Conan

On February 25th, Nick and I took the train into the city, yet again, for another live show. My favorite late night talk show, Conan O'Brien! It was a late afternoon taping and we had to be at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at 4:30pm and the show started at 5:30pm. The studio was quite smaller than they make it appear on television. The guests were Will Arnett (husband of Amy Poehler of SNL) and Flavor Flav from the old 80's rap group Public Enemy and more recently from the reality show "Flavor of Love". After the show we walked out one of the side doors and realized there were tons of paparazzi standing outside the door, waiting for someone to come through. We decided to wait for a few minutes to see who was coming out. After about 10 minutes, Flavor Flav walked out and the cameras and people quickly closed in on him, photos and autographs, etc. He was a good sport about it all, signing a few autographs and took a few pictures before he jumped into his waiting limousine. Here are a few pictures I took of the whole experience.

Recap of our Martha Stewart Show experience!

Sheesh, I didn't mean for it to take 3 weeks to post this but such is life with 2 toddlers.

Nick and I got to the train station bright and early at 5 am on Valentine's Day morning. It was about 18 degrees out but luckily the station had a little coffee shop/ticketing office in the station so we were able to wait inside for the train. We enjoyed the 70 minute train ride into Penn station and we were even able to watch the sunrise during the ride. We arrived into Penn station in Manhattan at 7:30am and had plenty time to walk the 5-6 blocks to Martha's show studio. Penn station is a sight to see in itself. It's the hub of many different trains, subway, etc. Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road trains, New Jersey Transit trains, and the New York subway system all have a stop at Penn station. It always seems busy, no matter what time of day it is. Don't dare slow down or stop to read a sign as you're sure to piss off someone behind you that can't be bothered to walk around you. It's also filled with restaurants, newstands, even an office supply store and a complete drugstore/pharmacy. All of this, by the way, is underground. When you take the escalator up to the street level, you come right out in the heart of the city. Oh, and Madison Square Garden sits right there on top of Penn station so it would be very convenient to go there for a concert or show and just go downstairs for your train ride back home. Okay, so back to the Martha experience.... We got to her building at around 8:15 and got in line behind many other couples. You couldn't help look around at the other couples and imagine how they met online. People were mingling while in line and sharing stories of how they met. Oh, and did I mention - everyone had on their red! I happened to look across the street and saw Curtis Stone, otherwise known as the "Take Home Chef" walking by! He was kind of gawking at the big line of red-shirted couples forming under the big green and yellow "Martha Stewart Show" awning. Nobody seemed to notice him, maybe I'm the only one that watches that show. It's the one that he surprises some young, cute girl in the grocery store and offers to take her back to her home and show her how to cook some fabulous meal, anyone know that show? So anyway, they opened the doors at around 9am and we all slowly filed through, showed our ID's to the ticketing people, went through a security line, then ended up in a large room with chairs and a coat check. They had fresh baked cranberry-orange muffins and bottles of Evian water for us. The walls were covered in beautiful photographs that I realized were all taken by Martha as I saw her signature in the corner of them all. 4-5 of the show staff came out and handed out a release form that we all had to sign and another piece of paper that we could write down any questions we had for Martha or her producer's. The questions would have to be handed back and pre-approved before the show and they were even coaching people on how to ask their question and changing the wording of the question as needed. I couldn't come up with any intelligient question to ask and I really didn't care to stand up with a microphone and cameras on me so I skipped it altogether. Nick wanted to ask who does Martha's dishes but his question wasn't picked. The 'warm-up' comedian guy came out (Joey) and interacted with the group and got everyone laughing and ready for the show. They then started letting people into the studio but they had some super secret & unusual order as to who went in. First it was people with stars on their ticket, then purple stripes, yellow stripes, A-Z, then #'s. We were 33 & 34 and we had to go in numerical order. I'd love to know what that was all about. Our little group of about 10 (ticket #'s 30-40) were lead by a girl with a headset microphone through a hallway and up a flight of stairs then into THE studio. It was HUGE. Apparently she has the largest television studio at 10,000 sq feet. It was incredible, there was a full sized kitchen, greenhouse, craft room, and off to the side and behind glass windows was another full working kitchen. They had the the music turned up while everyone got seated. There was one poor guy sitting near us that, for some craaazy reason, wasn't wearing red. He probably thought "oh, only the dorks are actually going to wear red, I'll just wear my old comfortable blue shirt". WRONG! One of the staff went back to the wardrobe department and got a red sweater for him to wear over his shirt. Once again we were amazed at how many cameras were rolling around and bright lights hanging from overhead. The show got started and Martha made her entrance. She had various segments - how to meet someone online, funny vintage photos, Australian olive oil, & she made a sea urchin appetizer. She also did a special segment about Paw-Paw (her Chow) and Paw-Paw's recent trip to the groomer. She had him trimmed and sent his extra fur to someone who turns the dog hair into knitting yarn. She said she was going to turn it into a fur coat for her smaller dog. Okay, well slightly creepy but if anyone's gonna do it, may as well be Martha. What I never realized is how many people are standing on a set that you don't actually see. Even if it was Martha alone on camera, there are about 20 staff standing just out of view off-camera. Some are holding her cue cards or gesturing something to her, about 5-6 people with big cameras, and the producers who just stand there and watch. During commercial breaks, Joey handed out baskets of soaps to random people (except us :-( After they completed the show they started setting up for another show that they're pre-taping, to be aired sometime over summer during the show's break. This second show was the "Ask the Producer's" show (hence the questions I told you about earlier). There's a segment where the audience asks Martha random questions, asks the producer's questions and then the producer's take turns telling us little known Martha facts. Some of them were really funny, and a few hard to believe! Martha came in second place in the Coney Island hot dog eating contest many years ago! I just can't imagine her doing that. Other little known tidbits - she suffers from insomnia and usually only sleeps 2-3 hours a night, she has been caught drinking buttermilk right out of the carton (we've all done that, right?) , she hates luverwurst, and she likes the rapper Eminem and even has his picture hanging in her office! They only filmed three segments for the second show and the other segments were to be filmed after we left. We were all given a bottle of Australian olive on our way out. Overall, we had a great time! If you missed the show but still want to see Nick and I on TV, click here and watch for us 1 minute 14 seconds into the show. (Sorry, you will have to sit through the 30 second Dulcolax constipation commercial first) Stay tuned for our trip to the Conan O'Brien show and also an Andrew & Lauren update!