Live Tonight with Conan O'Brien!

I went to the taping of the Conan O'Brien Show this afternoon. The tickets had to be reserved something like 6 weeks in advance, today being the first date with available seats. Since the maximum amount for one person was four tickets, I booked them all and advertised the extra ones on our UN intern Googlegroup. To my surprise they were all gone in about 20 minutes - and I thought that Conan O'Brien is famous only in Finland...

Due to lack of time (or a two-hour lunch today, last office lunch with my colleagues in a nice Spanish restaurant) and forgetfulness, I didn't even check tonight's guests online. I was happily surprised to hear that Hugh Laurie was the other guest to be interviewed, whereas the other's name I still don't remember. But besides guests and the show itself, even more interesting was to see the big machinery working behind it. Probably a dozen employees were just guiding the audience to our seats, counting and re-counting us and giving us orders. Half a dozen of 30-40-something men with nerdy or trendy glasses were shuttling around Conan during every little break, apparently going through last minute checks for the script. A few security guys and few other men and women were watching that the audience was behaving properly. During the warm-up jokes with Conan, one guy was even removed from the first row and put into the back row because he was a bit too spontaneous, getting up and hugging two other guys who Conan told to hug each other. Too dangerous to keep in the first row!

Also the reactions of the audience during the warm-up comedian were funny to us, reserved Europeans (Finnish, Polish and German). Everybody wanted to have their little moment in the spotlight, proudly yelling wherever they were coming from or just being overtly extrovert in general. One Canadian guy was putting himself forward a bit too keenly during the warm-up and the beginning of the show: standing up, doing hand gestures, cheering and laughing very loudly (faked laughter). He was also - luckily! - silenced very quickly. I would imagine that the security man told him to shut up or to be removed from the audience completely.

You can see the show live tonight on NBC (also online?), in Finland probably some night this or next week. I'm there, high up on the second last row in the middle of the audience, if they happened to shoot us at all. But it was fun to watch, I didn't have to fake laughter, guests were entertaining and the finishing rock band from New Jersey didn't suck too bad. All this for free, unlike many things in the US!

Comments

Elise (gramofoni) said…
hmm...

dr. house.
hmm....




näin SMG:n tänään. Sekin oli herkkua.
11 December, 2008 00:45
Elise (gramofoni) said…
tulee telkusta huomisiltana, perjantaina, Suomessa (00:05 lauantain puolella?)
11 December, 2008 10:38
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