Okay, I think I know why he took off his shoes.
Did anyone see that movie 'Accidental Hero', the one with Dustin Hoffman saving all those people from a plane-crash and then not wanting to be a hero, but they find his shoes. Well, at the end of the movie, he's in the Zoo with his kid, and a woman starts screaming from offscreen that her kid fell into the Lion enclosure, and Hoffman's character is once again called on to be a hero [after shouting at the woman to find the damn Zookeeper or something], so he says to his son, 'here, hold my shoes', so as not to be identified afterwards, and the movie ends.
Not only was he a nut [although I can see the method within his madness], he was a movie-buff. Definitive proof that not only does God not exist, but that Dustin Hoffman created the universe.