True story, the guy then proceeded to play “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music.” He was actually pretty decent.
Posts Tagged ‘busker’
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Sometimes I try not to respond to street performer’s music too much. It makes me feel less guilty if I don’t give them money.
I’m thinking specifically if the old Chinese guy at Union Square playing what looks like an electric saxophone. I feel like whenever I see him he’s playing “The Godfather” theme. I know it’s a popular song in general so a lot of street performers play it, but do I always happen to be passing by when he’s playing it? How many times a day does he play it?
This comic is also a reference to the Joshua Bell Experiment. If you’re not familiar an experiment was done in Washington D.C. where they took Joshua Bell, who is one of the very top violinists in the entire WORLD and had him perform in the subway in Washington D.C. They wanted to see if people would recognize remarkable talent then stop and listen. Essentially he played for about 45 minutes and of the 1097 people who passed by only one person recognized him. Very few stopped to listen at all. He made about $32.
Actually the song was “Silent Night” but I think the really REALLY Christmas-y songs are more annoying. Actually scratch that, they’re all annoying. I think the thing is that as soon as Christmas feels like it no longer takes forever to arrive and instead sneaks up on you, the holiday spirit is mostly gone. Actually, it’s more like once you start getting lots of people presents it just becomes stress. Plus now I’m more aware of how hearing annoying Christmas music is to the people around me who don’t celebrate it. Overall, not much stuff that’s amazingly spectular about the holiday season anymore.
Presents are still nice, getting days off of work are nice, parties at work are nice and seeing family is good too. But just the environment it creates with all the decorations, music and stuff that’s hard to avoid just walking down the street just tedious and irritating. Maybe I’m just a Scrooge but lately this is how I’ve felt during the holidays. I haven’t even been in a bad mood or anything, I just realized it when I heard the guy playing “Silent Night” in the subway on his clarinet that it didn’t inspire any sort of fun holiday feelings. Plus when I was walking around Rockerfeller Center I just wanted to get away from all the ENORMOUS CROWDS of people. Bleah.
This was me almost verbatim on the way back to my apartment. I don’t talk to myself outloud, but I did see a steel drum player playing “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic and I did indeed want to gag myself with a spoon.
Tourists with camcorders amuse me to no end. As a person who owns a camcorder and has taken it with himself traveling I know that no one ever watches these videos ever again. Even if it were edited down to be a little more interesting. Photos are my weapon of choice for memories of a trip that I took. I first learned this when I took my camcorder to Otakon one year that I went. When watching the video with my friends it was a lot of “Wait! Go back! Aw shoot, you didn’t get a better angle of that person??” I never revisited that video again past that first initial screening which consisted mostly of fast forwarding.
Subsequent years I went to Otakon I took photos which I’ve looked at numerous times since, either because I wanted to go back and look at a certain costume or I was quickly browsing through my photo album. Photos are nice because they’re quick to go through plus the moment is usually better reproduced because the lighting is better.
Yet whenever I go to Times Square, I see all sorts of guys shooting video while they’re walking down the street, walk signals and all. Then you have the guys who are videotaping street performers. No doubt complete with shaky camera movements, obscure wideshots and horrendous sound that can’t hope to capture any pure enjoyment you might receive from paying attention to the live action instead of the LCD frame on your camera. This is why whenever I see this I always want to say to them to enjoy the moment, because if you’re not paying attention then, you’re missing the entire show.
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