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Friday, May 5, 2006 By Sara I just got back from tonight's taping, which was surreal. We arrived at NBC studios at the Mezzanine promptly at 2:00. We were the first in line, number one! We didn't get our tickets until 3:00-ish. Then we came back at 4:15, and stood in a very, very claustrophobic hallway for 15 minutes. They finally took us to the elevators, and that's where I first saw Mr. Ed Norton himself [since he was a guest on that night's show]. I was in a daze because I just got out of the metal detectors, and they just pushed us into the elevator. I didn't realize it was Ed at first, and he was just standing outside of the elevator waiting to get on one to go up, and I got in the elevator and my other friend and my dad were like, HOLY HELL THAT'S ED NORTON! (Mind you, we're all massive Fight Club fans so this was a dream come true). It was only us four in the elevator, I was tearing up, and before the doors closed my dad was pointing at him and freaking out. It was funny. So we got up to the floor off the elevator, and they gave us our complimentary t-shirts. They sent us down a hallway to the studio and told us to stand for about a minute. Then they sent us in. It was so surreal. I've heard that the studio was small, but damn it was tiny. The magic of television, eh? I had an amazing seat - my companions were not so lucky. I sat as close to the aisle as I possibly could, which was a good move on my part because it was directly in front of Conan’s desk. I was in the front row, direct eye line to the desk. It was amazing. (But I was thisclose to getting a handshake from Conan--gah!) The guy next to me who wasn't in my party was a troublemaker. He first got in trouble for listening to his headphones before the show. The warm up act was hilarious; it was Brian - better known as Preparation-H Raymond. Is he always the warm up act? [Editor’s note: Brian is always the warm-up comic!] Anyways, he was funny. Then the band came out, played for a bit, but then I started to get anxious, and every time someone walked out I expected it to be Conan. Finally, he came out, and it was freaking fantastic. I mean, he was right THERE. In person. He's so much skinnier in person, too. He made two guys hug, he hugged one of them. Then he sent the guy up to hug Max, and Max gave him his drum sticks. They gave the other guy cheese and peanut butter crackers, which Conan licked. It was incredible. The show started a little while after that. The monologue was great. I haven't watched the episode yet, so I don't know if they edited it out or not, but during the Kennedy joke, the troublemaker next to me booed. If looks could kill, the man would be dead. Jeff the producer and the security guard gave him the nastiest looks ever. If I were that guy, I would have wet my pants--it was scary. I'm pretty sure everything that happened during the taping made it into the show. There was this crash-test type thing that happened before he came back, and I assume they do that a lot. It was just funny. The end of the show song was great. So that's it. It was fantastic. I have to get my next set of tickets as soon as possible. That's the privilege (if you could call it that) of living in New Jersey. |