Friday, January 20, 2006

NYC, Baby!



This week, I was fortunate enough to spend three nights in New York City, all on the company dime. My boss was in town from Baton Rouge because he had to give us our 2005 Year End Evaluations in person. As a surprise, I registered to win tickets to see a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman, and to my surprise, I actually got them.

Kim from the show called me last Tuesday, and told me that I had to call Bethany to arrange for the tickets. I called Bethany and had to answer a trivia question to get the tickets. The question was, where does Rupert Jee work? If you don't know the answer, then you have obviously never seen the show.

I was told to show up at the Ed Sullivan Theater between 3-4pm on Tuesday with my guest and our IDs, and tell them that we were on Bethany's gold list. We would get further instructions from there.

We got there around 3:10 after a couple of slices at Famous Original Ray's Pizza on Broadway. (Damn, real NY pizza kicks ass!) We were 16th & 17th in line, and were handed an information sheet to fill out. We had to put our contact info, and anything that we had that could be used for show and tell, including the story behind the item (I listed an NHL All Star game program that was autographed by Wayne Gretzky while we were playing Blackjack at Caesars in Atlantic City. A story for another timeā€¦). We handed in the sheets, waited in the line until 3:30, and were led in to pick up the tickets. We were instructed to come back at 4:30 and get in the red rope line in order of our ticket numbers.

So to kill the hour, we went over and met Rupert Jee at the Hello Deli. Then we went to the bar Gallagher's Steak House and knocked back a couple of Black and Tans and ate homemade potato chips. When we got back at 4:30, we waited outside for another 20 minutes, then waited in the hall for another 20 minutes before we were finally let in to the theater. I thought that we were assured good seats by virtue of our low ticket numbers.

I was wrong. When we went in, the first five rows were already filled with people who were apparently more important than me. We were seated in the sixth row, all the way at the far right side of the stage. It looked like we had a great angle at Dave's desk, but then the camera crew started moving things around, and we got to stare at their backs for nearly the entire show. We were so far over that when they "panned" the audience at the opening, the camera didn't even pick us up. We were, however, about 10 feet from Alan Kalter, which was pretty cool.

You often hear Dave's guests talk about how cold it is in the studio, and they are not joking. It was probably colder in there than it was outside. One camera operator was wearing a full length down coat during the whole show. Anyway, a hack comedian came out to "fluff" the crowd, then the band came out, sans Paul Shaffer. They played a couple of tunes and sounded exceptional, then Paul came out and joined them for one last song. A couple of minutes later, Biff popped out to say hello. Finally, Dave came out and lamented about his beloved Indy Colts and their "Little Dutch boy" kicker. Classic Dave!

Now the show began with the classic monologue. Pretty funny stuff, but you could see that Dave was a little annoyed. When he got back to his desk, he started a gag with Rupert, but they had the shot set up wrong, so they did a second take. Dave told them what was wrong, but when they did the second take, the same problem was there. He was so pissed that he started shaking his desk back and forth really hard. He spilled his coffee all over the place, and they had to stop and shoot it again. The rest of the show went pretty well the way it was on TV. There was no Top Ten List and Tatum O'Neal was a pretty lame guest, but what would you expect from someone who hasn't made a decent movie since The Bad News Bears?

Overall, it was something worth experiencing just to see the behind the scenes stuff. My boss liked it, which is great considering that layoffs are starting in two weeks, and he might have a say in who goes. Besides, a trip to NYC is a lot like sex; Even if it's bad, it's still pretty good. (Especially when it's free!)


Comments:
You are so lucky I tried to get tickets but never did.
 
Ohhhhh, I am SO EFFING ENVIOUS of you right now. Trying to convince NW Guy that we do a long NYC weekend this Spring. Too fun.
 
Like I said, it's even better on the company dime!
 
Gallaghers Steak house rocks !!..I used to work across from Radio City and while leaving work I'd just bump into people...although no one I got all giddy about...Tony Bennett one time..Dave Letterman another time when he used to tape from the top of Rock Center..we had a perfect view of the Christmas tree lighting every year from up on the 27th floor...NY is magical at times, other times..eh, not so great LOL
Thanks for stopping by my blog
Have a great weekend !!
 
I am so jealous man. NYC is a great place to visit. I miss having my father-in-law live there. It still sounds like fun to watch the show. I can't believe it really is cold in there. It must be tough to heat a theatre that large. Thanks for sharing your story.
 
Absolutely freezing, Egan. And Dave kept taking his jacket off during the commercials!
 
Huh, glad to see he has a sense of humor about it.
 
The theater is actually larger than I thought it would be. His studio at NBC was considerably smaller.
 
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