Michael Jackson-ing up 6th avenue

Last week I promised you an update on the Village Halloween parade and my not entirely pivotal part in it. The parade itself was a lot of fun, and definitely better than my previous attempts to try to watch it without participating. The only downside with dancing in the parade was that this was the week autumn weather finally came to New York. Last Wednesday it was an unseasonable 70 degrees, but come parade day it was more like 40. I figured that wouldn't be a problem because dancing would keep us warm. What I didn't take into account apparently was the 3 or so hours before the parade began that we would be standing on a very cold and windy Broome Street.

My group was performing two separate dances, both in tribute to talented pop icon Michael Jackson. The first was the dance to the "Beat It" video, complete with the fight scene that our fake Michael restores peace to. The second is the lesser known, and much more difficult, The Drill. I haven't found a video of us doing it online yet, but this is pretty much what we looked like, if a little less like Phillipine convicts. Also, there were less of us. Per the usual, I can't upload anything, but here's a link to the reasonable facsimile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKtdTJP_GUI

Our costumes were more suited for the Beat It part of the exhibition. We were divided into two rival gangs: those in leather and chains and those in torn jeans and bright colors. Naturally, I opted for Team Bright Colors because leather is expensive, and I already own torn jeans. Here I am looking as punk as is possible after just buying most of my outfit at H&M:
80s gang member or middle class poseur--you be the judge.

And here I am with a few members of my posse. In this one you can see that I put some red hair dye in my hair to add some more bright colors. It's a little more permanent than I thought, so I may be strawberry blond for a few days:

What a bunch of bad asses, am I right?

Now the moment you've all been waiting for: video footage of my first successful dance parade experience. As you can see, the videographers were slightly more interested in our awesome Michael Jackson impersonator, but you can totally see me trying to be thug in the background (the giant number 2 on my shirt does help). Here's the link: http://www.wpix.com/videobeta/77fc5a22-3a88-484e-bc20-0ba98dbd6983/Community/Parade-Costumes-Beat-It-Mob-Dance

Also, and this is totally unrelated to the dancing aspect of the parade, but who would have guessed that Chilean miner would have been the 'it' costume of 2010?

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween as well!

Update: Someone posted a video the us doing The Drill. You can't really see me, but trust me, I'm back there somewhere try to keep up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSR4IZioR8Q&feature=related