From "Bed of Nails Sandwich" to law school student: Sideshow performer makes transition

You can decide for yourself whether one-time Coney Island performer Eduardo Arrocha (who performed under the stage name "Eak the Geek") is making a big transition or a little one.

It depends, I suppose, on how you view law school: If you view it as a "Bed of Nails," maybe the transition isn't too extreme.

That was Arrocha's act in the Coney Island Circus Sideshow (it is the Sideshow website from which the accompanying image is taken).

A September 4 story by Lauren Johnston in Newsday reports that Arrocha has enrolled at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan.

Even though his father is a corporate lawyer (in Mexico City) and his mother an academic, it is unlikely that Arrocha will pursue a career with a silk-stocking firm.

For one thing, according to Johnston's story, Arrocha is "tattooed from head-to-toe" with "stars and planets inked all over his face." (Your typical big-firm associate is unlikely to have any visible tattoos -- maybe a little tiny AmJur volume on the hip celebrating a class award, but that's about it.) For another, Arrocha's ambition takes him in a different direction: Arrocha told Newsday that he wants to be a "freak lawyer.... I hope to have a little office in New York and work with the alternative people ... all the so-called riff-raff, to give them legal representation that is not judgmental."

But, before Arrocha gets to hang out his shingle, he's had to learn how to tie a tie. There's apparently a dress code at Cooley.