It's a drawing of this random guy falling off of Big Ben and holding onto one of the clock's hands. If you see it, I saw him draw the person.
He's quite funny in person, and has a very sarcastic sense of humor to deal with all the annoying people who walk by. Perhaps the funniest was an old lady who came by and asked him "Are you influenced at all by Dali?" To which he replied: "No, Dali was a pretentious bastard."
She then made some fuss over him, finally asking "Well, what does your drawing mean?" Voice dripping with sarcasm, he simply said "It means if you are falling off of Big Ben, hang on."
She walked away, muttering to herself.
For those of you who don't know who Beever is, you may recognize his work:
Sean and I had fun yesterday, walking around and visiting a few museums. Hit the Tate Modern, which had a kinda cool exhibit about modern cities and their growth. One showcase we really liked was three video screens in a room with a guy running along different sidewalks with a drumstick hitting different things and recording the sounds... the combination of the three videos was cool. Mostly we just walked around making fun of pointless modern designs.
Then went to Coventy Gardens and watched several street performers for a few hours, all of varying skills. Some were amazing - trick juggling while balancing on a non-taunt rope; others were just plain funny. Most amusing were the balloon animal 'helicopter' which looked just like a poodle - given to a disappointed kid. When everyone complained to him he responded "What? Haven't you ever been to the Tate?"
Another guy juggled five balls at once - two normal ones and three stuck together as one. This guy was part of a duo and they were excellent... incredible at entertaining the crowd, making jokes up as they went. Whenever they saw someone taking pictures they'd stop what they were doing and immediately pose themselves in ridiculous positions. Perhaps the craziest thing they did, which I'm sure they made up on the spot, was drag a lady out to pose with them, deciding that they weren't good looking enough, pulling out a man from the crowd to pose with her, then deciding that something was still missing, and then stealing a stroller from the crowd to throw in front of the man and the woman for the picture. We're going back to watch more later tonight.
Then saw the Lord of the Rings musical. Not knowing what to expect I had an open mind, and I loved it. It was really cool how they set everything up, and they really did manage to capture the story and make a good show out of it. Some of the songs weren't up to par - it might have been better as a play, as for the most part the spoken scenes were the best. However, they had Galadriel in the role of a background singer for much of the show, she'd be floating in the air singing out in elvish or English, and she had a beautiful voice even if we couldn't always understand her.
The highlight, musically, was the song Sam, Frodo and Gollum sang one night while resting. Speaking of Gollum, he was definitely the best actor I've seen on stage. Seen many musicals, but he was the first actor in a musical I've seen get a standing ovation for exiting the stage without singing a note. He did things with his body that I didn't know was possible - he was almost as good, if not better than, the movie's gollum at capturing the insanity and duality between Smeagol and Gollum. The most fun scenes were the epic ones, however, when the music was loud, the lights were flashing and stage sets complex and fascinating. Weathertop, the Balrog, the orc fights - all were super cool.
I also liked how they set the story up. To tell the story properly as a musical they had to cut a lot out and change a lot, but it worked very well. For instance, they combined Gondor and Rohan into The Land of Men, and had Boromir's father be the one under Saruman's spell that Aragorn frees. The story still had much of the same power and joy, but fit perfectly into a three hour musical.
Tonight we're going to see Spamalot, which will be completely different and just as fun.
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