This article reads like a parody of something, but I can't figure out what.
The Best Lips Ever Asked to Zip
By DAN BARRY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/06/nyregion/06ABOU.html
As Steve Herbst walks the crowded streets of this city, he possesses the strange knowledge that he can whistle better than anyone he passes. If you challenged him to a whistle-off, he would look you square in the eye and blow you away with a three-octave range. Mozart, Brubeck, Sondheim; you name it, he does it. The man can whistle.
But his is a loner's art. He practices until his dog, Sparky, is tired of walking; until his wife, Melinda, wonders what silence sounds like; until his colleagues at work ask him to close his door. And it is not as though he can jam with other whistlers in his East Side neighborhood.
"I'm not the only whistler in New York City," he said. "But name another whistler in New York City."
Whistling was once an enviable talent. Some of us used to swing to the sounds of the Big Band whistler Elmo Tanner, or nuzzle and coo to Fred Lowery whistling "Gypsy Love Song" on the stereo. The act of whistling may not have been considered ladylike, but if you were a man, and you could whistle — well, brother, pucker up.
But something happened. Society's appreciation for the art form turned to annoyance and, eventually, to, "Will you knock it off already?"
Whistlers came to be seen as odd. Fifty years ago, a man could stroll down Second Avenue whistling "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top," and no one would blink. If he did that today, some outreach worker would hand him a sandwich and ask if he needed to talk to someone.
Mr. Herbst, a whistler for 50 of his 57 years, has given a lot of thought to the reasons for whistling's decline. He has decided that boom boxes and portable disc players and cellphones have encroached upon those moments we once reserved for ourselves. "People don't entertain themselves anymore," he said, as he demonstrated another talent: cracking knuckles.
"You have a whole generation, the baby-boomer generation, that basically doesn't know whistling," he said. "And the children that this generation has produced, they don't have anybody setting an example for them like my father did for me."
Mr. Herbst's father, Allan, whistled on the way to his job as a Wall Street trader, whistled down in his woodworking shop, whistled while driving his Studebaker. Young Steven took up the habit, and by the time he was 10, he could do something no other kid on his block could do: whistle his way through every section of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf."
He whistled and sang with the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club, but chose not to pursue a career in professional whistling in favor of one in recruitment advertising. Setting aside the whistler's life was not a difficult choice, he admitted. "There just didn't seem to be enough of a call for it."
Mr. Herbst continued to whistle at weddings and parties, though, and felt his competitive juices stir whenever he saw an international grand master of whistling performing on "The Tonight Show." In 1994, he packed his bags, puckered his lips, and flew to Louisburg, N.C., for the annual International Whistlers Competition.
"I thought I'd go down and clean up," he said. "I came in fifth."
Mr. Herbst returned again and again to Louisburg, confident that his mastery of classical and popular, jazz and blues, would someday earn him the recognition he deserved. Why so persistent? "If you have the chance to be the world champion at something, that's worth taking a look at," he said. "Whistling is something I'm better at than almost anybody in the world — anybody you're going to meet."
LAST year he finally won the International Grand Champion award, and this year he was named International Whistling Entertainer of the Year. He is proud of these accomplishments: trophies adorn a corner of his apartment, and his status as a grand champion is reflected in business cards stored in a gold holder.
But it is not all about ego. Mr. Herbst sees himself as an ambassador of whistling, and has adopted the motto, "Whistling is an idea whose time has returned." He appears in local clubs, auditions for commercials (they usually opt for a clarinet), and released a CD of his whistled interpretations of Broadway tunes.
He also promotes the art form simply by whistling in public, out in the street. Sometimes people give him the fish eye and sometimes they thank him, saying they just don't hear much whistling anymore.
There are signs that whistling is on a rebound, though. The other day, Mr. Herbst walked along Second Avenue, loudly whistling a perfectly pitched "Bring Him Home" from "Les Miserables." Not one person told him to knock it off.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 11 August 2003 17:34 (twenty-two years ago)
five years pass...
two years pass...