Network television debut

I'm not exactly a spontaneous person. I generally like things (especially trips) planned. But how do you say no to a free trip to New York, courtesy of the Letterman show? It goes like this. Monday night: the Late Show calls my sis, books her for the Thursday taping. Tuesday: me hurriedly arranging to work from the NY office the rest of the week; book travel. Wednesday morning: on the plane.

This is where, if you were watching a tv show, you'd hear that scratching sound and the image would start rewinding. Hold on, back up.

In a nutshell, my sis was in NY in September and filled out a questionaire about weird talents for the Late Show with David Letterman. They called her back to audition and then planned to have her on for Audience Show and Tell in November. Alas, the writers' strike. Curses, foiled again! But they eventually booked her last week. And they flew me out with her and got us a hotel. Awesome.

Cut to me, briskly walking along Park Ave to my Very Important Job in The Big City.

They gave us the Dream Hotel, conveniently located around the corner from the Ed Sullivan Theater, where Letterman tapes. When I first walked in, I thought it was freezing before I realized that it's just blue. Also, they leave apples on your pillow instead of mints!

We spent a good 4.5 hrs in rehearsals on Thurs before the taping, which entails a whole lot of waiting around interrupted by spurts of checking camera angles, sound, etc. This means you get to hang out onstage (which is totally cool, but I couldn't get up enough courage to go sit in his chair) and backstage with the cast and crew of the Late Show, who are equally bored waiting around. So they let you do fun stuff, like play with the sound board ("Come break Dave's window!").

The green room. The guy on the left got cut from the show, but the other Show and Tell people are there, namely, Hulk Hogan Co-star and Colonel Sanders.

At one point in the afternoon, they did a pre-taped segment involving a really old guy. And I mean REALLY old, like hunched over with a cane, old guy. After he taped his segment, he, along with a bunch of the Late Show interns sat around in the green room with us. Really Old Guy then starting asking where everyone was from. When he got to us, we said we were from San Francisco, to which he replied, "Oh, so you live in Chinatown." At which point all the oxygen was sucked from the room and all that was left was the deafening sound of Awkward. These are the risks you run when you talk to a Really Old Person.

So what do you do when you have several days in New York and you've already seen all the sights on prior trips? You eat. You eat things like this.

Yes, that would be pastrami AND corned beef and note that the other equally enormous half of it is hiding on the other side. The pickles constitute the vegetables. Out of this sandwich, we made six large sandwiches.

And the Pinkberry.

Which we could only eat once because it chilled me to my very core. Note that she's still wearing a down jacket and scarf while eating.

Also we ate delicious coal oven fired (yes, coal) pizza at Lombardi's. Which I don't have a picture of because we ate it too fast.

But we did make it to Times Square (to watch Hairspray). Which is, even when the temperatures never go above 30 degrees, still insane with people.

And the ever so romantic Grand Central Station.


And that was our bite of the Big Apple.