More Halloween Fun: Flaming Lips Host Flaming Skeleton Parade

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Flaming Lips

I guess the joke would be, “Do you realize/that you have the most beautiful skull?” Or maybe not. The legendary Oklahoman psychedelic-rock combo played host to the “Ghouls Gone Wild” Halloween parade in Oklahoma City over the weekend, managing to recruit 1,000 fans to dress up in spooky skeleton costumes and carry flaming torches in what the band’s recruitment e-mail referred to as “a spectacle celebrating the mysterious, the supernatural, and the otherworldly.” Kind of like Zaireeka?

The parade, sponsored by the Oklahoma Gazette with the stated purpose of “celebrating creativity and artistry in Oklahoma City,” kicked off at 7pm on Saturday night, but not without a bit of a hitch: the specially-designed skull masks the band had ordered for marchers were deemed too vision-impairing to be worn by people carrying, say, flaming torches. “We do not want anyone catching on fire,” Lips frontman Wayne Coyne reassured parade-goers in a speech before the parade.

I’d just like to point out that if this parade had happened here in San Francisco, you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the costumed participants and the homeless lining the streets, there would have been a fight between anti-war protesters and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and like seven people would have been shot.

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