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Thursday, May 11, 2006 By Amy I awoke at the heart attack-inducing hour of 5:30am because my brother wakes up for school everyday at 6 and I knew I had to get a head start before him. After showering, getting ready and calling to make sure Melissa was awake, I was ready to go before 7am. Early, even. I was excited. It was rainy and gross, but I bought rain ponchos the day before, so I figured we'd be ok. Boy oh boy, was I wrong. But I'll get to that. Melissa picked me up and we stopped at McDonalds to get some breakfast and White Hen to get the paper and some beverages. We then parked the car at Video Village and walked across the street to the Richton Park Metro station, bought our tickets and got on our train. Doing that was probably a billion times easier than driving and I don't know why we don't take the train more often. Seriously. Anyway, we got to the Chicago Theater at about 8:45. We were told where to wait and there were about 20-ish people already there. Cool. So at 9, they started checking us in. They gave us our tickets and sent us to the line in which we'd wait for the rest of the day. It was at State and Lake, under the EL (which was worse than being where we were originally because all the wind was getting caught under there and it was just so worse). It was cold and windy and rainy and horrible. But we were guaranteed to see Conan, so we were pumped. This feeling faded throughout the day because when you're standing in the rain and wind and cold for say, 6 or so hours, it's really not all that fun. I could stand waiting. I could. We brought word searches, cards and other things to do. But it was so cold we didn't even want to move. Plus everything would have gotten wet. The ponchos helped, but we still longed for an umbrella. Eventually, I walked down the street and bought one. It helped for quite awhile until it kept turning inside out. But we used it until we got to go in and then tossed it. Either way we were soaked to the bone. Everything in our purses was soaked and most of our bodies were numb. But it was for Conan! Some guy was like, "I'm probably going to get pneumonia, but I'm getting it for Conan!" Melissa and I decided if we did get pneumonia or something amputated due to hypothermia, we were definitely making shirts that proclaimed "I got pneumonia for Conan O'Brien" or "I Lost My Toes for Conan O'Brien." You get the idea. We waited for what seemed like forever and finally we were allowed to enter the theater. We were in the center aisle, row 11. It was so awesome. The show was fantastic. We could see Conan so clearly it was amazing. We could see all the facial expressions of everyone, everything. The Sears Tower dressed in Sears clothing still amuses me and while I wish he would have body surfed by us, he was sent down the aisle next to us. John C. Reilly and Conan's duet was amazing, and John Mayer is even cuter close up. Max Weinberg and the Weinberg 7 play before the show and during the breaks and they are amazing. The only beef I have with the entire process is the fact that the ticket guarantees admission, but not what seat you'll have. Would it have been that hard to have some Ticketmaster printed tickets with seat numbers and everything? Give out those and wristbands, tell everyone when to be back, and then you're set. No huge lines everywhere, no people getting sick, no people waiting forever, no people pushing, shoving and running in order to get a decent seat, etc. There wasn't too much pushing and shoving, but there definitely was some. And when you wait 6+ hours you really don't to see people who waited waaaaay less get better seats than you. Especially when it's freezing. But oh well, what can you do? The important part was that it was a blast and we were close. I watched it last night and while we didn't really see us, there were a few crowd pans where Melissa and I caught glances of ourselves. I wish I lived in New York. I would attend his tapings all the time. |