On Saturday, my evening plans fell through so my mom and I decided to have dinner at a local restaurant. The food is good, and the staff are friendly and welcoming. They do everything they can to compete with the other, similar restaurant down the street. Bless their hearts.
Saturday evening was no exception. They had a violin/erhu/piano player in a full-on tux with tails. His hair was slick, and he played with the passion of a concert violinist. The only problem was that he really was not good at all. When we walked in he was playing some Christmas song on the violin, and he was off-key and flat, to boot. At first I thought I was having a stroke and that the auditory center of my brain had melted, but then I realized my mom was hearing the same thing. Let the giggling begin!
The entertainment moved on to the piano, where he launched into a piece by Mozart, messed it up a few times, stopped and started again, and then trailed into nothing. Ditto with Claire de Lune. After that, it was back to the erhu, which sounded ok to us - we assume he can play that one, and he's dabbling in the other instruments. Then again to his forte, the violin. He played several famous pieces, which we were kind of able to recognize - he would begin by keeping it simple, and do ok (not great, just ok), then his confidence would apparently outswell his skills, and he would take it to the next level, where it all went to shit.
While I realize this makes us horrible people, I have to admit we had the best time and giggled helplessly most of the evening, and walked out with big smiles on our faces. Naturally, we clapped at the end of each number. In fact, I enjoyed the bad playing more than I enjoy good playing: I like to chat with my company during dinner and have fun, not be distracted by good music and then feel obligated to pay attention. This was much, much better. We had no trouble telling the management that we enjoyed the evening's entertainment.

