last night at the daily show was an absolute blast.
if you’ve never gone to a taping of anything (i never had) then you should go if you ever get a chance. it’s a real experience.
we were advised via email to arrive at the studio one hour before the doors opened at 5:00. we got there at 3:30, just in case, and it was a good thing we did. people were already lined up all the way down the outside of the building. we got in fine, but not many behind us did.
we were let in about 5:15–went through security and into a holding room where we stayed until about 6:15.
it was a long afternoon, but it actually kind of flew by. anticipation will do that to you.
we were visited by an intern, who told us to turn off our cellphones and be nice to jon and don’t be an idiot or we will throw you out and all that. when we got into the studio, we had great seats to see the show–third row directly across from jon’s desk.
tv makes everything look much nicer than it is. the studio and the props looked kind of cheesy in person–tatty and dirty and sparse. we sat for a while, and then the warm-up guy came out and got everyone laughing and yelling and cheering and such.
then jon came out and answered audience questions. he’s a genuinely funny guy, and is funny spontaneously as well as when working from a script. he made everyone’s dopey questions seem funny, and even made the dopey questioners seem funny as well. and then the theme music played and the taping started.
it was a great night to be there. it was halloween, so lots of people had dressed up. and they don’t tape on fridays, which meant that monday’s show covered friday’s news along with monday’s. and of course, last friday was the big scooter libby indictment day, and monday was the supreme court announcement day, so there were big big stories to cover.
i have the show tivoed so i’ll see it tonight, but it will be interesting to see how different it seems on tv. live it was hysterically funny. dl hughley was the guest, and i love him from his appearances on the bill maher show on hbo. he’s funnier and more incisive there, because he has more time to be, but he was pretty good last night too. jon did his pieces on the current news, and there were a couple of “live” segments with this person and that person.
it was all over far too quickly, especially considering how much time it took to get in there.
but we had a blast.