Taping Report for January 7th, 2010
Two taping reports in this community within the past week? Amazingly yes! I attended the show for the first time on Thursday.
Originally, I had gotten tickets for my sister, her friend, and myself for Wednesday’s show. (My sister and her friend were visiting, I live on Long Island.) The tickets said to get there from 3:30 to 4:00pm to get in line. We got there at 3:50pm and after almost an hour in the freezing cold were told that they reached the limit and we were cut off. It sucked.
So! I checked the ticket request page like a maniac the next morning until I managed to get another three reserved and got to the line by 2:45pm. I was very close to the front (27th, as I found when they handed out tickets) and waited until my sister and her friend joined me just after 4:00. So if you’re coming from a far distance to make the show? Get there latest 3:30 if you want to make sure you get in. Bring a book or a friend for conversation. :) You’re allowed to hold places for people up until 4:30; even a minute after that they’re shown to the very back of the line. My sister brought me food and hot tea and we held spaces for each other while we visited the bathrooms they have downstairs.
Around 4:30 they came around and passed out our tickets and gave us the spiel on what can and can’t be inside. We passed through security around 5:15, and were then herded in. We got good seat, third row up in the center section, but most seats are good, I’d say. The capacity for the place is around 230 people, so I’d guess the audience is about 200. We sat and waited for everyone to be seated and listened to their music. It’s fascinating to see the set in real life and to see how everything’s laid out.
Finally the warm up guy came out (don’t remember his name) and was quite hilarious. Joked with people about what they did for a living; about the first three people were all students and he jokingly asked a middle-aged guy what he was, to which the guy answered “teacher”. That guy was a teacher and child psychiatrist and Warm Up Guy started talking about how he had a problem with his 10 year old in school and how he and his wife had a debate on whether or not the son should get the sex-ed talk at school. (He said aside to the rest of us, “They rest of the show will be funnier, but I actually have questions for this guy!”) He thought it was too early for his kid. (“Forget about the small Jew, I need questions answered. Seriously, he’s like this tall.” *mimes a foot tall person*) Child Psychiatrist thought it was better that he heard it from adults rather than classmates. He made us in the audience do a poll, and the majority of us sided with Child Psychiatrist and Warm Up Guy’s wife. And I have officially gone on for too long about that. But the guy was clever and kept it funny, even when he did go wildly off on a tangent.
Then Jon came out! He thanked us for coming out in the cold and joked how “at least it’s not as cold as yesterday, where only one person in the line died. The audience cut him open and crawled inside. In a way, it brought them all closer together.” Then he took some questions.
One person asked if when he prepared for interviews (Jon interrupted, “Prepared? Have you seen this show?”) for people who write books, how much does he read? Jon said that he reads both covers, but seriously that it ranges, depending on how much he is interested in the subject. And that John Yoo’s book was going to fuck up his weekend. :)
Another asked who were his favorite people to interview, which Jon said were the people who you could tell were genuinely good people, like Desmond Tutu.
Someone else pried a bit more than the people in charge probably like when they asked him if he was ever arrested (“Whoa, are you going to serve me papers or something?”) and cited a Denis Leary interview about punching holes in walls with dildos when they used to do stand-up. Jon was taken aback and got amusingly ramble-ly at this. “What? No, there were no punching holes in walls with dildos! Well, we were playing wiffleball with dildos, but... the story was told differently!” He said he had been arrested back when he was in college when he was coaching high school soccer and had bought champagne for outside a parking lot of some sort. But never since then. Those are all the questions I remember.
Then they started the show! I tried to watch Jon directly rather than the monitors and was glad I did. Some of us started laughing a bit ahead of time when he started pulling the props out like the popcorn bag. I wasn’t sure of the protocol for clapping for the correspondents when they come out; I was all set to clap for Samantha Bee but everyone else kept silent so I did nothing. We all gave her a hand when she stepped off stage for the commercial break, though. They played the Foo Fighters' "Best of You" during that break and Jon did a little head banging halfway through. :) Maggie Gyllenhaal was very pretty in real life and was very playful. I agree with Jon, she was a much better sport than Hugh Grant about not seeing every film that every actor’s pushing.
After the Moment of Zen, Jon came out and asked us to give a hand to the crew, who has been tackling the switch to shooting in HD (which is apparently like a whole other language), all while their regular director is out with the swine flu. He then urged us to come back another time, when it was warmer. Got out at 7:10 and then headed home.
It was a blast to finally attend a taping and I can't wait to do it again some other time. Wow, I wrote a lot more than I was planning to. Hope this wasn't too tedious to read!
Originally, I had gotten tickets for my sister, her friend, and myself for Wednesday’s show. (My sister and her friend were visiting, I live on Long Island.) The tickets said to get there from 3:30 to 4:00pm to get in line. We got there at 3:50pm and after almost an hour in the freezing cold were told that they reached the limit and we were cut off. It sucked.
So! I checked the ticket request page like a maniac the next morning until I managed to get another three reserved and got to the line by 2:45pm. I was very close to the front (27th, as I found when they handed out tickets) and waited until my sister and her friend joined me just after 4:00. So if you’re coming from a far distance to make the show? Get there latest 3:30 if you want to make sure you get in. Bring a book or a friend for conversation. :) You’re allowed to hold places for people up until 4:30; even a minute after that they’re shown to the very back of the line. My sister brought me food and hot tea and we held spaces for each other while we visited the bathrooms they have downstairs.
Around 4:30 they came around and passed out our tickets and gave us the spiel on what can and can’t be inside. We passed through security around 5:15, and were then herded in. We got good seat, third row up in the center section, but most seats are good, I’d say. The capacity for the place is around 230 people, so I’d guess the audience is about 200. We sat and waited for everyone to be seated and listened to their music. It’s fascinating to see the set in real life and to see how everything’s laid out.
Finally the warm up guy came out (don’t remember his name) and was quite hilarious. Joked with people about what they did for a living; about the first three people were all students and he jokingly asked a middle-aged guy what he was, to which the guy answered “teacher”. That guy was a teacher and child psychiatrist and Warm Up Guy started talking about how he had a problem with his 10 year old in school and how he and his wife had a debate on whether or not the son should get the sex-ed talk at school. (He said aside to the rest of us, “They rest of the show will be funnier, but I actually have questions for this guy!”) He thought it was too early for his kid. (“Forget about the small Jew, I need questions answered. Seriously, he’s like this tall.” *mimes a foot tall person*) Child Psychiatrist thought it was better that he heard it from adults rather than classmates. He made us in the audience do a poll, and the majority of us sided with Child Psychiatrist and Warm Up Guy’s wife. And I have officially gone on for too long about that. But the guy was clever and kept it funny, even when he did go wildly off on a tangent.
Then Jon came out! He thanked us for coming out in the cold and joked how “at least it’s not as cold as yesterday, where only one person in the line died. The audience cut him open and crawled inside. In a way, it brought them all closer together.” Then he took some questions.
One person asked if when he prepared for interviews (Jon interrupted, “Prepared? Have you seen this show?”) for people who write books, how much does he read? Jon said that he reads both covers, but seriously that it ranges, depending on how much he is interested in the subject. And that John Yoo’s book was going to fuck up his weekend. :)
Another asked who were his favorite people to interview, which Jon said were the people who you could tell were genuinely good people, like Desmond Tutu.
Someone else pried a bit more than the people in charge probably like when they asked him if he was ever arrested (“Whoa, are you going to serve me papers or something?”) and cited a Denis Leary interview about punching holes in walls with dildos when they used to do stand-up. Jon was taken aback and got amusingly ramble-ly at this. “What? No, there were no punching holes in walls with dildos! Well, we were playing wiffleball with dildos, but... the story was told differently!” He said he had been arrested back when he was in college when he was coaching high school soccer and had bought champagne for outside a parking lot of some sort. But never since then. Those are all the questions I remember.
Then they started the show! I tried to watch Jon directly rather than the monitors and was glad I did. Some of us started laughing a bit ahead of time when he started pulling the props out like the popcorn bag. I wasn’t sure of the protocol for clapping for the correspondents when they come out; I was all set to clap for Samantha Bee but everyone else kept silent so I did nothing. We all gave her a hand when she stepped off stage for the commercial break, though. They played the Foo Fighters' "Best of You" during that break and Jon did a little head banging halfway through. :) Maggie Gyllenhaal was very pretty in real life and was very playful. I agree with Jon, she was a much better sport than Hugh Grant about not seeing every film that every actor’s pushing.
After the Moment of Zen, Jon came out and asked us to give a hand to the crew, who has been tackling the switch to shooting in HD (which is apparently like a whole other language), all while their regular director is out with the swine flu. He then urged us to come back another time, when it was warmer. Got out at 7:10 and then headed home.
It was a blast to finally attend a taping and I can't wait to do it again some other time. Wow, I wrote a lot more than I was planning to. Hope this wasn't too tedious to read!