Homeless Guy NAILS Styx Song; He's Now Suddenly Famous

Donald Gould at the piano in Sarasota, Florida. 

I've seen this kind of thing before, but I always like it when it happens.

A homeless guy, the kind of person a lot of us go out of our way to ignore, does something brilliant.

Here, Donald Gould finds a piano in the street in Sarasota, Florida and starts playing the Styx classic "Come Sail Away." He's brilliant.

The video, just uploaded on June 30,  has gone viral, with nearly 6 million views as of Monday morning.

Everybody's talking about him now. He's been all over social and mainstream media over the past few days.

A star is born!

The pianos, like the one Gould found were placed in various areas around Sarasota by the Art and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County.

A follow up video features an interview with Gould, who says he plays the piano on the street every day to collect tips. He used to play the clarinet in the Marine Corps.

Gould says he has been homeless for six or seven years, when the economy tanked and he got laid off. Unemployment benefits kept him afloat for a couple years, but that ended. He says he has a construction background and can do that, but I agree with the woman in the follow up video that maybe a career in music would be better.

A GoFundMe page has been set up for Gould, and that has raised about $29,000 as of Monday morning. So that will at least get a roof over his head.

Here's the video of Gould playing "Come Sail Away."

Plays Of The Day: Awesome Baby Catch: Not So Awesome First Pitch

Two moments have been in the news this week: One was an amazing catch, one was a not so amazing throw.

I love this video of a guy in China who saw a baby teetering on a second floor window ledge during a torrential thunderstorm. The guy positioned himself, the baby fell, and the guy played amazing outfielder of sorts catching a life and death pop fly.

He caught the kid and everything was OK. Watch:


On the opposite side, we have 50 Cent throwing out first pitch at a New York Mets ball game yesterday.

Not so successful, if you ask me, but hey, 50 Cent never claimed to be much of a ball player.
Watch:

See? You Can Make Moving, Entertaining Ads And Still Sell Your Stuff

Readers of this blog know one of my pet peeves is how most advertisements are stupid, lame, boring, insulting.

In a rare, compelling ad, this one from Google,
a granddaughter, right, uses Google
 to fashion a reunion between two men.  n

To this day, I still don't know how annoying people want to make them buy your product our service.

So, as I occasionally do, I give props to advertisements and advertisers who actually do a great job.

In this ad, Google is telling us how wonderful their search engine is, how you can find anything and make anything happen. It's so convenient! So that's them marketing.

But like most of the best advertisements out there,  Google manages to tell a compelling story, in this case in just three and a half minutes.

In the video, we have two elderly men who were best childhood buddies but have been separated for decades, and haven't seen each other in decades, due to political problems in their countries.

Now, things have settled down and the two men have young adult grandkids who use Google to great effect in a loving conspiracy to fashion a reunion.

The video is surprisingly moving. As you begin to watch it, click on the "cc" on the lower right so you can get subtitles in English.

Watch it and judge for yourself: