So, today is National Anthem Day and just the other day my friend had an odd experience with The National Anthem. We were going out to lunch at Mission BBQ which is a somewhat National chain of BBQ joints (I think they can be found from the East Coast to West Coast, but not everywhere) anyway, he gets there before me as I was tied up here for a bit, so I get there about 10 minutes late and he has an awesome story.
He got there just before noon, grabbed a table and was waiting for me when suddenly a voice interrupts the country music they had playing over the speaker system and says "Please rise to sign the National Anthem". Confused, my friend looks around as everyone begins standing and looking toward the TVs, which just moments before had been playing sports highlights on ESPN. He looks up to the TVs and now they have a digital image of the American Flag waving and everyone begins singing the Anthem in the middle of lunch. Completely blindsided by this turn of events, he sat there dumbfounded for a second until he realized people were shooting dirty looks his way, so he stood up, hand on his heart, and joined in with everyone else.
Not sure why they do this every day at noon, but they do. I don't have an issue with signing the National Anthem at lunch either, it was just really funny how my friend was blindsided by the entire situation as it was probably the last thing he'd expected to do for lunch. If you don't believe me, here is video evidence: Also, TIL that Whitney Houston lip synced her National Anthem performance in this very interesting breakdown of Demi Levato's similarly performed rendition. If you're interestied in music composition or music theory, you'll like this video.
-Jay
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