I got out of the train station at Bowling Green and immediately saw people in colored t-shirts running to catch the 2:30 ferry to Governor's Island. I was going to the MP3 Experiment 5 in New York City, an event running 5 years long and hosted by Improv Everywhere (Frozen Grand Central anyone?)
Here's the deal: I downloaded a special MP3 song from their site and put it on my iPod to take with me and headed down to the ferry to Governor's Island where it was taking place. The ferry was every half hour and I had just missed the 2:30 and had to wait in line with a bunch of strangers for another half hour. Luckily, it was barely raining, more like a mist, and I was glad because I didn't want the weather to ruin such a cool event. We arrived with about four minutes to spare before everyone started playing the MP3 at exactly 3:15 PM. Their site even had an atomic clock that you could match your watch to. Btw, everyone had to wear either a red, blue, green, or yellow colored t-shirt. I wore a blue shirt.
3:15 came and I pressed play along with 600-900 other people. Music starts and Steve's voice comes on. Steve was the guy who guided us through the whole thing. He wants us to do some stretching. That's a great stretch girl in the blue. Wow, you sure are flexible, man in the yellow shirt. Next Steve wants us to see how acute our senses are. Touch your nose with your right hand. Touch your nose with your left hand. We then walk in line with our arms out. We stop and he wants us to do a "quick geography test." We point to where our house is, we point to the Empire State Building, we point to Staten Island, we point to Nicaragua. No one really has any idea where any of these things are so I just point my hands in any direction. Now cross the color boundaries and hug another participant wearing a different color t-shirt. It was pretty weird hugging some one you really don't know, but everyone did it anyway. Now hug an inanimate object. I picked up some wet leaves and squeezed them in my hand. Now hug an animal. Find an animal and give it a hug. Everyone was kind of confused here but I saw a bunch of people running in one direction and crowding around something. I realized it was this person in a bear mascot costume I had seen at the front of the line when I was waiting for the ferry. Clever. It was so crazy I almost fell over and I had to hold on to other people. Next we gave thumbs up and high fives to people not participating. I high-fived some guy driving a small golf cart thing. Steve then says we'll be doing an Epic Battle later on but we needed to practice first by having a thumb wrestle with some one with a different colored t-shirt. I won all three rounds with this girl who had freakishly small thumbs (it was actually pretty weird.)
We all walked together to the center of the island which took about ten minutes. Steve wanted us to disguise ourselves first by putting our pointer fingers under our noses like idiots.
We then opened umbrellas and spun them around while walking. We stopped and made equilateral triangles with two other people, then squares, then tetris pieces. We opened our umbrellas again to form a canopy that blocked out the sky. It was really cool because everything suddenly became darker. After a bunch more of these crazy activities (there were too many to post here) it was time for our Epic Battle. We split into two different sides, people with red and yellow went one way while people with green and blue went the other. I was psyched out because I realized how many people there were when I looked up.
We blew up balloons that we were supposed to bring and start marching toward the other side while smacking our legs and humming a tune that we learned before. It was time. ATTACK!!! Everyone collided and ran threw each other waving their balloons and trying to "kill" other people. It was absolutely crazy and reminded me of the Union Square pillow fight. After you sustained a lot of hits you had to die dramatically and lie on the ground. It was done. The MP3 Experiment was over and everyone started to head back to the ferry...
Obviously, Improv Everywhere was filming the event and will make a video soon. Expect to see me in it and the video posted here.
