Well I headed to NBC to participate in the live audience for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Potentially to be discovered as having an irresistably appealing laugh that needs to be in the laugh track of every comedy show, but honestly just to experience a new adventure - seeing a TV show taping is pretty uniquely Los Angeles. I figured it was something that needed to be on my LA Bucket List. And it was free. Woo!
We got up to the NBC studios super early. The gates opened at 2:30, so we parked in Burbank at about noon, grabbed some food at El Torito, and then headed over to the studios to get in line. I felt kind of ridiculous arriving about an hour and a half ahead, but when we got there, we were already number 35 in line, so at least we weren't the only crazy folks. It wasn't even just wanting to get there early to get a good spot in line to ensure we got in - it is also the crazy Los Angeles traffic. It was a Friday afternoon and you can never tell if it is going to take you an hour or two hours to get across the city. So there Amy and I are at the NBC gate outside of studio 11 where they tape The Tonight Show. Her Dad was in town so he came with us too. :)
And it is ironic that I was checking off an item on my bucket list of things I need to do before I leave LA when I found out my next rotation. Facebook broke the news really. On my phone I got an alert that I had a new wall post. One of the fellow LDPs in my class wrote "Texas! Congrats!" - then immediately deleted it, considering the fact that I might not know yet. And in fact, because it was my 9/80 Friday and because I was sitting minutes away from the Jay Leno taping, I hadn't caught the e-mail from my program manager asking me to call him. I did then call him, and learned it is true! I'm headed to Dallas next. I'll have to make a new list - "things I want to do in Texas before I leave." :)
The Tonight Show was pretty cool. Loved seeing the monologue live. Wish I was there on a Monday so I could watch headlines. :)
The episode's guests were Louis CK, a stand up comedian who was honestly a little too rude and crude and racist to be funny, and Aron Ralston, the hiker who is the inspiration for the movie 127 Hours. We rounded out the evening with musical guest Josh Turner.
Aron Ralston was a very inspirational and interesting guest as he described his unbelievably traumatic choice between living by cutting off his own lower right arm to free himself and death if he remained trapped by the boulder. And he was quite candid - he described going in for a preview of the film with a test audience in disguise. When they got to the amputation, having lived through the actual experience, watching a Hollywood re-enactment of it - while dramatic enough for some viewers to have fainted at the scene -was relatively easy to watch. He sat munching loudly on his popcorn, earning himself dirty looks from the captured, shocked film-goers around him. Want to hear his interview? Click to watch the December 3 episode I watched live.
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