Kevin's TV Guide (to NYC)

Oh no! A break!

2008-06-13T17:31:00.002-04:00

I'm afraid I have to take off for a few weeks. I've nearly run out of shows. I've had no time because of work, and now I'm roaming Appalachia for the next few weeks. Know that Conan, Tyra, the View, and a mysterious new judge show are on the back-burner. After that, who knows? There are only so many TV shows in New York. But I'm not quitting, at least not yet. As long as there is hope for syndication, I'll be fighting to keep reviewing live TV experiences. I just won't for a few weeks.

The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet

2008-06-05T11:22:00.005-04:00

Breakfast: Au Bon Pain coffee and strangely heartburney danishes (though I shouldn't complain; free breakfast is free breakfast)
Fellow audience: The most white and out-of-town audience yet.
Free gift: a book from "Money Guru Dave Ramsey"

Mike and Juliet are a curious bunch. According to the Times, she is "an attractive over-30 woman who has pursued her career rather than marrying and regrets it...[not a] giggly hot mom like Kelly Ripa; [nor a] model of rectitude and self-sacrifice like Ms. Vieira." She's more than a sad, hot career woman to some, though; unlike her partner, she has a fan blog.

Mike, on the other hand, seems a stalwartly un-self-aware boob full of cheesy, outdated humor. Sample line: when, late in the show, we saw a brief video of a pig poking around with his nose, Mike addressed us when the cameras weren't rolling: "that looks like it hurt his nose. The vet said he'd get him some oik-ment!" That Times article accuses Mike of "leer[ing] at girls like an old stage ham," but I see him as little more than a Fred Willard character come magically to life:

The warm-up guy, apparently a fresh college grad who wants to make it big in TV and won't let a setback like an internship at the Morning Show damper his spirits, gushed about the day's show, and when we responded with tired grumbles instead of enthusiasm, he encouraged us to drink up that coffee. "Hey, it's free!" he said with a boy-next-door smile. "You're gonna love today's show," he gushed. "It's got all kinds of craziness." I seriously doubted that.

We were seated. As we waited for the show to start, I noticed someone had left the camera turned the wrong way. I could see the teleprompter. This is what it read:

SEX CHANGES FOR
KIDS CELL PHONE
PREGNANCY PET
STAR

And that's when I realized this show might bring some spunk.

Five minutes later, Mike and Juliet were in a heated (though pitched) discussion with a female-to-male transvestite, a doctor who specialized in sex-reassignment therapy for adolescents, and a Christian moralist who opposed them. We'd just gotten back from a lead-in to the show where Mike had said, "Coming up next: a hospital that provides sex-changes...for children as young as seven!"

Doctor: Mike, I'd like to clarify something before we get started. I've never heard of a sex change for a seven year old. What we do is delay puberty for 10-12 year olds if they're having serious gender identity issues. That way they can have a little more time to figure out what their gender is, and how they want to respond to that.

Moralist: What's most alarming to me is that so many children can act on a whim and undergo life-altering surgery. They're just not old enough to make that kind of decision.

Transvestite: With all due respect, I was one of those kids. I've known my whole life that I was a man trapped in a woman's body.

Mike: Yes, that's a good point. But still, don't you think that seven is a bit too young for a sex change?

The show was hectic, with our warm-up guy rushing out at every quiet moment to try and entertain us. Asking us audience members to come down for quick dance sessions, to tell jokes, to offer tickets to a free comedy show (this one was actually free), etc. He tried very hard to be entertaining, and was sadly unsuccessful.

The last section was opened with the teaser: "Can cell phones harm your unborn baby?"
They interviewed a random doctor. He said, "essentially, no. The study was done in the 90s and all it proves is that some women of the women who used cell phones back then had children who ended up with behavioral disorder. I would continue recommending pregnant women not to smoke or drink alcohol."

The warm-up guy was trying to get us to laugh again, lamely, when Juliet walked by and threw a comment to us: "cell phones hurt your baby? Give me a break." That bit of honesty gave me a hearty belly laugh.

The warm-up guy looked up at me from a sweaty failed joke, thinking I was laughing at him. "Thank you! See, guys, at least one person up there thinks I'm funny!"

-----

Take one more Fred Willard. For the road:

On the Record with Bob Costas

2008-05-29T18:52:00.011-04:00

I stood outside a midtown hotel waiting for what was to be the classiest television experience yet. I mean, this is Bob Costas doing a panel-style, sports journalism show, and it's for HBO. Unfortunately, the people in line with me weren't quite as refined. I overheard two dudes (Boston sports fans, I might add, so I should have expected):

"Yeah, her brother did six months in Costa Rica for that thing...Americorps?"
"You mean Greenpeace?"
"Some shit like that."

Anyway, we were seated in a really nice theater. It was a live show, which is such a blessing: it means you know you're not going to be held for two hours after you're supposed to. Just sit back, relax, and wait for the show to start.

A woman came up to the mic. "Guys, we have a great show tonight. Bob's got some great guests, blah, blah blah. But right now we have a special treat..."

A special treat? I thought. Ice cream? T-shirts? We're going to all be guests on the show? Obama's here? We get Hummers?

"Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. Grammy award winning New York comedian...Paul Mecurio!"

Faithful readers know my stance on this man already. Again he did the style of humor that is entirely based on singling out a member of the audience and mocking them. It's not even good-natured. He walked up to a really big guy.

"Whoa! You're like a building with a head! What's your name?"

"David Stein."

"Whew, you're Jewish; you won't fight back."

Then he found another guy. "What do you do?"

"I don't have a job."

Paul was silent. That was the punchline. The guy probably felt great about himself that night. Then he found someone in the audience who had a job that would make one wealthy. He did the "give the poor man a dollar" joke he did at the Daily Show. Again, though, I seemed in the minority in thinking him a total tool. The Boston sports fans in the crowd ate him up.

In parting comments, he reminded everyone to be loud and excited; this is a TV show!
As was the case when Mecurio opened for John Stewart, I breathed a sigh of relief when he left the stage for our the host. Costas came out and said "The comedy stylings of Paul Mecurio. I want to amend something Paul said. While I welcome your enthusiasm, please keep it within reason. If I hear someone yell 'whoo', I'll have them thrown out.

You know, I've said before this blog is to talk about TV experience and definitely not to comment on race. But this was the most interesting of several interesting moments.

On his last panel, Costas spoke to two black sportswriters. To the first, he said "You have said, and I quote [though Kevin is paraphrasing]: 'a lack of good fathers as role models in the black community is to blame for why so many prominent black athletes fail to act responsibly.'"

To the second, Costas said "You have said, and I quote [though again Kevin paraphrases]: the values, or lack of values, of most pro-gang and pro-violence hip-hop is a major catalyst for this country's genocide of young black men.'"

The audience, let me add, was almost entirely white.

Then, three things happened in very short succession:

1. Costas said "I agree with you."

2. The audience, sitting rapt with attention and tension, immediately burst into applause.

3. Costas quickly stood up and addressed the audience, palms out. "Please stop. Stop." He then turned back to the men on his panel to say, "but I feel I can't bring this up. It's not my place. I have to wait for you to say it."

And the audience all said, inwardly, collectively, "whoops".

Paula's Party Air Date

2008-05-28T11:51:00.003-04:00

I just got this from Paula's Party staff. Note that instead of "best wishes", the letter signs off with "best dishes". That's a cooking reference. And that even though it's not Paula who wrote it, the salutation is still addressed to Y'all. She is very southern.

Hey Y'All!

Greetings from Paula's Party!!

We'd like to take this opportunity to THANK YOU for being a part of our studio audience. We hope you had as much fun watching the show as we did putting it together. The show you attended on April 14th in New York City, “Rainy Day BBQ,” will be airing Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 10:00PM EST on the Food Network. Please be sure to let all the members of your party know. We wouldn't want anyone to miss it!

Thanks again and Enjoy the Show!

Best Dishes,
The Paula's Party Staff

Paula's Party

2008-05-21T18:06:00.009-04:00

Warm-up guy: Former Ms. New Jersey! She's now a mom.
Main dish of the show: "beer-in-the-butt" chicken.
The beer they used: Natty Light.
Paula's husband: Is a tugboat captain. And, as it happens, Beard Papa:
(Many thanks to Danders for making that jpeg when I lacked the tools.)

Paula Deen is a restaurateur and cooking personality best known for being Southern. Apparently she has quite a following. When a woman I know in West Virginia ate at Paula's restaurant, that woman's daughter became so excited that she cried. I want to know that kind of passion. I have never cried over a restaurateur. To be honest, I haven't even really sniffled over a waitress.

Paula's Party is normally taped in Georgia, but my friend Sarah gave me the tip that they were doing a few spots at the Food Network's studio in Chelsea. This was the first time that while standing in line I had to sign a waiver that I wouldn't sue if I got food poisoning as a result of the taping.

The seating was fantastic. It's set up like a dinner theatre, meaning everyone in the audience sat at small tables, with snacks already provided. Though it was just Fritos and cornbread and lemonade, the fact that you could munch the whole show long instead of simply slobbering all over yourself while you watched Ms. Deen cook was a very appreciated gesture (Martha should take notes). The cornbread, I should note, was extremely sweet. It tasted of preservatives. I asked a food and drink-refilling employee (yes, they did that) what the deal was with the cornbread and he said they just baked it recently. I secretly doubted that. I think it was weird, store-bought cornbread.

Dena Blizzard, an honest-to-God former Miss New Jersey, warmed us up. She's a funny, funny woman, though as evidenced by this photo, quite small. Since the show hadn't been to New York before, they had a lot of scheduling kinks to work out, so Dena kept on coming up with stuff to keep us entertained. Stand-up. Dance parties. Trivia contests. Sample question: "What does Paula's husband do for a living? He's a tugboat captain!" Then Dena walked to Paula's husband, who was in the audience, so he could confirm that.

Then more stand-up. Then open mics for people who knew jokes. My girlfriend's contribution, "What was Beethoven's favorite fruit?" and singing "Ba-na-na-na," to the tune of the famous lick from his 9th symphony, went criminally unappreciated.

Anyway, once the show got rolling, it became apparent Paula had no idea what was going on. She did little to no cooking, and spent most of the time talking. That was probably mostly not her fault, but that of her guest host.

Rosie came out like a prom queen, all grins and waves, trying to hold her poise but then breaking stride when she rushed to hug...my girlfriend. Why did she do that? We don't know why. The two had never met and in all likelihood will never meet again. Girlfriend later declared the experience "squishy".

Paula seems to have little structure to how she runs her show; she mostly makes chit-chat with the audience or her guest, cooks, and that's that. But when she'd try a little friendly banter with O'Donnell--"So how have you been?", it was met with less-than-entertaining material. "I've been pretty depressed, to be honest. No one wants to hire me--I do NOT want to talk about the View, or the Little One..."

O'Donnell talked about herself so much, and talked so much shit, that it held up the show for probably over an hour. God knows how much they edited out to make the actual episode. She talked about her kids, how much she disliked Donald Trump, how good she was at TV, and how she didn't like Paula's producer, who kept prodding them to get back on track. (The producer, a hulk of an Australian, didn't seem too pleased by the dissent.) She brought about a good bit of Bush bashing with absolutely no prompt but her own meandering monologues. It was a mess.

I was getting restless. I'd been there almost five hours and had work to do. I looked up to where Beard Papa was, to see how he took dealt with all this time wasting. He had bailed. So, so did I.

Guest Blogger #2: A West Virginian goes to the West Virginian Obama Rally! (Televised, therefore relevant)

2008-05-15T15:01:00.003-04:00

A press release the Obama campaign randomly emailed me: "Today former Mountaineer Quarterback Major Harris and current Quarterback Pat White announced their support for Senator Barack Obama for president. Both have achieved legendary status in the hearts and minds of Mountaineer fans across the state of West Virginia."

Daily News's headline after the WV primary: HIL BILLY WIN

So again I'm using a guest to do my dirty work. My mom happened to go to the Obama rally Monday, right before he lost West Virginia. Don't worry, my writing will resume next week with a scathing report of Paula's Party, including a special celebrity guest who got weirdly close with my girlfriend without having any idea who she is. Anyway, here's mom and Obama:

Waiting Line time to pick up tickets: Maybe two minutes. I was able to order will-call tickets the night before since I was from "out of town". All of the "local" tickets were gone. [Ed's note: the speech took place in the Civic Center in Charleston, about 50 miles away from our town, Huntington.]

Security: Again, not much of a wait. I had to surrender my Coca Cola umbrella to a table of fellow umbrellas (no claim check, just faith that it would be there when I came out.) The airport type scanners were like those I recall from going to a John Kerry rally, which I guess was four years ago. The uniformed presence was pretty deep, including bomb squad specialists. On the drive back to work afterward, an AWACS plane flew overhead.

On the way into the Civic Center we had passed a multitude of button, poster and Tee shirt vendors. Sometime in the distant past, campaign buttons were free. As we entered the arena, we did find free buttons and literature from the Veterans for Obama for President. Veteran affairs and benefits would prove to be the focus of Obama's message. Since we had white tickets instead of the more desirable blue veterans tickets, we had seats toward the rear of the Civic Center, folding chair seats, that were padded and comfortable as far as folding chairs go. We were seated by 10:45 and the talk was scheduled for 12:15, so there was plenty of time to look around.

Our seats were right on the aisle, next to the press section. I watched one camera man slouch in his seat and slide into a nap. A young woman with the press group dug through her backpack, methodically applied moisturizer and then with the help of a mirror completed the rest of her makeup routine. The camera man awoke and trained his camera on a man on a two step ladder who I assume was his reporter. The reporter stood there for a very long time, his microphone positioned just so, about mid-chest height. Every once in a while he would adjust it just a little bit. He wasn't speaking into the mic, so I can only guess his motivation. Balance practice? Meditation? Some type of isometric exercise? The local TV press was on the far side; I assume the cluster near us traveled with the campaign and they all looked tired and bored.

By 11:00 all the white ticket seats were full and people continued to come in. My husband never misses an opportunity to talk to those around him, so he had lots of conversations, including one with one of Obama's press people. I worried that I would have to fight to defend his chair, because he was in and out of it a bit, but people were polite and respectful of a purse-saved seat. There were a few chants from the crowd but they really didn't gain much momentum. The first was "Yes we Can!", but I must confess I thought they were saying "Let's go Herd!" It was difficult to make out the words. [Ed's note: "Let's go Herd!" is a chant usually heard at Marshall University sporting events.]

The warm up:

Finally a little bit after noon a man came up to the mic and said something to the effect of "testing, testing," to which the crowd responded with cheers and applause. You have to remember we had been sitting there for an hour and a half and this was the most exciting thing that had happened so far. Senator Jay Rockefeller came out next and gave a glowing endorsement introduction. With the audience on their feet, Barack Obama took the stage.

Obama's speech in Charleston. Let me warn you that it's 20 minute long.

At this point I could see nothing at all, being somewhat height challenged and I was grateful when Obama invited everyone to take their seats. With some head bobbing on my part I was able to see him most of the time that he spoke. His talk was largely about Veterans and improving Veterans' programs. When he did say that he was grateful to see so many supporters in light of the fact that Hillary was likely going to be the winner in West Virginia, the audience booed loudly. Obama made a point of taking a jab at a McCain stance on some Veterans issue. The point made was that he was running against John McCain, not Hillary Clinton.

I wanted to write that he was very eloquent, but I've since read that somehow that is an insulting thing to say, somehow implying that it unexpected or surprising that he is an eloquent speaker. Nevertheless, I found him to be compelling. He also looked tired.

Exiting the Civic Center was orderly. And I was pleasantly surprised to be reunited with my Coke umbrella, lying on the table with hundreds of other umbrellas, right where I had left it.

Guest Blogger: Making the Band Season Finale

2008-05-08T12:09:00.002-04:00

Kevin's note:

Many thanks to Shannon Bambenek. I had tickets to the finale of making the band but was out of town. I hated to see this opportunity go to waste, so I sent out a few choice inquires to see who most deserved them. Shannon got back to me almost immediately and displayed a vast knowledge of the show (in that she knew at least one band on it). She was a shoo-in. So, without further stalling for time, Shannon's entry:

Arrival time:** 4:45 pm (taping will last until at least 9pm)
Dress:** No hats, No large Logos on shirts, dress casual like you are
going out
You and your guest must be over 16 years old.
You MUST be available for the entire taping.

After reading the invite, I knew I would fit right in, me being a 25 year old 5'10" chick from Texas. My friend and I showed up 'kinda' early and there was a line wrapped around the block of 16 year olds wearing hooker wear... They let the first half in and gave wrist bands out to the rest of the people "that were on the list"... VIP bitch... So as soon as we got our wrist bands, my friend and I headed to the closest bar to get lubed up for ditty. When we returned to the line, we literally were in the same place in line, the end, behind the devout crowd.

Now the second round of people got to go in. We were whisked away, warned if we talk to famous people then we will get thrown out. The group split up into different closets so we could check our coats, bags, and concealed weapons, then filed through the metal detector. In this process, we jumped way ahead in line leaving a good amount of die hard fans behind.

While waiting to get into the studio, the show started without us! Diddy brought an extra 30 people and did not inform MTV, so a bunch of us were stuck in a hallway. Needless to say, we started getting a little riled up. Danity Kane, the only band I actually knew anything about, was up first. We watched the taping on televisions they had mounted to the wall and everything was how I expected. The girls were a little annoying and looking easy. At first I was a little disappointed about missing the only group I had a clue about, but as the show kept taping the people behind me were getting all worked up.

All the thoughts that were running in my head (Damn that weave is bad, she's fat, bad tan, blah blah) were being full on yelled at by the chicks behind me. I was in heaven. The die-hard fans were turning against the bitches and I loved it. They were coming up with shit I didn't even notice, like panty lines and I learned about the best comb to use on weaves.

So after each segment, all the 'celebrities' would dash out of the studio and back into hair and make up. That's where we come in. Since I cut in front of line so much, my friend and i were up close to see them get whisked away. Exciting, I know. When Diddy ran past, I got a glimpse of his iced out cross. His cross literally made me a believer.

Before the next band came on, the boy band, another set of people got to go into the studio while they kicked out others. We inched closer and closer and were the last people to get rejected. shit. But once again, got to see 'stars' scurry. This time when Diddy walked by he said something like, 'Are we still doing this bitchassness shit?' I should have expected he would talk to his lowly crew like that but I was still a little shocked.

Finally, after the boy band, we get to go in and stand in an area in the back. I guess you could call us in the audience but really we are behind the audience, cameras, and crew. I got there just in time to hear Donny, the solo douche from jersey, do his little performance, in which Diddy performs too (!). Diddy has his part in the bridge or something and after he recited his words, he danced. He danced like hes never danced before. Seriously. He dances like hes 50. Pretty awesome. This happened twice cause Diddy fucked up the first time and made them do it again. Live TV it is.

After all the performances were the interviews. At some point, Diddy starts boasting about the word he made up, 'bitchassness'. He has now coined the word 'bitchassness'. Sean John is branding this word and placing it on tshirts that we can all buy and enjoy. He tried to give
the definition of the word, and from what I remember, "it's a disease that is taking over America."

I think it will catch on.

The Daily Show

2008-05-01T12:35:00.008-04:00

Waiting for the Daily Show is probably the worst wait of any show in New York.

This is the first reason:
Standing in line, a comedian named Paul Mecurio came by and explained how hard-working he is and how hard it is to make it doing stand up. I do not doubt that. He says he had free tickets to his upcoming show. Cool! All you have to do is sign a form that asks for your name, address, email, and phone number. I just gave my email. They'll contact me, he said, when the show's near, and then to redeem my free tickets, all I have to do is pay $10! Plus, they're special tickets, either better seats or cheaper or something. Later, he called out for me by name: "Kevin! Where's Kevin? You forgot to put your phone number!" I didn't really want to give it, but he promised not to abuse it, and I sheepishly finished the form.

Second: Not one, but two guys came out and addressed the audience as the Head of Daily Show Security. One of them gave this tirade:
"Expect airport security. If you are carrying any guns, knives, mace, nunchucks, etc., you must give them to me. Go to the bathroom now because you will not be able to when you enter the studio."
"When will we enter the studio?" I asked.
"I don't know, so everyone go now."
I correctly guessed that we would not enter the studio for over an hour after he said this. This guy does this same thing, we must assume, every day at the same time, five days a week.

This is the second-and-a-half reason.
Several adults in bright, orange-safety colored vests led a large group of children to the street corner where I stood. Breep! went their whistles. Breep breep! Then they crossed the street. Then they turned 90 degrees counterclockwise and crossed that street. Breep breep! They just made loop after loop. Apparently is was "let's practice safely crossing the street" day. Inadvertently it they made it also "let's annoy Kevin with incessant shrill noises" day.

Then, a van drove up, stopped at a stoplight. "Jon Stewart's dead!" he said. "But it's not his fault!"

Undetterred, they finally allowed us inside. Our warm-up guy was no other than Paul Mecurio. This is his style:
"All right, all right! Let's hear you go crazy!"
Those in the audience who are prone to the power of suggestion go woo a lot.

"That was not enough energy. Let's hear you go crazy!"
The same people repeat the same level of woo.

"You know what? I like this guy."
He goes to a guy in the front row.

"What's your name, sir?"
The guy mumbles.

"'Bluh bluh bluh bluh?' That's not a name. Why don't you speak up? Three hundred people are trying to hear you."

"My name's Robert Thompson."

"What do you do, Robert? Are you in finance, or a lawyer?"

"I'm a banker."

"A banker! Did I call it or what?"
Mecurio looks to another person in the front row.

"You, young sir. What's your name?"
"Peter."
"Peter, what do you do for a living? Or is wearing a shirt that ugly your full-time job?"
"Haha. Actually I'm...I'm unemployed."
"He's unemployed!"
Mecurio walks to Robert.

"Peter needs some money, Robert. Give him a dollar."
Robert is hesitant.

"Go on, Robert, you've got tons of money! Give him a dollar. Don't be a scrooge. Give him a dollar."
Robert gives him a dollar.

"Now hug!"
Robert does not want to hug anyone. Mecurio grabs Peter, puts his hand on his back to guide him, and the two awkwardly hug. Mecurio addresses the audience.

"Are you ready for Jon Stewart tonight?"
The audience woos.

"Don't be surprised when you see him come out."
His voice drops to a whisper and he puts his hand out flat, about three feet from the ground.

"He's this tall."

That joke would be funny, I guess. But I went to a taping of the Daily Show about two years ago, before this blog was a twinkle in my eye. And I don't remember who the warm-up guy was, but I remember him being this abrasive. And I remember that same joke.

The audience didn't seem to hate Mecurio nearly as much as I did, but surely at least some were being polite because they were afraid of being called out.

Finally, Stewart came out. I breathed a big sigh of relief. He entertained some questions from the audience before starting the show.

One lady:
"Will this show air today, or do you do several shows a day and have a backlog of them?"

Stewart:
"Miss, are you familiar with the name of the show? Do you ever wonder how we're so topical?"

Stewart really is a professional. Not that I expected any less. He was still chatting with us as his producer counted down to roll tape, seemingly unaware, and then switched at the blink of an eye into total performance mode. I know this is a few years old, but Stewart's the real deal:

America's Got Talent

2008-04-24T10:14:00.012-04:00

Warm-up guy: Affable Brit with a painfully lame sense of humor.

His worst joke: (To audience member) Oh, your mom’s visiting you here in New York? Yeah, I’m sure she came to visit you. For six days. I’m sure she didn’t come to New York for the…shopping!

Length of line to get in: two city blocks

In 2003, after George W. Bush fell off a Segway, Talent Judge Piers Morgan was quoted in the Daily Mail: “You’d have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn’t you, Mr. President?”

In 2007: Piers Morgan fell off a Segway, breaking three ribs.

Piers Morgans's qualifications to be a talent judge: He's the former editor of several tabloids and he won Celebrity Apprentice.

I don't like: Judge Piers Morgan

Spirits were high as hundreds of people piled into the Hammerstein Ballroom. We filled the entire lower section, then the balconies, then much of the upper level.

After Awful British Warm-Up Guy (from here on out, A-Bwug) told some dumb jokes, he had us pretend to leave. Producers wanted a shot of the whole audience leaving. So A-Bwug counted to three and everyone got up and made for the exit. I didn’t really believe it, but everyone else got up and started to leave. A few seconds later, A-Bwug called us back. Then he had us do it again. And a third time.

Finally, the judges came out. The nice one, Sharon Osbourne. “The Simon Cowell of the group,” Piers Morgan. Yes, that’s how A-Bwug described him. (It means Morgan is British and an ass.) And finally, the populist, the pinnacle of cool for some reason, David Hasselhoff.

“Don’t hassle the Hoff!” yelled a guy sitting a few rows behind me. People laughed. So did I. Over the course of the evening, the same guy would shout the same phrase repeatedly over the course of the evening, undeterred by its rapidly diminishing funniness.

Time for the show. First was a step group. All were high schoolers of color from the Bronx. They seemed good to me, but I've only seen step a handful of times.

“You’re just not talented enough,” said Piers.

“I’m sorry, dears, but we see a lot of step people come through here, and you didn’t give us anything great,” said Sharon Osbourne.

This was the first time, but not the last, that I openly wondered why two British folks who seem to have done nothing worthwhile in their lives (plus the guy who, you know, starred in Knight Rider) are qualified to criticize stuff like a style of dance owned exclusively by black youths.

More acts came and went, and before long we realized we weren’t getting the cream of the crop here. A couple who claimed to have invented his very specific combination of polka, jazz, and swing dancing.

A guy who claimed to be one of the world’s best soap bubble-based entertainers. (He only blew a few normal bubbles, which was hardly impressive, but in his defense, he was buzzed off the stage within fifteen seconds, and he claimed his act only became challenging in the later stages.) It took a long, long time to set up and take down his act, and the audience grew restless.

A middle-aged woman came out in a skimpy nightie and talked about the greats she used to work with. Sinatra, John Wayne. Her act was that of a lounge singer, singing badly and rolling on the floor, faux-seductively. We loved her for her brashness and for not giving into the standards that say beauty requires youth. Then we hated her for the same reason and booed her off the stage.

Audience reaction was a great experience in groupthink. Nearly everyone was cheered at the beginning. We loved everybody, you see. But as soon as we got bored, fifteen to thirty seconds in, we grew restless, and soon we booed. Everyone in the crowd basically did what everyone else in the crowd did. It worked seamlessly, like a tower made of ants. All of us, hundreds of people, all switched from loving an act to hating it in a matter of seconds.

A woman brought out her pig, which can paint. Sometimes. Not this time. When the act was buzzed off, she couldn’t make the pig leave the stage. It was scared and unresponsive, and after five minutes of frustration, Sharon stormed off, followed by the other judges.

We waited and waited for the judges to return. Some people walked out of the theater. A-Bwug came back out. “Ladies an gentlemen, the judges are not on a break. They’re simply offstage, doing some work that can’t be done in front of a big audience, some filler shots. In the meantime, we have a big treat for you.”

“How about some talent?” yelled a guy in my section.

“We have for you tonight the seventh—or maybe eighth; I can’t remember—place finishers from last year’s contest, the Glamazons!”

From this point on there was a steady trickle of audience members headed toward the emergency exit.

"Don't hassle the Hoff!" yelled that guy for the upteenth time.

After about half an hour, the judges returned. They were preceded by A-Bwug coming out and saying “Ladies and gentlemen, the judges have finally returned from their break!”

It was an opera singer. He was good. Or, well, I liked him. Isn't a par-for-the-course opera singer a much better singer than an average pop singer? The judges thanked him profusely for saving what had so far been a dour and hopeless night. They told him he wasn’t that great for an opera singer, but he wasn’t bad, either, and he had a lot of passion. Well, they’re the experts. David Hasselhoff. The chick who married Ozzie Osborne.

Then there was another break. A-Bwug came back out. “I just talked to the producers. We’re gonna do another shot where everyone’s exiting. So leave your bags on the floor, but when I count to three, everyone get up and pretend you’re leaving. One, two, three.”

I got up and made for the doors. Somehow I couldn't turn return to my seat.

On my way out, I stopped the lady who worked the door. “All these people are leaving," I said. Is this normal?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Nobody ever stays for the whole thing."

Judge David Young

2008-04-16T18:59:00.008-04:00

Host's most famous former boss: Janet Reno
Location of Studio: 106th St. and Park Ave. (Note that the show 106 and Park is filmed nowhere near here.)
Breakfast provided: Dunkin Donuts and orange juice.
Rather than orange juice, I wish they knew that donuts actually go with: coffee.
Number of security guards who stand around doing nothing save the one who scans audience members as they walk in: 6.
Oft-repeated but factually incorrect catchphrase on this show: "The Nile is not a river in Egypt!"
Seats: Benches, very much like church pews.
Recommendation given by the guy in the urinal next to me: "Yeah, he's a good one to see live. More entertaining than most of the judge shows."
The world has many David Youngs. One wrestles professionally, one brokered the end of the writers' strike. One played professional rugby for Wales. There are poets and musicians, as there are of every name. One was special ops for Nixon. I was there for the TV judge.

There aren't many people involved with this production, in terms of both staff and audience members, and that's relaxing. The Audience Coordinator was a chatty guy who was quick to point out to me that Young "was a real judge" back in Miami. That doesn't mean his televised trials are fiction, he insisted. But he's these days restricted to small claims.

Most people there are regulars, he said. They come as groups of five to eight or so because it's entertaining and you learn a little about the law as you go. Decisions made in Young's TV court are legally binding, though they can be appealed. People come to have their cases settled here mainly because it's a free trip to New York.

As luck would have it, I was there to see paternity tests, known in the vulgate as baby mama drama. The timing of cases was a stark contrast to how it's done at Maury's show. There, a new "you are not the father" bomb dropped every few minutes, continually. At Young's show, he asked probing questions of both the plaintiff and the defendant for about half an hour per case.

The result of this, of course, is that we become far more involved with the lives of the people up there. That the host has a law degree and the audience didn't come to hoot and holler only furthered my inability to distance myself from the very real problems these people had.

The first was a Tom denying paternity and a Natasha pressing claims to get child support. Nothing new here. Young almost immediately sided with Natasha, and when it was revealed that Tom never revealed to her before their affair that he was married, it was all over in Young's mind. He interviewed Natasha at length and hardly let Tom speak. When Natasha said Tom's mother had been present at the birth of the child in debate, and Young asked him why she would do that if he weren't the father, Tom stammered that his mother was crazy. Young launched into a tirade about the sanctity of mothers.

Time for the test results. Young talked to a doctor in Toledo via satellite hookup. "With a likelihood of 99.9998%, Tom is the father," he said. Maury never had a doctor tell him results. For all we know, he was making them up. At least Young's show has a screen with a guy with a lab coat on.

After that came the post-findings ruling. This is where Young, a bit of a prima donna, lectures both parties on responsibility. He asked Tom what his father was like growing up.

"He wasn't around."

"I see," Young said. "I assume he left you and your mom?"

"Yeah."

"This is why you have problems with relationships. Because you weren't raised right. If you had been--"

"Judge, I was raised ok."

"Do not interrupt me when I'm speaking. You weren't raised right, and look where you are now. You cannot do this to your son."

A little awkward, if you ask me.

The second case, though, was the most dramatic. A woman named Taeshawn, married at sixteen, separated at eighteen, divorced at 22, "married, I think, for eight years," got involved with Jamal, who is ten years her senior. Jamal didn't talk much and didn't like to talk. The first two evenings Taeshawn recounted were hazy, she said, because she was pretty drunk.

"So does your alcoholism keep you from being a good mother?" asked the Judge.

We never established whether Taeshawn actually is or isn't an alcoholic, but Young is both very quick to judge and often right.

"Jamal don't even help with the baby," Taeshawn said.

Young turned to Jamal. "Did you ever change this child's diaper?"

"Yes."

"Did you feed him?"

"Yes."

"Did you buy him toys, or play with him?"

"Yes." Young turned to Taeshawn.

"It seems like he's a pretty good father."

"Yeah, I guess he is," she said.

It didn't seem they had a real court case at all. They were there for the paternity test. Not only was Jamal not there to deny fatherhood, it became apparent he was resigned to loving Taeshawn from afar and was hoping against hope he was the father.

"Do you love the boy?" asked Young.

"Yes."

"Would you be his dad even if it turns out you're not the biological father?"

A pause. "No."

"Because it would be too hard?"

Another pause. "Yes."

Again we went to the doctor in Toledo. This time he gave no likelihood of accuracy. There was just a simple "Jamal is not this child's father."

Young turned to Jamal. "Do you have other children?"

"Yes."

"Well, they are lucky. Lucky, lucky children. Because they have a fabulous dad. Case dismissed." He banged his gavel and walked out.

The custom on this show holds that no one may leave until dismissed by his bailiff. Young leaves, then we wait about sixty seconds, then the plaintiff leaves, then we wait another minute, and finally the defendant is dismissed. Jamal stood there, silent, his back turned to us, while we all waited.

Taeshawn was dismissed.

We all heard Young from behind the set. "Man! I really wanted that guy to be the father! He seemed like such a good guy. Pete, who do we have next?"

Finally, Jamal was dismissed.

Maury Povich

2008-04-09T23:39:00.019-04:00

The first thing you notice about going the Maury Povich show is how very little goes into the set.

It's located in an old hotel on 33rd Street, where the bathroom is public and frequented by the homeless. The set is absolute crap: cardboard walls, cheap chairs, and a box of Kleenex on a table. A trashy electronic remix of Rhianna's "Umbrella" played on a loop. We sat in folding chairs arranged haphazardly around the set.

Maury came out to adoring fanfare. Unlike most TV hosts, he is completely in touch with why his audience loves him. They want hugs. He gives hugs. They want to tell their most hilariously trashy secrets to a 69 year old guy in a black turtleneck. He wants to hear them. He loves that they love him and loves that they love him in the way that they do. He spits out aphorisms like "When times are good, I'll have a Forty Ounce."

My show's theme was a common one: Baby Mama Drama, aka "You are NOT the father!"

At first the show was off-putting. I mean, we're talking lowest common denominator of American pop culture. Real people come to this show, all of them poor rural whites or poor urban blacks, to have their problems quickly addressed and dismissed by a rich, skinny, old white guy who married Connie Chung and whose dad wrote for the Washington Post for seven decades and who may or may not have access to real DNA testing equipment.

They're sobbing, these real people, and surely they aren't completely faking their sorrow. Surely a woman who doesn't know the biological father of her son is upset about that. They're airing their dirty laundry on television, and though they undoubtedly wouldn't have signed up for this show if they were camera shy, when they're proven wrong it can't be a good experience.

There's a pattern on the show, weird in its regularity. When Maury delivers his dramatic catchphrase, when he triumphantly shouts "You are NOT the father!", the most offended party always runs from the room. The person is usually a woman who mistakenly thought she'd finally pinned down the right man. She collapses somewhere in the hallway. As she sprints, a cameraman follows, and we see the action on TV. Maury jogs over and tries to console her, but he has to keep the show moving. This is what always happens. They always run from the stage, though they always break down before they leave the cameras' range.

As this same story repeated itself in rapid succession, always the same except the characters, my arms slowly uncrossed. Maybe it was the frequency of insane revelation that sobered me to the ludicrousness of what was before me. You see, in the course of about forty-five minutes we saw probably a dozen paternity cases. Each time, we heard those same five words.

(Note I didn't add the music here. I just needed the clip.)

In between guests, audience members rushed on stage to dance with Maury, to hug him, to get a friend to take a picture of them on the set.

This is what warmed me to the show:

A woman struts onto the stage, dressed to impress. Her name is Fo'eva. (Maury: "Or, as I call her, 'Forever'. But she says it's Fo'eva.")

Fo'eva has two kids, Eternity and Christopher. Her newest is a boy named Sincere. This is her seventh time on the show. Each appearance was to prove paternity. Two of those prior times were to test the that of a man named Terrance. Both were negative. He's on the show today to test his DNA against Sincere.

Terrance is announced and comes out with his arms spread wide. The crowd loves him and he loves the way the crowd loves him. He and Fo'eva spar the way you'd expect:

T: Fo'eva, get it through your head that there's no way I'm any of these babies' father! I'm never gonna get with your skanky ass!
F: As soon as we left last show, you were all up in this coochie! You're messed up.
T: Your shoes are messed up!

According to Terrance's timeline, he and Fo'eva didn't have sex anywhere near the time to get her pregnant, so she wasn't on the show for truth and child support, but to smear him. She didn't deny that.

When the time came, and Maury told Terrance he still was no father, Terrance got up, gleeful and proud. He ran up and down the aisles, high fiving people who had been, I guess, rooting against his fatherhood. Everyone but Fo'eva was cheering and laughing. The audience, Maury, and even I was overwhelmed by the situation. Terrance had won. For the third time, Terrance had won. And somehow, so had we all.

I still don't really understand what's going on with people in these shows. Is everyone on it so desperate for a paternity test that the only reason they come on the show because they can't afford one at home? I sincerely doubt that. Are people there actors, either duping Maury's staff or in their employ, and relishing their few minutes on national television but free from any actual baby mama drama? I sincerely doubt that, too. They cry too well and they never break the fourth wall with a snicker.

When women ran down the hallway, sobbing at news that they still can't tell their kids who their real father is, their mics usually stayed clipped to their shirts and their weeping and moaning carried through the loudspeakers for a disconcertingly long time. There's some complex emotion going on with these guests. It's related to the utter trashiness of some of our pop culture, but it would be wrong to chalk it up as just garbage and dismiss it wholesale. I honestly don't get what's going on there, and if I did, I think I'd understand America better.

Anyway. On to the end.

After the first segment of the show, Maury addressed us. "We've got a whole 'nother show of Baby Mama Drama coming up next. But in the meantime, we're going to take you outside, feed you, and bring you back in!" We cheered. God, did we love Maury. The most entertaining show I'd seen, a cultural riddle, free lunch, and more!

Staff members escorted us outside. Why did we need to leave the building? we wondered. There was a line stretching out the door, where people were waiting to see the show we'd just left. Did we have to get back in line? "Yeah, you've got to get in the back; these people have been waiting. We can't promise seats."

No seats? Then where's that free pizza?

"Pizza? What are you talking about?" said the guard. He closed the door in my face.

Maury, you slick bastard.

Oh no, music! An extremely close evening with John Vanderslice

2008-04-06T23:24:00.007-04:00

I realize I'm somewhat betraying my goals of this project when I write about music. First among many differences between posting about Bjork or John Vanderslice instead of Martha or Maury is that I truly do love the work of the former two, while my emotional attachment to television personalities isn't exactly as strong. Also, music is not free with the price of cable. Also, you can't see the musicians I talk about by turning on your TV. Also, the work of these musicians is familiar to far less Americans. Thus my new pledge: I will only blog about music as a supplement to my every-Thursday postings, never as a replacement. And I still only write about experiences relevant to TV or the experience of being an audience member.

It's the experience of being a spectator bit that brings me to the keyboard now. The other night I saw John Vanderslice for the third time since becoming infatuated with 2001's Time Travel Is Lonely, and for the second time saw one of the most amazing shows of my life. I have a complex relationship with Vanderslice:

I have sang with him on stage: in the spring of 2007 I read that he sometimes allows fans to come up and sing his songs during shows. I emailed him my three favorite songs, and come May went up on stage and sang "Radiant With Terror". I didn't forget a single word.

I recently interviewed him about his recording process for EQ Magazine (sorry, the link's only to the Mag's site and not to the actual interview).

I'm pretty sure that despite the first two things I've done with him, he has no idea who I am.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, his music is deeply personal and his lyrics are decidedly not. His lyrics are almost exclusively about fictional characters, and I can't think of any contemporary singer-songwriter who's so deeply in touch with himself as an artist who doesn't ever bother to write about himself. That he's so careful with his material, yet so egoless, so concerned with form and the form of his content, is what draws me so closely to his work.

Everyone who's a devoted fan of pretty much anything--music, fashion, good food, sports, etc.--creates a personal relationship with the material that enthralls them. A real fan will learn where those works come from and develop something of a made-up relationship with a real person responsible for those works. Steelers fans talk about Ben Roethlisberger like a busy and successful older brother, congratulating him when he's on and adopting indignation when he forgets his bike helmet. Wilco fans repeatedly criticise or praise Jeff Tweedy to their friends, though Tweedy will never hear the opinions of 99% of them. And I have a complex, meaningful, but one-sided relationship with John Vanderslice, even though he doesn't know my name, and Bjork, and Jeff Magnum, despite his being a recluse, and Freddie Mercury, even though he's dead.

Vanderslice played four shows in four consecutive nights in New York. But I caught a tip from a friend that he was doing a fifth, smaller show the middle of this frenzy, scurrying from a big show at the Bowery Ballroom to nearby Pianos for an after-show show. There was no band, just Vanderslice and a violinist, going through every song from his previous two albums besides the ones he played two hours earlier. Then he moved to the floor, inviting the small crowd to circle around him. In the crowd was members of his band: his drummer had a single tom, his keyboardist a xylophone and accordion. Annie Clark, also called St. Vincent, another singer with whom I have a one-sided but meaningful relationship, was there to sing backup. There was no amplification, so everyone just shut up and listened to the actual instruments and people singing. I was a few feet away from two people who, as cheesy as it sounds, have brought significant richness into my life. It was as intimate a show as I could imagine, and it was downright magical.

"Thank you so much for coming," Vanderslice said. "Now it's time for a dance party!"

This is another thing he likes to do at shows, or at least I've heard: have dance parties. From interviews I gather he's really into both hip-hop and electronica, and he immediately started dancing. He was unselfconsciously there to have a good time, but the same couldn't be said for his fans, or even his bandmates. My roommate Eric, who's been in awe of Vanderslice's latest for the past month, went to talk to him and came back 30 seconds later. "I didn't know what to say."

I, meanwhile, was scoping out St. Vincent. I caught her momentarily alone and sheepishly asked if I could take a picture with her (for this blog, of course, though she didn't know that). I told her my girlfriend and I bonded over her music (not true) so she wouldn't think I was trying to mack her like the guy who talked her ear off before I could get to her. She seemed slightly uncomfortable but agreed to the photo, and when the picture turned out too dark, I couldn't bear asking for a re-shoot.

Our fellow audience members got drinks and stood by the walls, huddled with their friends and glancing at the musicians, or filing out. No one danced. It was like a middle school dance. I'd forgotten what real awkwardness was like. It was like this.

That's why I'm writing this. We can form incredibly intense relationships with even the mildest of celebrities. We don't have to read tabloids to know intimate details about them. We can know some of their deepest thoughts, or their life history, or what their love life is like at the moment. They're both real people and important people figures in our lives. They can share with us incredibly moving and intimate experiences, and they become our experiences and they're no less meaningful for that. But when they break that fourth wall and go where we can briefly interact back with them... it's just kind of awkward, you know? And a little weird.

I don't think any of Vanderslice's videos do justice to his music, so I've included a clip of someone who shares my thoughts on the man's work.

106 and Park

2008-04-02T18:10:00.012-04:00

Bewilderment. That was the dominating feeling I had during my time at 106 & Park. In the most basic sense, it's Black Entertainment Television's version of TRL.

Like TRL, another show designed for young people and with mostly high schoolers in the audience, 106 & Park doesn't care to warm up its audience before releasing it before the cameras, apparently assuming its audience will already be energetic enough. Thus while the warmup for shows for adults is a comedian or at least someone who's trying to get people excited, the pre-show for youth shows is a downer. Like, "Listen up! There will be no gang signs. There will be no calling attention to yourself. You will dance when we say to and stop when we say stop. You will cheer when we tell you to cheer and be quiet at all other times!" That sort of thing.

I attended this show with my friend Anthony, known to Royals fans as the driving force behind the world's number-three Kansas City Royals blog. He took this amazing picture of the waiting room. No one knew what 106 & Park referred to, though in general kids were friendlier than those at TRL and more ironic about going to a taping.

A few kids regarded us curiously, asking us if we we knew what this show was, why we were there, etc. We asked what the show was about, and we were met with a bit of "dancing...music...it's more for African-Americans." I am so not here to write an essay about race and hip-hop culture--to ape an ex's favorite phrase, that's way too "complex, problematic, and multifaceted". I'd also like to steer clear of the "I was a white guy at a rap show, and it was confusing to me!" shtick. Alas, avoiding that will be more difficult.

We were ushered onto metal bleachers in the back and rearranged several times to make us less and less visible. I felt like I'd wandered onto the set of a Bollywood film. At times, everyone broke into a chorus, and everybody knew that song but me. At every commercial break, people would break into dance, and everyone knew when to do that but I could find no clues. Each time, a few would scramble to a spot in the middle of the enormous set and dance for three and half minutes. It all seemed intuitive and mystifying.

Whereas TRL downright peddled sex to adolescents, here a girl was admonished for dancing provocatively in that dance spot in a too-revealing dress (it was very revealing): "if you're wearing something you'd be embarrassed for your mom to see you in, don't even think about coming down here."

Apparently videos were playing throughout the show; again, I could rarely tell what was going on. Suddenly there was an amateur R&B competition on a stage ahead of me, and everyone was beckoned to leave the stands to crowd the stage. Three young guys were to each take a turn singing a single song, with their own backup dancers if they brought them:

1. A normal, competent guy from Charlotte
2. A flashy guy from Charlotte who kept lifting up his shirt
3. An off-key singer from Brooklyn

I adopted the pose I always do at shows where I don't know the music: standing, arms crossed, staring hard at the performer, judging. This wasn't quite what they wanted in their shots of the crowd, so I was moved to the back.

Then Djimon Hounsou came out. He was remarkably well-dressed, soft-spoken and not-interested at all in 106 & Park. He's in a lot of good movies but most recently did this:

After an eternity of confusion I was sent home, but not without a new Rick Ross cd. Next Thursday: Maury. It's a good one.

Oh no, music! A Secret Show with John Vanderslice and St. Vincent

2008-04-01T18:08:00.009-04:00

I realize I'm somewhat betraying my goals of this project when I write about music. First among many differences between posting about Bjork or John Vanderslice instead of Martha or Maurey is that I truly do love the work of the former two, while my emotional attachment to television personalities isn't quite as strong. Also, music is not free with the price of cable. Also, you can't see the musicians I talk about by turning on your TV. Also, the work of these musicians is familiar to far less Americans. Thus my new pledge: I will only blog about music as a supplement to my every-Thursday postings, never as a replacement. And I still only write about experiences relevant to TV or the experience of being an audience member.

It's the experience of being a spectator bit that brings me to the keyboard now. The other night I saw John Vanderslice for the third time since becoming infatuated with 2001's Time Travel Is Lonely, and for the second time saw one of the most amazing shows of my life. I have a complex relationship with Vanderslice:

I have sang with him on stage: in the spring of 2007 I read that he sometimes allows fans to come up and sing his songs during shows, emailed him my three favorite songs, and come May went up on stage and sang "Radient With Terror". I didn't forget a single word.

I recently interviewed him about his recording process for EQ Magazine (sorry, the link's only to the Mag's site and not to the actual interview).

I'm pretty sure that despite the first two things I've done with him, he has no idea who I am.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, his music is deeply personal and his lyrics are decidedly not. His lyrics are almost exlcusively about fictional characters, and I can't think of any contemporary singer-songwriter who's so deeply in touch with himself as an artist who doesn't ever bother to write about himself. That he's so careful with his material, yet so egoless, so concerned with form and the form of his content, is what draws me so closely to his work.

Everyone who's a devoted fan of pretty much anything--music, fashion, good food, sports, etc.--creates a personal relationship with the material that enthralls them. A real fan will learn where those works come from and develop something of a made-up relationship with a real person responsible for those works. Steelers fans talk about Ben Rothlisberger like a busy and successful older brother, congradulating him when he's on and adopting indignation when he forgets his bike helmet. Wilco fans repeatedly criticisze or praise Jeff Tweedy to their friends, though Tweedy will never hear the opinions of 99% of them. And I have a complex, meaningful, but one-sided relationship with John Vanderslice, even though he doesn't know my name, and Bjork, and Jeff Magnum, despite his being a recluse, and Freddie Mercury, even though he's dead.

Vanderslice played four shows in four consecutive nights in New York. But I caught a tip from a friend that he was doing a fifth, smaller show the middle of this frenzy, scurrying from a big show at the Bowery Ballroom to nearby Pianos for an after-show show. There was no band, just Vanderslice and a violinist, going through every song from his previous two albums besides the ones he played two hours earlier. Then he moved to the floor, inviting the small crowd to circle around him. In the crowd was members of his band: his drummer had a single tom, his keyboardist a xylophone and accordian. Annie Clark, also called St. Vincent, another singer with whom I have a one-sided but meaningful relationship, was there to sing backup. There was no amplification, so everyone just shut up and listened to the actual instruments and people singing. I was a few feet away from two people who, as cheesy as it sounds, have brought significant richness into my life. It was as intimate a show as I could imagine, and it was downright magical.

"Thank you so much for coming," Vanderslice said. "Now it's time for a dance party!"

This is another thing he likes to do at shows, or at least I've heard: have dance parties. From interviews I gather he's really into both hip-hop and electronica, and he immediately started dancing. He was unselfconscoiusly there to have a good time, but the same couldn't be said for his fans, or even his bandmates. My roommate Eric, who's been in awe of Vanderslice's latest for the past month, went to talk to him and came back 30 seconds later. "I didn't know what to say."

I, meanwhile, was scoping out St. Vincent. I caught her momentarily alone and sheepishly asked if I could take a picture with her (for this blog, of course, though she didn't know that). I told her my girlfriend and I bonded over her music (not true) so she wouldn't think I was trying to mack her like the guy who talked her ear off before I could get to her. She seemed slightly uncomfortable but agreed to the photo, and when the picture turned out kind of dark, I couldn't bear asking for a re-shoot.

Our fellow audience members got drinks and stood by the walls, huddled with their friends and glancing at the musicians, or filing out. No one danced. It was like a middle school dance. I'd forgotten what real awkwardness was like. It was like this.

That's why I'm writing this. We can form what incredibly intense relationships with even the mildest of celebrities. We don't have to read tabloids to know intimate details about them. We can know some of their deepest thoughts, or their life history, or what their love life is like at the moment. They're both real people and important people figures in our lives. They can share with us incredibly moving and intimate experiences, and they become our experiences and they're no less meaningful for that. But when they break that fourth wall and go where we can briefly interact back with them... it's just kind of awkward, you know? And a little weird.

I don't feel any of Vanderslice's videos do justice to his music, so I've included a clip of someone who shares my thoughts on the man's work.

My Cash Cab on YouTube

2008-04-01T11:16:00.004-04:00

I don't know how long this will last, as YouTube threatens to take down videos of TV shows that don't have explicit permission from the creators. Until then, for your viewing pleasure. I'm the one in the back seat.

I'm on Cash Cab tonight

2008-03-31T10:16:00.001-04:00

I just got a call from a producer at the Discovery Channel (who knew they made house calls?) and she told me my appearance on that show, blogged about below, is airing tonight at 6pm.

Martha Stewart Living

2008-03-27T00:44:00.010-04:00

Growing up working-class in Jersey City, her mother, her namesake, taught her how to sew. Her father, a Willy Loman-like salesman and failed doctor, instilled in her an intense ambition, as well as a passion for gardening. Her grandparents taught her how to can and preserve foods. Her elderly neighbors next door taught her to bake pies and cakes.

It was a perfect storm of home economics.

A serious child, she went to Barnard on a scholarship and made money as a part time model. After college, she began a career as a stockbroker and moved to Connecticut with her husband. They restored and moved into a now-200 year old farmhouse.

It took nothing less to produce the most prominent professional homemaker the world had ever seen.

She became an editor at House Beautiful magazine and published the combination cookbook/party journal Entertaining. She became a common name in the New York Times and a common face on the Today Show. In time, she partnered with K-Mart, got her name on four magazine imprints, authored countless books, sold a nearly infinite range Martha-brand kitchen supplies, started a regular blog that she allegedly authors, stamped her name on a 24-hour satellite radio channel, founded a wine label, makes regular public appearances...

and was standing right in front of me a week ago, talking on the phone. That's part of the show. Her producer had a baby. The first five minutes of the show was Martha talking on the phone with her producer. I could read the teleprompter. Martha used it for talking points for the phone call, but she didn't follow it to the letter. She interrupted the new mama frequently.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, some stats:

Place Martha's show would get if I ranked all other shows in order of which has the brightest and cleanest studio:1

Number of apparently functional rooms that exist as a working part of her set: 4 (show kitchen, back kitchen, craft space, greenhouse)

Gifts I got: (1) small bottle of water before the show, (1) dog leash, given out frantically during commercial break by the warm-up guy, (1) ticket to the Bronx Botanical Garden

Anyway, the studio: way too much legroom. The windows are huge and bright and painted fairly convincingly like the Manhattan skyline. A hallway that cameras will never show is decorated with bookshelves and cabinets and carpet rather than being neglected. Much thought was put into this design.

The warm-up guy was short, stubbly-bearded, beady-eyed, and bespectacled. He sported a thick New York accent, mildly effeminate mannerisms, and a painful need to please everyone, especially if that means running around in circles, moaning, flustered. He smiled too much and would most likely give a foot massage to every elderly woman who asked. He shouted"ladies!" when he wanted everyone's attention. He would not have been out of place on Sex in the City; in fact, he seemed out of place for not in the company of Ms. Bradshaw and her friends. In short, he seems less a natural human being than a carefully constructed character whose main purpose is to get women from middle America to exclaim, "oh, I just love New Yorkers!"

He told lousy jokes and danced the same funny neck dance several times. We waited for Martha. Jennifer Lopez and Jay-Z blasted over the speakers.

Martha came out and talked a lot about cookies, how to make her version of Girl Scouts' thin mints (she claims hers are better), and her new cookie book. She spoke, as usual, in that weird low voice. That "I caught a cold in the 4th grade and never remembered to get over it" voice. That "I'm actually a dead person and this is how dead people talk, didn't you know?" voice. She used spatulas. She had four sizes, each available in either wood or plastic, and she talked about how each one could be useful. She hawked that shit like a street vendor. Her media company is called Martha Stewart Omnimedia. That, to me, is a fine example of futuristic terror.

I wish I had scathing criticism of Martha's show. I wish I had stunning revelations. But to be honest, it's very tightly run and it delivers on its promises (boring though they may be to straight men). If Martha's your bag and you're visiting the New York City area, I can honestly recommend her show.

I leave you with Conan O'Brien visiting her on her 500th show, then a list. The clip isn't scandalous or even insightful. Instead, it's harmless, current, and mildly entertaining.

A list of things that prompted applause (not comprehensive):
the show cutting to commercial
the show coming on after commercial
a doily
a basket

List of things that failed to attract applause besides a single clap from me (which was quickly followed by embarrassment):
Patricia Clarkson announcing she's in the new Scorsese film

Tune in next week for 106 and Park (BET's version of TRL)

Premiere of Bjork's new video, Wanderlust

2008-03-19T13:04:00.016-04:00

Percent of Bjork's Icelandic accent that she has retained in these years spent in the States: 100.
Times I made eye contact with her: 0.
Times I tried hard to make eye contact with her: 2.
Times I felt creepy for trying so hard to make eye contact with her: 2.
Times Bjork was honored with one of this year's Icelandic Music Awards: 2

Yes, I promised there would be Martha today. I am very, very sorry. Next week. For real.

I picked up on the rumor that there was a guerrilla screening of a new Bjork video. Since this meant I could join a small number of people who were tangentially involved in the creation of a short video segment that will later debut to the public, I deemed this worthy of a post. First, the song, Wanderlust. As performed at the Coachella music festival last year:

For starters, all I knew going in was this flyer on her website:

It was accompanied by the text "If you can't attend this one, there will be one more screening: on Friday, March 14 at 7pm in the Kaufmann Auditorium, American Museum of Natural History in NYC." And it was there that we went.

As is a consistent theme with this blog, we waited outside for maybe an hour before being ushered in. Apparently they planned on only one video screening/Q&A session, but enough people showed that they had to do the whole process twice. Buzz was running high amongst the people in line with me. "I mean, come on, it's Bjork," said one hip chick behind me. "We shouldn't go in with any preconceived notions. I'll almost be surprised if she doesn't shower us with whipped cream as we enter."

We weren't showered with any foodstuffs; however, we were handed 3-D glasses (the clear kind, not the one-eye-red, one-eye-blue kind) as we entered.

We were greeted by a man who I think was Greg Dinkins, the head of the New York Stereoscopic Society. These people are crazy about 3-D glasses and the things you see with them. They just eat 'em up! With the risk of hyperbole duly noted, I think this presumed Mr. Dinkins was the most awkward public speaker I've seen in my life. A sample.

"Well. We're here to see... this... video. It's an incredible... work. Thanks for joining us at... this... um... auditorium. In the museum. You probably want to... uh... see the video... soon."

And so on. Then a gentleman with an Appalachian accent, one not dissimilar to that heard in my native land, jumped up on stage and asked everyone to put on their glasses and hold still. He wanted to take our picture.

I tapped the woman in front of me on the shoulder. "This is the place to see the new Bjork video, right?" I whispered.

"I think so," she said.

I don't know if I'll ever see the photo, but I'm confident it looks just like the picture on the right.

I originally posted Michel Gondry's video for Bjork's Human Behavior as an example of what the Wanderlust video looks like. I've replaced it "Knife" by Grizzly Bear, as the Encyclopedia Pictura guys said it's what drew Bjork to them in the first place. Personally, I find Grizzly Bear's music on the boring side, despite indie rock's most pretentious tastemakers arguing otherwise and the fact that its singer is a very entertaining interviewee. Knife is a far more interesting video than song, in my opinion.

Wanderlust is like that, except it stars Bjork, it's even cooler, has a good song, and is in 3-D. It's eventually going to be available in 2-D form on the internets eventually.

The plot of the Wanderlust video:

Bjork is somewhere in a bright forest that's defined by mountains and rivers. A god who looks like Bjork creates new river paths by scraping her/his hand across mossy dirt. (Picture a child messing up a birthday cake.) Also, Bjork is friends with a number of cool-looking buffalo (see that promo photo above). These buffalo can float and don't mind Bjork riding them down the river. She floats along swimmingly.

Then, all of a sudden, Bjork's backpack sprouts arms and legs! And a head! It's a Pain-Body, that physical manifestation of the dissatisfaction that results from equating self with ego and body, as described by respected-as-much-as-a-New-Age-spiritual-guru-can-be Eckhart Tolle! Oh no! Bjork's gonna have to fight that Pain-Body by doing tons of flips on that buffalo! Is she gonna do a ton of flips while riding that buffalo down the river? She is!

I won't spoil the ending, but I will say this: we end up meeting a different god, one of the river, who acts as midwife to a certain Icelandic pop-star after she's swallowed by the river/birth canal. Got it?

After they showed the eight-minute video, which received thunderous applause, Mr. Dinkin invited the three principal filmmakers (two from Encyclopedia Pictura and one from Ghost Robot, all from San Francisco) came up for some Q&A.

"Actually, guys, you didn't need to come up here," Dinkin said as they came up there after he called them up there. "I've got microphones and they're wireless. You can go back to your seat."

The three guys looked at each other. "Well, we're here now," one of them said.

"But you can go to where you were and stand if you want," Dinkin said. "If you want."

"This way, everyone can see us," said another filmmaker. "I think we'll stand here."

Dinkin processed this for a minute. "Okay. You can stay there."

Then they entertained questions for nearly an hour. My favorite exchange was with a middle-aged blond woman. She asked:

"So, that was an Eckhart Tolle Pain-Body back there?"

"Yes."

"Do you think the American populace is going to realize what you were going for?"

"No."

But almost all of the other questions were in the parlance of the stereoscopic nerd and sounded something like this:

"Were your anaglyphs achieved with a bipolar medulla oblongata rig, or did you wing it with a cavernous Sally?"

As my interest in this kind of dialogue waned, another event popped up to compete with my attention. Slowly at first, and then more and more apparent, were races being held by two young girls. Up an aisle they would rush, then down that aisle. Each time they got a little more vocal. Finally someone asked what it was like working with Bjork. Then, like something from a dream, she rose out of the audience, where she had been sitting like a commoner. She came to the stage, clasping the smaller girl in her arms as she went. She is a magnetic woman. And the girls were her daughters.

"I'd like to thak awl of sees people involved. They had so much passion. They showed so much harrdth."

They showed the video again, and again it received massive applause. Bjork asked everyone who was involved with the production to stand, as who knew when they'd all be in the same room together?

More than half the audience stood. But that didn't diminish the value of that applause, in my book. Not one bit.

Next week: Martha. I promise, I promise, I promise.

I leave you with Michel Gondry solving a Rubik's Cube with his nose.

Cash Cab

2008-03-12T14:09:00.004-04:00

I signed a contract. I am legally forbidden from publicly speaking about much of my experience on Cash Cab, and I'm not going to hint about it and ask you to read between the lines. I do not begrudge the producers of this in any way, but it seriously hinders my description. Some day I'll post the full story, though I don't think I can while this show is still on the air.

It's somewhere around 7:30pm and I'm in the Upper East Side. As Megan, Ned, and I climb into one of those van-cabs. If you live in New York, you know what I mean. If you've never been, you can imagine it. It's a van that is painted like, and functions like, a cab.

We ask the driver to take us to the main library at Bryant Park. The driver starts rasping at us, nearly unintelligibly. He actually sort of sounded like a mentally challenged person. This was probably either for the producers to get some reaction shots of us, or because the guy was bored. He was white, which isn't often the case with NYC cabs, and had a big bald head. I had a slight sense that something was up. I recall purposefully not reacting, not being alarmed, because the cab was very nice and clean, and surely the City wouldn't give a license to someone gravely unqualified. Also, there were electronics in the ceiling of the cab, which I soon surmised were lights and cameras.

Then the square, disco-ish lights flashed on the ceiling of the cab, and the ruse was up. Driver-host-comedian Ben Bailey parked and turned around and in his normal voice welcomed us to the show. A producer showed up and opened the door. She congratulated us and gave a rundown of how the show works: you're in a cab for x number of blocks. You're asked progressively harder questions. Each one right gets you money. Three wrong and you're kicked off and get no money. You can ask two people for help: call someone on the phone, and stop someone on the street.

At this, I clandestinely whipped out my cellphone. Long ago my friend John and I established a number of hypotheticals, like what we'd do in case of a zombie apocalypse, how we'd like our funerals conducted, and who we'd use as our Lifeline if we were on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. John is firmly my answer to that last one, and he's often guilty of not answering his phone. So while the producer was still talking, I excitedly texted him "EMERGENCY", then stowed my phone.

When the producer finished talking, she informed us we could now call someone to be on standby. We could say no one was in any danger, and to please be ready for a call in the next half hour or so, but little else. I pulled out my phone. I had six missed calls from John, as well as a few texts from concerned friends who had heard that something drastic had happened. I called him back, said I was fine, be ready to answer a call soon, and be smart. By that I meant be near a computer with Google pulled up, which is not something I think he did.

We re-shot me hailing a cab, as apparently there weren't sneaky camera-people hiding a few feet away when we did it the first time. I don't think this makes the show inauthentic. I do think that America will soon see me hailing a cab with bad form.

I cannot state the results of the show until it airs. I will state that Ned performed admirably, and that Megan and I were of little help. I will also state that the show's questions have gotten far, far harder than they once were, as evidenced in this older episode:

Other cabs recognized the flashing lights inside ours and gave friendly honks. It made me think of how, if I were swimming in the ocean and friendly dolphins were around, they might swim alongside me for a little while, barking those clicking noises in an encouraging way.

Ben Bailey, the host, is a funny guy, and sort of personable. He swore at people on the road when we weren't taping. He called someone a "son of a whore" and we laughed politely. I admire his ability to host a TV show and drive in Manhattan at the same time. We mostly just went down Broadway, but still.

Next week: Martha Stewart

The (Actual) Montel Williams Show

2008-03-07T17:25:00.010-05:00

After our rousing pre-show warmup, where Montel proved himself completely and utterly batshit insane (see Thursday's post), we moved on to the real show, with a subject fascinating to us all: germs. Also, the important of disinfectants.

The show's coming on in six...five...four...

Montel turned to us, big grin on his face, arms out, palms pointed upward, and adopted the tone of a kindergarten teacher.

"Big smiles! Sit up straight!"

Every single time we came back from commercial, he did this. Every time.

Out came a microbiologist from the University of Arizona School of Public Health. Her introduction was a good example of the two sides of Montel's stage personality: Funny Class Clown, and Guru On Pretty Much Anything. First, the Clown:

"Please welcome Dr. Kelly Reynolds to the show! Dr. Kelly, when you were in school, you actually said, 'Hey, I like learning about germs. I want to study germs for the rest of my life.'"

She laughs. "That's right."

"That's crazy!"

Soon, she was giving tips on how to keep a kitchen clean. Montel quickly switched to Guru mode and interrupted: "When I'm cooking chicken at home, I clean my sink first. Then I just prepare the chicken in the sink, and so when I'm done, I clean it again, but I don't have to clean up my whole kitchen!"

"That's a good idea!" Kelly said. She was chipper and clearly pretty much game for anything. "Remember, clean your sink with bleach."

At Montel's prompting, she soon talked about the biggest germ hotspots in the average household. When she got to the bathroom, she used the phrase "fecal bacteria".

Montel reverted to Clown, turned to the audience, pulled a Jim Varney/Ernest scrunched up face, and squealed:
"Fecal bacteria? Eeeeeeeewwwww!"

As evidenced by the Q&A prologue, the man seems to get a real kick out of telling his viewers what to do. If the makeup of the audience at the show with me is at all representative, his viewers are overwhelmingly composed of middle-aged women. Before the show, Reynolds had swabbed the handbags of fifteen or so women, and she revealed the shocking diagnoses during the show. Diagnosis: dirty.

"You know you do it, ladies," Montel quickly chided. "You've got a big ol' bag, you're out to eat at a restaurant, and there's not enough room on the table, so you put it on the floor. Or you're in the bathroom and instead of hanging it up on a hook, you put it on the ground. Where all the fecal bacteria is."

Montel is in touch with the day-to-day doings of the Everywoman.

"Your bags are even under your seats right now! Picking up all kinds of germs!" He smiled. For the first and last time I was in his studio, I felt he was kidding. When we got there, we all were instructed to put our belongings below our seats.

Then, as it did several times during the show, often interrupting people mid-sentence, even Montel, the prize bell went off. That means:

Someone in the audience is given a prize
Montel's eyes are going to get really, really big.
His grin is going to get really, really big.

A woman got some cleaning wipes.

Montel brought out a second doctor, Dr. Manny Alvarez. He's not a microbiologist. He's a television doctor with apparently real medical qualifications. He was not interesting.

We moved to a taped segment where Dr. Reynolds went to a family's house and tested it for germs. Their house has a bathroom. Their girls played with Barbie dolls in the bathtub.

We cut to commercial.

I happened to be sitting in the front row, and the parents of this family, Melody and Ron, came and sat next to me. They're from Tempe, Arizona. The show flew them, and not their daughters, to New York for a few days, booked them a hotel, and gave them a small stipend. This arrangement, they said, was an absolutely ideal vacation. How did they get picked to be on the show? They're well involved in Girl Scouts, and their local chapter got an email looking for someone who's obsessively clean. They forwarded it to Melody, who considers herself a bit of a clean freak, and it was a perfect match.

When the segment finished, Reynolds read the results of the tests to the audience, dramatic NBC game show style.

"Your bathroom has...four hundred thousand fecal bacteria!" (Cue Montel's Ewww face.)

"Your girls' Barbies have...twenty thousand fecal bacteria!"

Melody was aghast.

As a prize for this taking this disturbing news publicly and like champs, Reynolds and Montel gifted the couple with brand new Barbies for their daughters. They held them awkwardly on their laps.

We cut to commercial.

Montel pointed at the Barbies. "I'm going to have to ask you to put those on the floor for the rest of the taping."

The Montel Williams Pre-Show Q&A

2008-03-03T18:06:00.007-05:00

Pre-show warmup: Coffee and donuts
Times I was late to the show and had to return the next day for a different taping: 1
Quality of the pre-show Q&A: So good, it filled the entirety of this post. I'll post more Montel Saturday.

This is an exciting time to be Montel Williams. This is his last season on the air. I'd always written him off as talk show trash, a compatriot of Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake. My loss. A few days after I started this project, I caught this clip from his appearance on Fox News.

He didn't return after that moment. I love how someone in the editing room keeps shifting away to pictures and footage of Heath Ledger when Montel is talking. Brilliant.

Anyway, after we filed in to see the show, we were treated to a brief Q&A with the man. I, emboldened after watching him act so bravely on Fox, asked him if the show was ending because someone at Fox didn't like him speaking truth to power. I paraphrase his response, addressed not just to me but to the whole audience:

"Many of you probably don't know the incident this gentleman is referring to. I was recently on a news show to promote my new book. My publicist told them before booking my appearance that I would only come on to promote my new book. Before I came on the air they asked if we could talk about Heath Ledger. I said, 'No. I'm here to talk about my new book.' They said ok. Then we go live, and the first thing they do is ask me about Heath Ledger. Well, nobody pushes me around like that. I fight back."

His story didn't even hint at how he brought up Iraq. Maybe he was putting on a self-aggrandizing facade in order to actually be modest, I thought. The next twenty minutes gave me a good impression of the extent of his modesty.

"Some people say this is why I'm ending my show this season," he continued. "That my show's canceled because some bigwig didn't like me refusing to play nice. That's not true. This is the year my contract ends, and I chose not to renew it. I spent seventeen years in service with the military, then seventeen years in service with television. It's time to move on to the next seventeen years. Something big is happening."

People moved on with their questions, but it was obvious his allusion to "something big" piqued a lot of interest.

One person: "Is the next big thing for you movies?"

Montel: "Hollywood would love to have me. They've been trying to get me for seventeen years. But people don't know it; I'm already in movies. You can go to the video store right now and pick up a movie called... it's called..." He paused for a moment. "War, Inc. [editor's note: it's since been released, and wasn't reviewed much or well]. It stars John Cusack. I play the voice of his car's navigational system. I give him advice. It's funny stuff. Next question."

Someone asked, "Montel, what are you reading?"

"I am a voracious reader. I've read sixty-three books in the past three months, all about the same subject." He held his gaze with the crowd. "Poker. I am a fanatic poker player. Next question."

Someone asked, "Montel, what kind of music do you listen to?"

"I love all kinds of music. People say their music tastes are diverse? I really do listen to all kinds of music. In the past few days I've listened to everything from Led Zeppelin, to Dr. Dre, to the Beatles, to DeBussy, to Dr. Dre, to... Led Zeppelin. Everything. I love music. Next question."

Someone asked, "Montel, who do you support for president?"

His tone changed slightly. "I don't want to put you on the spot," he replied, "but this is something that really bugs me. Why are celebrities supposed to tell normal people who to vote for? What gives them the right? Because you know they're not looking out for the interests of normal people like you and me. They're picking a candidate they know, and you'd better believe they're trying to get a job with that candidacy if they win. Next question."

Someone asked, "Montel, would you ever run for office?"

Ding ding! That's the million dollar question.

Montel was quiet for a moment. "You know what this country really needs? There are decisions that are unpopular but need to be made, that are good for the country. I'm talking about the kind of tough decisions that might get one shot. That's the kind of thing that gets somebody assassinated. But that's something I'd be willing to do. What's one life compared to all of America? Next question."

Someone stood and said, "Montel, one thing politicians need to realize is that we want to keep jobs in America."

"This is something else that bugs me. We have all these people who are so concerned about illegal immigrants. 'Oh, illegals take our jobs! Illegals are ruining this country! I tell you what. They're doing what nobody else wants to do in America. I promise you this. I can walk into any high school--into the high school down the street. I can offer to the kids there a big sum-- $20 an hour--to come into an orchard with me and pick oranges. And they won't do it. They won't do it! I tell you this: farmers in America have fruit that is literally falling off trees. You ask a farmer--

"I'm a farmer," said the woman who asked the question.

"See?" replied Montel. "You're a farmer. You know what I'm talking about. There are farmers in southern California--"

"We actually hire the local kids in the summer, when school lets out," she said.

"That's what I'm saying," Montel said. "There are farms in California where fruit is literally falling off of trees, and if only illegal immigrants are willing to pick it, then I say let them stay. Next question."

Someone stood and said, "Montel, the government should melt down all our pennies. Why don't we have copper doorknobs?" [Editor's note: apparently copper is much less of a haven for germs than most materials, and this is a cause for great concerned among, I guess, people who home-school their kids.]

"I completely agree with you, but copper's at a premium. I would love to see those doorknobs across America. Our show today is about germs. But listen to me--it ain't gonna happen."

-----

Saturday: A bonus post, one detailing the actual Montel show, on Saturday.
Update: it's Here
Next Thursday: Cash Cab

Late Show with David Letterman

2008-02-27T23:08:00.001-05:00

Audience warm up: Friendly, heavyset man in his 40s with slicked-backed hair and good rapport with tourists
Seating: Cramped, theater-style chairs
Taping: January 30, 2008
Air date: January 30, 2008 (I think)

A few weeks ago, a NY Mag piece articulated what were at the time my thoughts on David Letterman: he is the polar opposite of Jay Leno. Leno is the champion of the status quo, who hams it up with jokes about how "blondes are dumb, gay men are silly," while Letterman is a "renegade" who delights in "absurdist" comedy. Nowhere is this more striking, the story notes, than in their respective monologues. Both do one every show, of course, but Letterman shows open disdain for his shoddy material, while Leno embraces it. When channel surfing on weekdays at 11:30, a circumstance that really doesn't happen too often to me, it's obvious why I always choose Letterman.

I was standing in line to see another show when I got a call from somebody at Worldwide Pants. He needed me to confirm absolutely I'd attend Late Show and asked me a very simple trivia question that I nearly missed. If I'd gotten it wrong, I wouldn't have been able to attend! That's when I realized that when it comes to its studio audience, this is no normal show.

Most shows treat their audiences as afterthought, a gimmick to augment their show. Not so with Letterman. It's held in the Ed Sullivan theater, which gives the whole process more of an air of regional theater than of those cheaply made TV studios: fancy staircases, a nicely carpeted lobby, and an astonishingly high number of pages, all of them wearing fancy "Worldwide Pants" jackets. While waiting, we were shown this vintage Letterman clip:

As is standard, I waited for hours in line. As is not at all standard, I got a ticket proclaiming me in the "red zone". Not everybody was in the red zone. Some were relegated to the yellow or orange zones. And each zone stood in its own line, and the red zone's line was closest to the entrance and entered first.

Awesome, I thought. Red zone? More like red carpet!

The Late Show isn't filmed in a normal TV studio; it's in the historic Ed Sullivan Theater. There's not just one tier of seats, but two. Two! And they took us to the second tier! That turned out to not be such an honor.

It hit me while I was sitting in that famed Ed Sullivan theater, in the nosebleed section, wondering why there was a nosebleed section to begin with. I was listening to kindly goomba of a warm-up guy talk about how Dave is such a stand-up guy, adjusting my girlfriend's head while she dozed on my shoulder, when I realized I don't have to like Letterman just because I despise Leno. That whole "whose style monologue do you prefer" thing is a false dichotomy. Letterman shows disdain for his monologue because it's a lower form of comedy, but he still does a monologue every time. I'd prefer Matchbox 20 to post-drugs Aerosmith (I guess), or a Dane Cook movie to one starring Robin Williams, but my God, that doesn't mean I'd voluntarily sit around for any of those.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we don't have a very good show tonight," Letterman said to us before taping started. At first I thought he was joking, and says that to each audience. Anti-comedy, right? But in retrospect, I doubt it. It was actually a bad, bad show. The guests were Dr. Phil ("We're all nuts here!" Dave quipped in a manner suspiciously like his rival), Lena Heady (Sarah Connor from the Chronicles; we discovered she's actually British!), and Gary Allan (a Wal-Mart country star hopeful who powerfully gushed blandness; I believe he sang an ode to malls). If I hadn't been taking notes for this blog, I would have forgotten the entire experience within a few days.

To be fair, right after the Super Bowl, I managed to catch Letterman interviewing Eli Manning, and it was freaking awesome. Dave's been at it for 25 years; maybe this was just an off night.

Next week: Montel

TRL

2008-02-15T16:29:00.002-05:00

Arrived/Departed: 10:30/1:45
Audience warm up: Standing in line, walking through metal detectors
Seating: Long, painted benches
Taping: January 29, 2008
Air date: January 31, 2008

Oh my God. The bright, multicolored lights, the music. Total sensory overload. It's candy. Pure sugar. A quick rush, without any substance, rapidly gobbled by kids and utterly garish to adults. This is Total Request Live--TRL, MTV's red herring to pretend it's still music television. The show doesn't show full music videos, just clips. It also represents youth culture for many. That's a harbinger, surely.

I'm a white male in his twenties who considers his music tastes discerning. I am no way the target demographic for this show. So it's hardly fair for me to hate here.

Fortunately, life is also not fair. And similarity to life has nothing to do with television. I don't know where this analogy is going, but let me be clear: TRL is terrible in every way, and the kids these days are disgusting and immoral, and their role models are smut peddlers and scum.

I arrived late because my train was stuck underground for half an hour. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was the highlight of my day. Like with many shows, we waited outside for a while. And after that, we waited inside for a while. The show is advertised as for people 16-24 and you need ID to prove you're in that range. I was not checked, and neither was anyone else I saw. Most seemed about fourteen. This is relevant. No kids said anything to me, but I can't imagine my thick beard and mild bald spot went unnoticed.

If I actually arrived on time for the show, I would have waited about an hour and forty-five minutes around before even being seated. I learned two things while waiting:

The kids today do not respect my personal space.
The kids today still state falsehoods to their friends, then, as said friends are sufficiently hoodwinked, yell "psych!"

When you're an audience member, those in charge of the show don't give you much respect, and this was even more apparent with TRL. The Audience Coordinator had a palpable contempt for her clients. It's very high school: Empty your pockets for the metal detector. Stand in line. Shh! Stop talking! Sit down there. Scoot down. Stand up. Sit down. Yell wooo when I say. Stop yelling wooo.

TRL is shot three-quarters in the round, which I guess is impressive. That mostly meant that kids had to keep scooting one way or the other to fill the background of a given shot. In case you caught the episode I attended, I'm sitting next to the heavyset guy in a yellow t-shirt who whooo-ed even louder than the rest, always with his fists raised triumphantly above his head.

This episode was "10 Influential Music Videos" in anticipation of Missy Elliott's latest, Ching-A-Ling, which is in 3-D and therefore may prove influential. Our host is Damien Fahey. He's a perfectly affable jackass and perfect successor to Carson Daly. He's opposite of a Colbert or Montel in that I probably wouldn't mind hanging out with him in real life, but he's a total tool to watch. He was helped by a Lyndsey Rodrigues, an Australian whose job was apparently to smile and be tall and pretty and occasionally speak in her charming accent. She was perfectly cast. Halfway through the show, the Aussie said announced to the cameras,

"Karen from Kansas writes,
'Dear TRL. My boyfriend has a great body, but mine could use some work. I'd like to get some exercise but he won't work out with me. What do I do?'

Karen, you are oh-so-lucky. Because today we have the queen of erotic aerobic workouts, Carmen Electra!"

They cut to commercial. Don't think the show is live; taped shows frequently stop for roughly the amount of time as commercials. Some TRL staff came out, rearranged some of the kids sitting in one corner, and placed a cheesy, heart-shaped bed.

The Aussie gestured to the bed and leered at Carmen: "So, Carmen, would you mind showing us an erotic aerobic dance? Woooo!"

And Carmen Electra seemed genuinely surprised by this request. Was she not earlier informed earlier than this that she would be "dancing"? Did the bed in the middle of the stage not raise a red flag? What about the fact that, besides a meager acting career (in fairness, she stars in the recent "Meet the Spartans"), most of her post-Singled Out and Dennis Rodman notoriety come from these videos?

(Disclaimer: I hate to be a prude about this. But look at who's sitting behind Carmen in this picture. This is the target audience for her Aerobic Striptease DVDs?)

"Gosh," Carmen said disingenuously, suggestively, and sadly. "I'm wearing this short little dress. I'll give these people behind me a show."

At this, most of the guys commenced hooting and hollering. The fists of the guy beside me became ever-more triumphant.

"Well," she said coyly, "I guess I can give a little demonstration."

Then, this is what she did:

She flopped on the bed.

She rolled around a little.

She grabbed a pillow.

She threw the pillow a foot and a half in the air.

The pillow landed near her head.

She slowly waved her arms in a a way that was less effeminate, more freakishly weak.

She giggled.

She stood, finished with her routine, and giggled.

"I guess the real workout is what comes after."

Everyone applauded. Boys hooted.

Fists triumphed.

America worsened.

Next week: Letterman

The Colbert Report

2008-02-13T18:12:00.001-05:00

Show: Colbert Report
Date: 1/30/08
Arrived/Departed: 4:30/7:45
Audience warm up: Funny but mean comedian
Seating: Spacious!

I started out with a show that’s easy to watch: the Colbert Report. Save Letterman (coming up in two entries), Colbert is the only one-man TV show I appreciate but had never seen live. And one-man it is. The writers are still striking, and the WGA members picketing outside are doing it only for the sake of viewers like me. (And principle, I guess.) They’re making no impression on the intern who guides the audience-to-be to wait outside in a line; in fact, she says her crew provides them with daily hot chocolate. [Note: Yes, I realize the strike has since ended.]

We waited outside for about an hour, shielded by the studio building on one side and a heavy tarp against a fence on the other, before being ushered into a waiting room. There the Audience Coordinator, a guy allegedly famous for some web video where he pretends to live in an Ikea, reminded us several times that Mr. Colbert works entirely without papers or a script, and that he really feeds off the audience’s energy.

Then he gushed praise for his boss, painting him as both nice and fallible, the opposite of his TV persona. “I have worked for a ton of famous people, and Stephen is the nicest guy.” He said his boss struggled as an actor, and that things looked pretty dim before he was picked up on the Daily Show, but now, “Stephen’s landed his dream gig. We’re all so proud of him.” The marked distinction between the human actor and the character who shares his name was a theme repeated through the night, which surprised me, given that on TV, Colbert seems at pains to always appear in character.

We were ushered in to a very spacious studio. Seating is stadium-style and spacious, going about five rows back. The stage largely consists of a series of slightly angled walls, angled to create a desk room, an interview room, and two walls of paraphernalia, like a hockey jersey from the Saginaw Spirit, the team with a Colbert-themed mascot. “I Fought the Law” played semironically over the speakers. Other pump-up songs of the evening included "It’s the End of the World As We Know It" by R.E.M., The Ramones’ Blitzkreig Bop, and "Holland, 1945", by Neutral Milk Hotel. The music is obviously designed to pump up the audience, not immerse them in Colbert-ness.

As I think is the norm for comedy talk shows, they sent a standup comedian to warm up the crowd. He also peppered his talk with praise of Colbert and reminders that he was working entirely sans script. He was as funny a comic as I’d expect to see in a club, though he did casually engage in the two pet peeves I have for standup. First, he made a few “you’re in this demographic, so you must have these characteristics!” jokes (here, a Pakistani guy who shocked our comic by choosing to become an accountant, rather than an engineer or doctor). Second, he harassed a member of the audience in order to impress the rest of us (to the same guy: “I don’t hate you because of your accent. I hate you because I cannot stand your fucking hair,” while reaching over to mess up the guy’s hair, which I thought crossed a line.) It was definitely funny, but I’m pretty sure it was a big damper on the accountant’s night. To the comedian’s credit, he was obviously called on to stall for far more time than is usually necessary, and he kept it going smoothly.

Finally, Colbert came running out, arms held high in self-celebration. That’s his thing, in case you don’t watch him. It’s weird to see TV personalities in your line of vision but made up for the camera. Their faces look plastic and their bodies look stumpy. Colbert looked older than my mental image of him.

He addressed the audience. “I’d like to answer some questions before I turn into that awful, mean character.” Someone jumped right in with a Lord of the Rings question. Colbert answered almost immediately with something like: “Yeah, well, Faramir wouldn’t have lost that ring! Twelve thousand years, people! If you read the Similarian—and I trust you all do—you know what I’m talking about.”

As his show is progeny of the Daily Show, Colbert begins with a segment joking about current news stories. Then he went on an ongoing bit, probably his best of the night, detailing that since the nonagenarian leader of the Mormon Church recently died, and apparently had a thing against a group of writers, then it follows that Colbert’s own writers are guilty of murder.

Since we’d been so frequently reminded by the administration that Colbert was responsible for all his own material, we’re left to assume that he comes up with all his jokes and has to meet with someone in the art department to convey that when he does the “Ron Paul is the Pope’s Puppet” bit, he’s going to need someone to Photoshop in a puppet with Benedict XVI.

The interviews were funny but strained for being stretched to make up for lack of written material. The first guest was Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born writer of the comic book Persepolis, now a very good animated movie in theaters. The second was a heavyset, badly goateed Christian author and apparent spiritual leader, whose theology had something to do with God loving us and being vague. I paraphrase the most interested exchange:

Guy: “God’s not just smiling at us when we’re in church. God’s smiling at us whenever we’re doing what we’re made to do.”
Colbert: [Some sort of characteristic, self-aggrandizing remark.]
Guy: “See? God’s smiling at you when you act like you’re a nine year-old in a forty year-old’s body, because apparently that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Colbert: [Grins silently, stunned.]

The show ended soon after. All was quiet on the set while Colbert reshot a single line of dialogue. Then he put on his sincere face, thanked us so much for being a great audience, and before he finished his sentence, rushed backstage. The Audience Coordinator told us we were a fantastic audience—is there any other kind, I wonder?—and the show was over.

If you have ten minutes and want proof of the extent of Colbert's chutzpah:

Next Thursday: TRL.

Kevin's TV Guide to NYC

2008-01-24T13:35:00.002-05:00

I'll start this project with a mission statement.

I'm not the biggest TV fan out there. In fact, I got my first television less than a year ago and still haven't gotten around to shelling out for cable. But in my nearly two years of living in New York City, I've seen tapings of two of my favorite shows: The Daily Show and Late Night With Conan O'Brien. There are plenty of other shows filmed here, too. Game shows. News shows. Shows for middle-aged pseudo-feminists. Shows for stupid people. Headache-inducing morning people. Conservatives. Trivia buffs. Homemakers. There's a wide range of demographics, usually those I most pointedly avoid, who are represented best by television shows found in Manhattan. Also, a few of the shows give you prizes when you show up.

It occurred to me that reviews of these experiences is an untapped market, and with some careful scheduling, I can see a show a week. Whether you're a resident or tourist of New York, a TV connoisseur or simple travel voyeur, or even just a big fan of me, I hope you enjoy my weekly descriptions and reviews.

I'll try to judge a viewing on its own merits, despite the discrepancy between my predicted enjoyment of, for example, the Colbert Report and the Martha Stewart Show. If the former's uncomfortable, relatively unfunny, and tiresome, and the latter delivers on its promises to teach me how to make the best poached eggs and knitted snowman pillows, then Martha's getting the higher grade.

I will pointedly strive to have a new post available every Thursday morning.

One final note: whether I know you or not, I wholeheartedly invite you to comment, question, etc. Television is a one-way form of communication, but this project needn't be.

This Thursday: The Colbert Report