Chopstork

If I may say so myself, I think our costume this year was my personal best. I say “our” because LauraDan, StephanieTim, Old ManDamian, and IAndy formed Ok Go. Yes, we learned the dance. No, not the treadmill one, the other one. I’ve never prepped for halloween two months in advance, but it was worth it. I think most people “got it,” and I hear a few were all about it (we all zone out during the dance so we can’t really see the crowd’s reaction). Here’s our tour schedule…aaaah, I love how stupid we are:

Friday (happy birthday, Keri)

• Sidewalk in front of Medjool’s
• Medjool’s rooftop (Derek asked the DJ to put the song on inside too but he wouldn’t)
• Sidewalk in front of 12 Galaxies, with an encore performance (they still wouldn’t let us and our friends into the private party)

Saturday

• In front of Bar None (after some flippy cup action inside)
• In front of Mauna Loa (Press photographer took some pictures)
• In bus stop in front of City Tavern (Reno 911 cop danced with us instead of keeping us from getting run over)
• In the back yard(!) at a house party in Cole Valley
• Encore performances with anywhere from one to three band members present, and with a flamingo on my head, in the back yard. I got to wear Matt’s (he lives there) N-Judah costume, which was awesome, but I didn’t think to dance in it—what a lost opportunity.
• Almost forgot—our encore on our way out with Eli filling in for Stephanie, the rest of us barking out the moves to him in real time. He did a swell job for his first performance ever.

Tuesday (actual Halloween), tentative

• Some block party for kids near Buena Vista
• Castro Street

I’m kind of sad it’s over now. No more Ok Go dancing. Thanks to our fans who cheered us on out there. Touring is tough, but we do it for the fans.

Us at Bar None in the Marina:

And as is usually the case, I collected bits of other people’s costumes throughout the night:

More pictures from Emily, Courtney, and Luke

Update: No, we didn’t go out Tuesday, and we didn’t get shot in the Castro.
Update: Here’s a video.

We were making ramen at 4 in the morning after we got back from the halloween house party last night. Old Man grabs a bowl, “Are these Corelle? You know corelle doesn’t break?” Pretends to throw one down, but it slips out of his hand. Thunk. It doesn’t break, whew. He picks it up, “that’s not what I meant to do,” and chucks it at the floor. The thing doesn’t just break—it explodes. Instantly there are pieces of bowl covering the entire kitchen. Old Man was honestly surprised at what had just happened. We were all dying laughing. Then he admits that the fine print does say you can’t really throw the dishes on the floor. And then we enjoyed our ramen. Good times.

We survived the worst move of all time AND rallied ourselves out for the Halloween revelries. Note: those are NOT gay unicorns humping. One is a mare and one is a stalion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Runner up: Old Man In a Trash Chute

Has anyone seen Dr. Gene Scott on KRON 4 around 1 in the mornings? Who is this guy? I could swear he’s not really talking about anything. And he has these giant whiteboards with Hebrew and Greek passages (that I assume are somehow holy), which he scribbles over while talking more gibberish about their etymology. In the end it’s a mish mash of multicolored underlines and circles. Somehow all the nonsense is mesmerizing*. I finally googled him and it sounds like his old shows were good entertainment. “The Shock Jock of Televangelism,” they called him. Too bad he’s dead now. Maybe I’ll be him for halloween.

*enough to keep me watching a televangelist for no more than 10 minutes

My friend Sara’s account of Halloween in the Bible Belt:

When I was living in Tulsa a group of friends and I decided to go to a haunted house on Halloween. Now, what does a haunted house mean to you? Ghosts and witches, right? Well, apparently in Oklahoma, churches as fundraisers put on haunted houses. Actually, “haunted house” is a misnomer. It is actually a “scared straight” house.

Anyway, we paid our money and walked in. We were treated to scenes of drunken car crashes, gang rape, a drug den, a kid sticking a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger as his parents argued in the next room, and other sights. Then Satan appeared, and declared that all of our souls belonged to him. We walked through a room of clowns dancing around a broken Christ, carrying signs “Kick Jesus, $1″.

Then we then were saved by a bloody, backlit Christ on the cross. Finally, the scariest moment: at the exit, church members waited to ask if we had accepted Christ as our savior. I got into a twenty-minute argument with one girl about the existence of hell, and then my friends dragged me away.

There you are, Halloween in the Bible Belt. In the future, we must all beware of what fundamentalists think of as “a fun time”.