Being a Dancing Santa on-stage with the Flaming Lips was the most exhausting concert experience I’ve ever had.

I say this after raging three 10-hour days at Bumbershoot, after sleeping a total of 12 hours over three days of Sasquatch, after seeing more shows that I can count over the course of my life. The emotional stamina required to keep up with the Flaming Lips for two and a half hours drained me for days afterwards. I will probably never be the same.

_{Jake the Animal Wrangler}

We arrived only a few minutes before the Lips were to hit the stage and were ushered into the bowels of the Paramount by house security. There we met with Jake the Animal Wrangler, who outfitted us with the last of the Santa get-ups (mine: XXL) and a ten-pound, battery-operated mega flashlight. Waivers were signed, instructions were given, and then we were led upstairs to the back of the stage.

A massive battery of balloons were netted behind the backdrop, waiting for launch.

This dude had been following the Lips since Chicago—nine shows in all. It was his first time dancing on-stage and he came prepared.

He, two other guys, and I were led to the front of the stage and asked to spot lead Lip Wayne Coyne as he did his crowd-walk in the infamous Space Bubble. Coyne slithered into the Bubble it was inflated around him as the band played a slow-building instrumental intro song called “Ta-Da.” He walked out over the crowd as we focused our heavy-ass power torches on him and the bubble. He stood up at a couple points, but mostly crawled and stumbled. After a minute or two he made it back to the stage and we reeled him in.

Then the room exploded in a spectacular Technicolor freak-out the likes of which can only be seen at a Flaming Lips concert.

I didn't stop dancing, spinning, jumping up and down, smiling, whoo-hooing, hugging, high-fiving, or questioning the reality of my situation for the next two hours.

I remember bits of music: "Race for the Prize," "Vein of Stars," an instrumental intro to "Kashmir," an older Lips song I didn't recognize, newer stuff like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" and "Free Radicals." Steve Drozd, the Lips' main instrumentalist, sang a couple. I stood right behind bassist Michael Ivins' head the entire show.

_{Left to Right: Ivins, Coyne, and Drozd}

There was more music, more balloons, more confetti. There was an enormous inflatable Santa and an enormous inflatable alien. There were smoke and lasers. There was an anti-Bush rant that made a lot of sense, especially when Wayne Coyne played an electronic version of "Taps" through a doctored bugle. "I'm sure there would be a few more people here tonight having fun with you guys if they hadn't gotten killed in Iraq," he said. These rants have gotten longer, deeper, more impassioned in the last couple years. It almost felt like there was some kind of postive group mind, some positive unity in the room. Amidst all the hurrahs and hoopla, it was a surprisingly serious moment.

Serious moments: These are what make up a Lips show. The band is silly, ridiculous, and they're poingant, bittersweet--thanks to the music and the spectacle, more so of all of it than any other band. The moments when--strung-up with confetti and streamers, massive bass booming behind your ears, costumed freaks on the stage and in the crowd--you recognize the band's exhaustive emotional range, that a night with the Lips is tragedy and comedy at the same time, that it surpasses mere music elevates into something else... these are moments you never forget.

They finished with a massive singalong to "She Don't Use Jelly" and then encored with a cover of the Stones' "Moonlight Mile." After what seemed like an interminable duration of peak emotion, it was a surprising and welcome comedown, a mellow and comforting way to send their fans back into the real world.

The night felt like great sex. Immediately afterwards I was glowing, buzzed. We trudged downstairs and doffed our costumes and received t-shirts ("I a. danced, b. took drugs, c. had sex with the Flaming Lips"). A little while later, Wayne came into the dressing room and spent an hour in conversation with the Santas and aliens, taking pictures with all the dancers, talking with them and signing autographs. There was no reason for him to stick around other than because he wanted to.

After we left the Paramount, the outside world still seemed far away. A sense of total fulfilment descended over me. I had planned on heading to Neumo's for Diplo--it was around midnight--but there was nothing else that could be done that night. There was no way, no reason, nothing that could possibly follow the Lips.

Three days later and I felt the same way: I was still so fulfilled by the experience that last night I felt no urge to shift gears into the Arcade Fire. I'm sure the show was great, but I just didn't have it in me. I was still filled with the Flaming Lips.