Live From New York

It might come as a surprised to you, but I have some experience in television. For example, I was on The Popeye Club when I was in 1st Grade. The Popeye Club was a show on WSB-TV (in the 50’s and 60’s) that featured “Officer Don” and Popeye cartoons. Officer Don’s sidekick was “Orville the Green Dragon”. There was no attempt in teaching children anything other than to sit around and wait on the next cartoon.

 I was not able to capitalize on my appearance on The Popeye Club to make television a career. Apparently there is some rule about if you are hideous looking you can’t be on TV. However, I have watched a lot of TV in my life, enough to be voted into The Couch Potato Hall of Fame. So I was thrilled when my wife announced we had tickets to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon even though I had never watched it and I get Jimmy Fallon mixed up with Seth Meyers.

 Before we went to the taping of Late Night, we took the tour of The NBC Studios. This is a hit and miss affair. We were taken to one studio-the studio which tapes Dr Oz. This is an historical studio because it is where the original Late Nights with David Letterman and Conan O’Brien were taped. Dr Oz is okay; the times I’ve seen it he seems to be really interested in feces. Maybe I just happened to catch “Poop Week”.

One thing I did notice is that the pages at NBC look nothing like Kenneth on “30 Rock”. Most of them are very attractive young ladies who button only one button on their shirts. This is just scientific observation.

 Our Late Night was a pretty good show. First we had great seats-in the middle of the third row, right above the cameras. The Late Night band is The Roots, which has a tuba player. It is an incredible band. Tina Fey and John Slattery were the guests. Tina doesn’t look like she eats. My wife has tagged John Slattery as her next husband.

 We may live in a relativistic post modern world, however, if there is one constant it is that you cannot use your cell phone inside of a NBC studio. Somebody two rows down from us was texting during the show. I’m not sure what was so important that you couldn’t turn off your cell phone and watch Tina Fey eat a piece of fried chicken (they had a fried chicken contest-you had to be there). The Enforcer Pages (the ones that button their shirts) went all Abu Ghraib on this person and threw them out of the studio

On Saturday morning, we got up early and went to the Fox Studios. My wife loves the Weekend Fox and Friends crew and we met Alison, Dave, and Clayton. My wife was interviewed as part of the “After Show” for their website regarding the topic “Prom Prices”. If you have any high school students at home, you know a “Prom” can cost anywhere from One Billion Dollars to One Zillion Trillion Million Dollars. Lori hit the question out of the park while I was bringing sexy back in my blue Georgia Southern t-shirt. I’m surprised I wasn’t offered a show called “ALAN!” on the spot. (It would feature me wearing my various college t-shirts complaining about Obama.)

Saturday afternoon, we had tickets to Huckabee. Before the show started, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee came out and shook our hands. Then they took us to a holding room which had snacks. Huckabee, like his preacher pedigree, opened the show with a short homily. Then he interviewed two women, a guy, and Dolly Pardon. It was a taped interview with Dolly. She is at the point in her career can make breast jokes in front of an ordained minister. At the end of the show, they gave us a copy of Dolly’s new CD and a dinner for two at Cracker Barrel.

We were back at the hotel when the show came on. I saw myself on TV. Somebody texted me and as I was answering him  I was shown again, looking like the King of Goober City. Then I was texted a screen grab of me clapping. Soon, I was all over Twitter and Facebook. My fifteen minutes of fame.

Somewhere, Orville the Green Dragon would have been proud.