Mimes and other irritating street performers.
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
No matter where you live, be it London or New York, if you take a trip downtown I guarentee, if you look hard enough, or in fact, if you don't look at all and try to avoid them, you will find a mime, robot or some other breed of street performer. Some are benign, simple folk who will sing you a song in return for a few spare coins, others are evil hellions bent on making your shopping outing a nightmare, these I will classify, describe, and tell you how to deal with.
1. Mimes: By far the most annoying street performer, they will stand on the sidewalk attracting huge crowds of children while they climb up imaginary ladders and lean against metaphysical walls. They usually attire themselves in black and white spandex and wear pale white makeup with two bright red circles on each cheeks. No one knows quiet why they do this, there must however, be a reason. The best way to deal with them is either to cross the street, or if that is not possible, pretend you don't see them. They are not allowed to speak, so if you can't see them, they aren't there.
2. Living Statues: These crafty 'entertainers' paint themselves gold, grey or copper green and sit on pedestalls in parks or courtyards. For hours at a time they will sit and do nothing, then seemingly without warning they jump out of position right in front of some elderly couple, nearly giving them heartattacks. People laugh and applaude at the seniors near-death experiance and the couple give the man buckets of spare change, this too is for an unknown reason. To avoid the embarresment of this happening to you, you have two choices, comment on the weather to every statue you see, which will also give you a good healthy share of embarresment, or you can avoid all statues. Neither of these solutions are perfect, but we do not live in a perfect world.
3. Wheezing Robots: Although these entities are hard to classify, as they fit the descriptions of both Mimes and Living Statues at times, they do have their differences. The Robots paint themselves a steel color and only seem to be capable of moving one joint at a time, giving the impression they have a severe case of hemmeroids. With every movement an unseen sound device releases a loud wheezing noise. With every movement. A bend of the finger, a blink of the eye. Every movement. Not only is it painful to watch these creatures take half an hour to bend over and pick up a peice of paper, it is also an audible nightmare. If you come across one of these, it's time to give up your sanity for a few moments and do the following: Plug your ears, anything will do, a ball of cotton wool, a hotdog, whatever, close your eyes, start yelling that your ears are being attacked by >insert object here< and it is vital that you run as quickly as you can directly through the crowd, and do just that. Run and don't stop running into you stop hitting people. Don't look back.
I hope this entry will help you with your next trip downtown, and I plan to write a whole series of guides to dealing with different groups of people: Telephone salesmen, Jehovas Witnesses (nothing personal, but do you guys have to try and convert us _every_ christmas?), homeless people, door-to-door salesmen, and other non-human entites. I thank you for your patronage.
1. Mimes: By far the most annoying street performer, they will stand on the sidewalk attracting huge crowds of children while they climb up imaginary ladders and lean against metaphysical walls. They usually attire themselves in black and white spandex and wear pale white makeup with two bright red circles on each cheeks. No one knows quiet why they do this, there must however, be a reason. The best way to deal with them is either to cross the street, or if that is not possible, pretend you don't see them. They are not allowed to speak, so if you can't see them, they aren't there.
2. Living Statues: These crafty 'entertainers' paint themselves gold, grey or copper green and sit on pedestalls in parks or courtyards. For hours at a time they will sit and do nothing, then seemingly without warning they jump out of position right in front of some elderly couple, nearly giving them heartattacks. People laugh and applaude at the seniors near-death experiance and the couple give the man buckets of spare change, this too is for an unknown reason. To avoid the embarresment of this happening to you, you have two choices, comment on the weather to every statue you see, which will also give you a good healthy share of embarresment, or you can avoid all statues. Neither of these solutions are perfect, but we do not live in a perfect world.
3. Wheezing Robots: Although these entities are hard to classify, as they fit the descriptions of both Mimes and Living Statues at times, they do have their differences. The Robots paint themselves a steel color and only seem to be capable of moving one joint at a time, giving the impression they have a severe case of hemmeroids. With every movement an unseen sound device releases a loud wheezing noise. With every movement. A bend of the finger, a blink of the eye. Every movement. Not only is it painful to watch these creatures take half an hour to bend over and pick up a peice of paper, it is also an audible nightmare. If you come across one of these, it's time to give up your sanity for a few moments and do the following: Plug your ears, anything will do, a ball of cotton wool, a hotdog, whatever, close your eyes, start yelling that your ears are being attacked by >insert object here< and it is vital that you run as quickly as you can directly through the crowd, and do just that. Run and don't stop running into you stop hitting people. Don't look back.
I hope this entry will help you with your next trip downtown, and I plan to write a whole series of guides to dealing with different groups of people: Telephone salesmen, Jehovas Witnesses (nothing personal, but do you guys have to try and convert us _every_ christmas?), homeless people, door-to-door salesmen, and other non-human entites. I thank you for your patronage.
