Today is the one-week anniversary of The Funny Looking Clouds (And Light) Over Manhattan At Sunset. I've reviewed the (many) videos on YouTube of this event, and found my favorite. It includes not only the clouds, but two fixtures of the Lower East Side: a manic pixie dream girl who opines about the meaning of the clouds ("I love that he's celebrating...crazy trilogy of death and God is talking to us") and an old man walking around without a shirt:
When my friends and I left a bar on Allen street to investigate why everyone on the street was taking pictures of the sky and saw the clouds, we reached for our own cameras before realizing, wait, nevermind, it'll be all over the internet in an hour. And it was. I love that! We can just go through life, enjoying it, without feeling the burden of having to document every moment of collective awe. We enjoyed the clouds, and watching the people watching the clouds, and then went inside and finished our beers with total faith that we didn't have to do anything -- everyone else was on this. It's like how we've all outsourced at least a little brain space to google and wikipedia. We don't own the knowledge but we know where to find it, and we don't own pictures of the Radiohead concert or the rainbow or whatever (or have to miss out on the full experience of each because we're filming them), but we will in an hour or two. What strange times we live in, with what strange clouds!
Are those clouds strange? I guess so. I agree that it is nice to know that other people have things covered on the recording end of things. My favorite line was someone in the background saying they looked like gnocchi. Yum.
Posted by: Joel | July 03, 2009 at 02:47 PM
I love how so many people stopped to observe natural beauty. Oh, and how some guy yelled something about Farrah and MJ...no beautiful moment would be complete without that guy.
Posted by: merkinsocks | July 03, 2009 at 07:37 PM
Haha, Manhattan is craaazy.
Posted by: Niamh | July 04, 2009 at 09:22 AM
if i saw those things, i'd use the end of the world as an excuse to fuuuck.
awesome.
Posted by: becca | July 04, 2009 at 03:28 PM
That video is so dream-like... it's kind of beautiful.
Posted by: Rich | July 05, 2009 at 05:54 AM
The girl wasn't opining on the clouds. She was repeating what the crazy guy was shouting as he walked down the street - something about Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon all dying "on the same day" - ie: a trilogy of death. I think that girl only wishes she was a manic pixie dream girl. She probably owns cats and reads Popular Science.
Posted by: torontot | August 01, 2009 at 11:40 AM