I'm sitting here listening to an All Hallows Eve (Dance) Mix Ben made (check it out! He said the link should work for about a week. So act soon!) and I'm eating some MONSTERous grapes. (Okay, they're not that big. But they are big grapes.) Oh yeah, and it's Monday, November 2nd. All of this can only mean one thing: It's time for me to talk about Halloween!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let's just pretend that this was more topical/on-time.

Friday night I saw Jude Law in Hamlet. Very cool. I didn't really hear his first soliloquy because I was saying to myself, "Wow. Here's the guy I've seen in I Heart Huckabees and Gattaca and now here he is, in front of me, reciting Shakespeare. And he's going to keep it up for three hours! I should really shut up and listen to what he's saying." That's pretty much my interior monologue, verbatim.

Saturday night was an adventure. I got a last-minute ticket to the sold-out Get Up Kids show at Irving Plaza. Doors/show was at 9, so I decided to get downtown at 8:30, thinking I'd have plenty of time. I got off the subway at 14th St. and 7th Ave. (for you non-New Yorkers, this is about three avenues west and two blocks south of where I needed to be), only to surface and find myself in the middle of utter pandemonium. Since this was my first Halloween in the city, I was unfamiliar with the (annual?) Halloween parade. It goes along 6th Ave. (Again, for you non-New Yorkers: By going along 6th Ave, the parade prevented me from walking eastward. This was a problem.) Police officers assured me, though, that they were letting people cross over 6th at 15th St. and 19th St. On my walk to 15th St., it started to rain. And, of course, when I got there, they weren't letting people cross. Nor at 19th St. I decided that going north was a bad idea (the parade was heading north), so I turned around and walked south. I figured that if I reached the point where the parade began, I could then cut eastward. Thankfully, before I ended up walking way more than I had to, I realized that I could take the L (get this -- from the exact same stop I got off of originally!) one stop and exit on the east-side of 6th Ave. And that's how I was able to get to Irving Plaza. About forty minutes late. But I got there!

Thankfully, The Get Up Kids totally made up for my escapades. They came out dressed as characters from The Wizard of Oz: Matt Pryor was the Scarecrow, the keyboard player was the Cowardly Lion, the other guitarist was the Tin Man, the drummer was the Wicked Witch, and the bass player was Dorthy. They then proceeded to follow another Halloween tradition I was unfamiliar with: covering a whole album. Yeah, they played the entire Something to Write Home About album. It was incredible. I felt like the entire crowd was singing along. I don't know if I've ever been part of such an amazing crowd experience. After wrapping up the album, they played a couple songs from Guilt Show (still don't like those songs) and Four Minute Mile (very cool), and ended with an odd choice: "Walking on a Wire." I like the song, so I didn't mind, but I do find it an odd closer.

After the show, I walked to Times Square to see more people in costumes. The award for you-think-your-costume-is-original-but-it-really-isn't goes to the five or six guys I saw wearing banana outfits. What's this all about? Did I miss something? Two of the guys were right around the corner from each other, too. I also saw a couple people as Mario, Luigi, Peach, etc. One of the better costumes I saw was Lt. Dangle from Reno 911. That was pretty funny.

Anyway, check out Ben's party mix. Download it and save it for next year. It's cool.