Ohhhhh..... my achin' everything.... I know why they call today "The Day of the Dead".
I had planned to go meet everybody at Logan Square when I got the call from the Rat Patrol to represent on our choppers. So I busted up there early and we "participated" in the parade the same way as we do every parade... meaning we show up and ride in it. I had worn my lederhosen to work that day but wussed out because it was 30 degrees out, so I dressed as Count Chopula instead which in retrospect I was grateful for... how dare I think about dressing in tracht for halloween when I can be a vampire on a vampire bike?

The bikes... well, I'll wait till I have some pictures to show. The Redmoon Theatre events are so surreal they really have to be experienced, but it was great circling around on various contraptions while the band played a sort of kickin' dirge. The rest of the festival was indescribable, probably the closest thing I could compare it to is a little tiny slice of Burning Man. My favorite moment was banging on this... I dunno, a harpsicord? Like an open piano but with strings going every which way. They had it mic'ed and we stood around and banged and scraped on it with forks and mallets and brushes and cookie cutters... the sound was spooky and chaotic and musical at the same time. For the big show, they had set up this tower, oh probably four stories high, and all over it were hanging people playing instruments. Hanging from the middle was a lady dressed as a big bird, she was the singer, she was in a tweety-style cage and bawked and squawked to the music, other guys were on pulleys, so one guy would be playing keyboard way up high, he'd jump off and another guy would be on the other end of the rope and he'd shoot up and play a xylophone up there. The drummer had this big torch that went "whoosh" whenever he hit the kick drum, then towards the end the lady on the top climbs down, and we're all like "Why's she quitting?"... everybody was banging and screaming while the fire jugglers did their thing and there was howling and creepy organ music and all the sudden it came to a sudden stop... and WHOOOOSH this GIGANTIC fireball burst from the top of the tower. It had to be as big as a van, at least. Great finale, everybody screamed like mad. Fire good.

Singular was too bundled up to reveal her Wednesday costume, E-D was a fairy princess, Kabuto was the devil (he looked like a Wisconsin cheesehead but you know the devil, never can tell what he looks like), and Lil' Gordie forgot it was Halloween. We met Lulun at the Pontiac, which was done up in the haunted-asylum style, had some chelas, and I sang "Monster Mash" on karaoke. We adjourned to a nearby park for a little mota and then headed home.

I had really pushed Count Chopula to it's limits getting up to the square, dodging in and out of all three lanes, leaning into corners, that sort of thing. I was delayed slightly by running into Jerney, of all people, who lives in Cleveland but is working a bit up here. So if you can imagine, sitting back in a recumbent position and just pulling on the handlebars and pushing against the backrest and pound pound pounding the pedals for a half an hour... then drinking a bunch of beer... today I was sore as hell. Oh, well, the thing about drugs is that they don't increase your enjoyment of life, they just take a little enjoyment from the future and compress it into the moment... think about it, beer, mota, speed (including caffeine), MDMA, coke- each extracts its toll in its own way, some more than others. I stay in the left half of that list for that reason. Not to mention all the candy... usually I binge on those little candy pumpkins until I retch, but this year someone was handing out WWF Crazy Dips, so I ate some Rick Flair candy and Fun Dip... the Fun Dip stick has to be the tastiest candy ever, made more so because you can't just buy it, you have to buy the whole fun dip and if you eat the stick the rest is useless so you have to work yourself down to its crunchy, powdered-sugary goodness. I bet it's made of crack.

But I'm rambling. I hope you all got a little bit of celebration of the Dark Unknown last night.