April 13, 2005

Jon Stewart Show - on taking acid and public peeing

As it turns out, one of the bonuses of sitting in the studio audience for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is that you get to ask silly questions before the show begins.
Last night, those questions included:

Have you ever done acid?
Is it true you peed on stage during a play at your high school?

After buying himself a lot of time to think -- with questions such as "you mean LSD?" -- Stewart said "I don't do drugs now - because I have a job." And with some sense of panic yelled at the college-aged questioner to "Stay in school!" Then he noted the college kid probably had a good two or three years before he has to get a job himself. ...

As for the urination thing -- apparently Stewart was supposed to be a background character in a park as the drama was unfolding at the front of the stage. He added an impromptu pantomime -- indeed of a man comically relieving himself on the tree. Went over well with the audience - not the drama teacher.

And now you're probably thinking: How can I get tickets to one of those tapings so I can ask embarrassing questions? The good news is that the tickets are free - and we each got a free copy of Lewis Black's book, "Nothing's Sacred;" the bad news is that my pair of tickets came a full five months after my initial e-mail request. And every step of the way -- did I mention all the e-mails? -- the Daily Show warned there was no guarantee we were getting in, despite all the confirmations.

(The even worse news for you is that the Daily Show tickets page currently says demand is so high they've stopped offering them for now. But "please check back from time to time to see if we have re-instated the ticket request form.")

It's a small audience - maybe 100 people. And a lot of people in line yesterday were turned away even though they went through the same process we did. They just happened to get in line a few minutes later.

My husband got in line at 4:20 p.m., and I arrived a short time later. At 5:35 a woman with a clipboard walked along the line and confirmed that our names were on her list. We each get a yellow laminated ticket. Mine said 91. At 5:45 we passed through a non-functioning metal detector and into a room with the rest of the audience. We stood there until 6:10 when we were allowed in -- after the VIPs, who by the way, didn't laugh much and got picked on by the warm-up comedian.

The audience was a mix of ages -- from college level to sprightly grannies. There was a punk rocker kid with numerous piercings -- who the warm-up guy referred to as "tackle box" -- and a number of professionals, including a lawyer, an anesthesiologist, a guy from Morgan Stanley and another from Lehman Brothers. Go figure. The warm-up guy basically made us shout a lot and laugh loud, as "you are the laugh track. You're not watching the show; your participating in it."

The warm-up guy introduces Stewart, who sits on the couch and answers the audience's questions. (Though he stood up and paced during the peeing-on-the-tree story.) Stewart tells us Sen. Bob Dole will be the guest for the show, but that's about all we know.

He whips through the opening segment about the president's iPod, takes a break apparently matching the length of the commercials and resumes the show. Stephen Colbert runs on stage and takes a seat to do his Pope segment. He gets done and it's only 6:45. Then Lewis Black emerges, and does his Back in Black thing. As they break for commercial, the studio fills with AC/DC blaring "Back in Black." As that's playing - loud - out comes a happy Bob Dole. Unprompted, the studio audience gives him a standing ovation. He sits and the two talk about Dole's new book, "A Soldier's Story," and he and Stewart make a few jokes despite the fact they're talking specifics about how Dole was injured in WWII. As Dole exits, he gets another standing ovation and he stops to shake a few hands in the front rows.

And basically, that's it. We were outside on 54th Street a few minutes after 7 p.m. wondering where to get a drink.

Earlier: How to (maybe) get tickets to the 'Daily Show'

April 13, 2005 11:45 PM in Sightsology

®Copyright 2006, All Rights Reserved