The Bad Lip Reader

This'll be a short one. A weird/annoying one and a funny/obnoxious one.



Okay, so this 40ish woman was watching me play today and gave me a dollar. Right after she drops it in, she looks at my feet and goes, "Your feet. Your feet are really small." I had no idea what to say. No one had ever said that to me before. Also, I'm not sure if it's an insult. Maybe she had a small foot fetish or something. But considering that people assume that you have a small weena if you have small feet, then I should assume that it's not a compliment. Maybe after she told me that I had small feet I should've said, "Your jiggly wigglies. Your jiggly wigglies are really small."



This other one involves the train conductor. A lot of the time when the train is in the station and people are rushing to get on, one set of doors will close before the other set.

So, the back four train's doors will be closed for a few seconds while the front four train's doors are still open. This woman was running to the train and the doors closed in front of her. The conductor leaned out his window and said, "Over here!" and pointed to the open doors to his left. The woman was confused and maybe didn't hear him. She walked the wrong way and was definitely flustered. The conductor then started screaming at her. Perhaps he was mad because he thought she was delaying the train because she walked the wrong way. He kept yelling at her and she said something back like, "Why are you getting so mad at me?" The guy had that 'what a dumb bitch' look on his face.

It would've been fun to get up and give the conductor guy the business, but I decided to do something else. I just sat there, looked right at him and mouthed, "You are a dickhead," over and over. He noticed me looking at him and must've assumed that I also thought the woman was dumb because he gave me a little smile that showed that he appreciated the fact that I saw things the way he did.

Then as I continued to mouth, "You are a dickhead" repeatedly and he continued to believe in his mind that I was saying something like, "Yeah, I also think she is dumb," the guy smiled at me and yelled, "Yeah!" I guess this means that he admits to being a huge schmuck.

I should've known

Here's a funny one, I think. It involves me thinking that I'm clairvoyant and me not shutting up. That's always a bad combo. Mainly it has to do with me thinking that I can tell what type of musician someone is just by looking at them.

So, the other day I was playing Times Square when this dude walked up and listened to me while leaning against a post. I played a Bach cello prelude and caught a few glimpses of him as he watched. He was kind of a hefty fellow and looked a lot like many of the opera singers I've met over the years. So, when I finished the piece I said to him, "Can I ask you a really random question?"

He goes, "Yeah, sure."

"Are you an opera singer?" I asked.

He smiled and said, "Nope."

"Darn," I replied, making an 'aw shucks' facial expression. Then I followed that with something like, "You know, sometimes I think I'm totally psychic and can tell what type of instrument someone plays just by looking at them. Or I can tell if they're a singer or a composer. I mean, some of the time I see someone and right away I can tell that they're a pianist. Perhaps it's got something to do with how they look. Their squirrely little faces or just the fact that they usually just look like huge douchebags."

He responds with, "I'm a pianist."

You Are Also Quite Awesome

Today was a quick one. Two hours and 75 bucks. I can't complain.

I was playing on the N train platform at Times Square when this hot chick walked up to me and said, "You are quite awesome." I didn't know how to try and get the conversation going, so I awkwardly said, "I'm sure that you are also quite awesome at things." She looked at me weird and walked away.

One interesting thing was when I was in the middle of a piece and this woman was walking toward me. She was holding a newspaper and the cover was folded all weird. She was messing with it, trying to get it folded right, but she was having trouble. When I saw her struggle with this, I fucked up the passage I was playing right away. Isn't it wild that simply watching someone mess something up will cause you to also mess up. It's kind of like when you were in high school and your friends said that they were gonna cut a class, then you're like, "Fuck it. I'll cut that shit too." But that's more of a conscious thing, so I guess it's a little different.

One other thing about messing up is that I have a conundrum whenever I see a beautiful woman start to walk my way. Do I concentrate on my playing and not get a good look at her or do I check her out and risk fucking up? Then if I mess up, I make it more obvious that I was gawking at her. To look or not to look? One of the most important questions in the history of man.

First

Hey everyone. So, hello people I know and people I don't know. My name is Matt and I'm a busker (street musician) in New York. I've been playing guitar down in the subways for seven years and it's kind of ridiculous that I haven't started a blog until now. Alrighty.... here goes.

Okay, it's 2010. I started this shite in 2004 and I remember after ten months of busking thinking to myself, "Holy f#$%! Ten months?" It really is like a drug. It doesn't really make me happy, but I keep doing it over and over again.

Today was the typical combination of good and bad stuff. Here was the first crappy thing. These two kids walked up to me. One was about 8 and the other was around 18 or so. I'm assuming that they were brothers. The older one was wearing tough guy sunglasses and had a look on his face that screamed, "I am the shit and don't you forget it!" Anyway, they walk up to me (this was five minutes after I started playing) and see that I don't have any money in my bucket. But I did have a few of my business cards laying in there 'cause sometimes I leave random stuff in my money bucket. So, the 18 year old with the bandana and tough guy sunglasses reaches into my bucket and takes all of my business cards that I left in there, which was probably ten or so. Those cards are about 5 cents each, so he pretty much took fifty cents out of my pocket. This was a big douche move by the guy, but I wasn't about to start and argument with him. But right after he takes all of my business cards, the 8 year old says to, presumably, his older brother, "Mess him up!" With 'him' being me, of course. I want someone to explain something to me. Why are so many kids so obsessed with violence. Video games, movies? I don't feckin' know. The mindset of these kids was pretty much, "Let's steal pointless shit from this busker that will never do us any good and then beat the fuck out of him just 'cause we're bored."

Then about a half hour later, this behemoth of a dude walks up to me and kicks my CDs across the platform. At first I thought he may have done it by accident. But he didn't. He never even looked back at me to see my response. He just kicked my shit all over the place and kept on walking. I hope he ends up as the middle-man in a human centipede. The only positive here was that some old dude was watching me when this happened and then bought my CD 'cause he felt bad for me. I'm not sure that he wouldn't have bought it if the guy didn't kick my CDs, but if I had to bet I'd say that he would've just given me a buck.

Then on the train ride home, these kids were selling cute little stuffed Tyrannosaurus Rexes to the straphangers. Or I should say that they were trying to sell them. These kids were walking up to every single person on the train. If someone was listening to their iPod and couldn't hear them say, "Would you like to buy a Tyrannosaurus Rex?" then the kids would simply place the little stuffed animal directly in front of their face. Imagine you're sitting on the train minding your own business and out of nowhere, it's like Jurassic Park 4 all up in your grill.