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It was Flaming Lips Day in the quiet kingdom of Kansas City. So declared a royal proclamation from our humblest of humble civil servants, Mayor Kay Barnes. Declarations would be made, a key to the city bestowed upon Lips singer Wayne Coyne. And the peasants would rejoice. At least until the boiling oil came cascading down the ramparts.

It was an odd sight: the establishment and the counterculture greeting one another awkwardly on a Tuesday evening in the middle of 18th Street after Coyne had graciously, surprisingly, accepted an invitation to join the city’s Mardi Gras celebration.

And there he was. Right on time. The guy who splashes fake blood on himself as people in rabbit suits dance behind him onstage was standing at 18th and Wyandotte wearing a pinstriped thrift-store suit and a big fur hat. Chatting with fans, shaking hands, kissing babies.

The actual ceremony was a textbook lesson on the dangers of high expectations. Barnes and Coyne stood beneath a white tent, obscured from most of the crowd, mightily trying to master the whole talking-into-the-microphone thing.

Amid howls for somebody to turn up the volume, one brave soul shouted the old Mardi Gras standard, “Hey, Kay! Show us your tits!”

And the mayor obliged.

Just kidding. The ceremony proceeded dryly as pleasantries were exchanged and Coyne donned the key to the city, an absurdly small piece of metal attached to a red, white and blue ribbon.

And that was that.

But the party had just begun. The festivities built steam while night descended on the city and the temperature fell. The jazz-funk band Eudora played on as the cordoned-off block of 18th Street morphed into Bourbon Street.

The atmosphere was jovial, communal and surreal. People dressed in elaborate costumes laughed and shouted and bumped into one another as they drank, ate, danced and were merry. A guy calling himself Johnny Wonderful sat in a corrugated tin shack banging “Great Balls of Fire” on a keyboard. A dance troupe adorned in diapers and angel wings conducted an intricate performance while holding oversized straight razors. The Pythons Drill Team marched through the congregation with rumbling drums and shrill whistles.

People stood on stationary Mardi Gras floats tossing out free tufts of cotton candy and strips of bacon to the clamoring masses. It was a family affair. There wasn’t much nudity, except for the ambitious woman who continuously shouted, “Bacon!” as she flashed her boobs at those distributing free pork.

Revelers formed a procession for a brief parade to 18th and Locust, where the after-party was already under way. There, hundreds of partiers were packed into the warehouse and the art gallery next door as members of Marco’s V7 and the Malachy Papers jammed onstage. The world was a happy place.

That’s when the fire started.

Somebody lit a papier-mâché car on fire in the middle of a vacant lot across the street. One man monitored the blaze with a hand-held water tank as the flames leapt up and ash swirled into the air. A single cherubic Kansas City, Missouri, police officer had maintained control over the celebratory crowd with little trouble for more than six hours, but once the fire started, all bets were off.

A fire engine and a swarm of patrol cars arrived too late to save the paper-maché car, which was by this time no bigger than a large campfire.

Police slapped the warehouse owner in handcuffs for illegal burning. One person protested the arrest and was arrested. Then another. And another.

Then officers smashed one man against a brick wall. They cuffed another and, even though the second guy wasn’t resisting anything, at least three officers slammed him facedown on the sidewalk.

The brutality spurred me to take a step toward the nearest officer, who was holding a black canister the size of a fire extinguisher. “Was that really nec — ”

Apparently it was. Because the last thing I saw was a cloud of white. The blast of chemicals could have been Mace, or it could have been pepper spray.

I’d like to report that I took it like a man. That I yawned off the affront with a casual, “Is that all you got?” before elegantly bashing the officer over the head with a brick.

But no.

It feels like battery acid or napalm, like someone is drilling giant cayenne peppers into your eye sockets. Repulsed in blind, horrifying pain, you stumble backward and gasp for breath. You are a pathetic sight. A moaning, drooling three-year-old Helen Keller.

I’ve been told that several people were hit with Mace. I don’t know this for sure, because I couldn’t see anything. I stumbled in circles asking whatever I bumped into — people, stop signs, parked cars — for water to flush away the sizzling poison. I staggered toward a group of officers and, through my wincing, asked the peacemakers how to relieve the torture. They chuckled and told me to open my eyes.

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

The next thing I bumped into was a KMBC Channel 9 cameraman who requested an interview. I declined on account of my melting face. That, he calmly explained, was exactly why he wanted me on camera.

Eventually, strangers came to my aid. Somebody poured beer on my face. Someone handed me bottles of water before Mott-ly, who runs the MoMo Studio, allowed me the indefinite use of his water faucet. It was more than an hour before I could see without searing pain.

That’s fine. I can take one for the team. Karma is a bitch, and I’ve undoubtedly done several things that would justify someone spraying me with Agent Orange. I’ve run red lights. I’ve jaywalked. Once, I even stole a pack of Bubble Yum.

The problem is, if the story hadn’t hit me in the face, the good citizens of Kansas City might never have known about their police department’s violent efforts to douse a little harmless merriment downtown.

Channel 9 reported that no one was hurt, so it must have been true. Who was going to say any different? Some rowdy kids? Ha. The Flaming Lips? Dream on. Mayor Barnes? Whatever. The police? Riiiiiggghhht.

I doubt these officers were sadistic. But their swift, brutal and reckless reprisal was absurdly disproportionate to the conflict at hand.

“It was inexcusable, what happened,” says Mike Dalena, associate director of the Kansas City Jewish Museum’s Epsten Gallery, who also endured the Mace. “The crowd was calm. The officers were riled up. I did everything they asked me to, and I was targeted anyway. It was a completely irresponsible use of power.”

OK, a bonfire in a vacant lot wasn’t such a smart idea. But it hardly deserved an aggressive police occupation. This wasn’t a riot. These people weren’t burning cop cars and smashing Gap windows. This was a good-natured crowd of men, women and children. Mostly art-school kids and other coffeehouse types. Real badasses.

My buddy the cameraman said that the police initially denied using Mace. They were merely doing their civic duty. Protect and serve, right? Maintain order. Spark your own riot and then stomp it out.

A few days later, when I asked for the night’s arrest records, a police department spokesman told me he didn’t know what I was talking about. I called the mayor’s office, but she never called back.

At least those who suffered through this stupid event can be consoled by the fact that things could have been much worse.

Someone could have gotten hurt.