used long strips of paper, taping them to the wire as I went around the circumference.

All that was left was a batch of royal icing and a little bride and groom for the top!

And they were done! All that was missing was a pair of sunglasses, which were mysteriously missing from my glove compartment!

These Devo hats weren't going to end up in a museum, but they looked great and (almost) everyone knew who we were as soon as we arrived.

The goal of the Guitar Hero Party was to dual head-to-head on this addictive guitar-based Playstation game.

Guitar Hero is a little like Dance Dance Revolution, in that the players are trying to match what happens on the screen with their Ukulele-sized Guitar/Controllers.

We were rocking! It was really nice to see all the different bands come together for such a good cause.

I did not win the evening's competition. Ah well, If I need the thought-control satellite transmissions to win a music contest, maybe I'm better off taking sixth place.