Yesterday was a good day, my friends.

Sharkboy and I started the day out by going to City Hall and forking over the $130 to get a piece of paper that says we can legally wed. O Bureaucracy, O Mores! I think I fell in love with City Hall as a building, not a concept, this trip because of it’s hushed tones, hip curves and trippy bubble clocks. And zombie like employees who came to their desks with heavy sighs and complaints about scheduling. Lady, I’d love to have your job for a while. I’d be so camp with the same sex licenses…

With that done, we hustled to our respective offices where, as you know, I donned my chaps, cop shirt, C.H.i.P gloves and Masters cap to much ballyhoo around my floor. Pictures below, if you want to jump ahead.

End of day, we met up with Rod and Bill who are 90% convinced that going on December’s cruise would be a great fucking idea. Please dear readers, give them 10% more of a reason. A nice round number like 10 at the table would be fun. We then headed to Wicked for their Halloween show.

Now, I’m a cynical old fart when it comes to Broadway musicals. I whole heartedly agree with the Simpson’s parody of Planet of the Apes or Trey Parker/Matt Stone’s version of Rent (Everyone has AIDS!). They’re lyrically stereotypical and schmaltzy. But Wicked was fun. I enjoyed it. It was well written (other than a few glaring plot holes) and did an amusing job of Lucasing the pre-Oz story.

There were some costumes in the audience. Leaving the theatre, I saw a family of 4 getting their coats on and noted that mom was dressed as Dorothy, one kid as The Scarecrow, the other kid as The Cowardly Lion and good old Dad was

Jean Luc Picard.

…What? The fuck?

I snort a laugh. I look at Sharkboy. He’s already into hysterics. Apparently Dad didn’t get the email saying “Oz Theme!”

Then we went to Church street. It was already 11:20pm and the street was still closed. Some my-tee-fine costumes this year, people. I was suitably impressed, dare I say “Best Halloween EVAR”? Very little repeats (although Dracula was popular) and only one Steve Irwin with a barb through their chest. Best Costume goes to the pair of guys with silver Barbarella-style 60s space outfits replete with goldfish bowl helmets. Damn me forever for not getting a picture. Lots of WTF costumes too. You know the ones: straights wearing boas thinking “Hey that’s enough to get by”. Next year I am going to ONLY take pictures of WTF costumes.

The police win the award for the biggest downers, however. At 11:30, they started to drive their cruisers through the crowd to clear the street. Their horns blazing, they berated the crowd to the sidewalk only to have them spill back out onto the road. I saw one cop physically shove a pair of guys, deliberately blocking traffic in front of Starbucks. Of course after they managed to regain control of the road, the traffic wasn’t that busy and they could have extended the street closure. But I am sure it was a question of paying extra cop salary to have them stay on. Regardless, the 30 mins we had there was fun. I have to say, I enjoy Halloween on Church more than Pride. It has zero corporate involvement and has 100% party vibe.

Halloween 2006 Photos are here, kids.