life of andyman

So I visited Bloomington again this weekend. I went with Morgan to see a guy named Ira Glass put on a sort-of show at the auditorium. He was very entertaining: funny, charming, thoughtful, incredibly intelligent, and whatnot.

He’s got a show on NPR called “This American Life.” At the time I’d never heard the show, but I listened to my first episode ever. But this show has a crazy cult following, and get this: they have statistics from that show saying that the *average* amount of time that 1.7 million people listen to the hour-long show is 46 minutes. What that means is, something like 86% of people who turn on the show, listen to the entire thing.

Anyhow, I listened to my first episode on streaming audio tonight. It was very entertaining, but the reason I’m telling y’all about it is one of the topics of one of the shows. There’s this group called “Improv Everywhere” that pulls “pranks” of sorts. The goals of these pranks, the mission, if you will, is to give the “victims” unforgettable memories and make them happy. Here’s a few of the missions I’ve read about.

1. They found an obscure band who’s playing a show where they didn’t think anyone will show up. Then, they downloaded their songs off the internet from the band’s website. Then, they had 35 people memorize the music, attend the concert, and act like adoring fans.
2. At each stop on a subway train’s route, a few people get on the subway not wearing any pants. A few more at the next stop, and more at the next, ’till there’s about 15 people in the subway car not wearing any pants. Then, at a final stop, a “vendor” gets on the train, with a cart full of pants, and is trying to sell pants to anyone interested. No one is interested.
3. And, my personal favorite of the ones I’ve seen so far: about a dozen of the members practice and practice a normal, everyday 5 minute scene where they act like normal people. They all practice their parts to memorization. Then, they go to a Starbucks in NY, and act the scene again and again, repeating every last detail every five minutes, until they had acted out the same 5-minute loop 12 times–exactly one hour, then they all leave. (Of course, they have someone hiding a camera, recording the whole thing.)

Anyway, this is, like, one of the cooler things I have ever heard of, and something like ideas that I’ve had of my own of always wanting to do something like this. Perhaps I’ll try one some time.

Here’s “This American Life”:
www.thislife.org

Here’s Improv Everywhere:
www.improveverywhere.com