My Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Adventure

Living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I have been very lucky throughout Hurricane Sandy in that my building had no damage and I never lost power, cable, or internet.  My office did lose power however, so I've been out of work all week. And after 2 days of sitting in my apartment watching reruns all day, I finally decided to go out yesterday to explore the city. That's when I saw this tweet:

Longtime readers of this blog will remember that we attended a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon back in 2009, but I've always been interested in attending Jimmy's monologue rehearsal.  I wondered what kind of jokes didn't make the cut, and if there were alternate punchlines for each joke that were tested by the audience's response.  So I decided to leave my apartment for the first time since the storm hit 3 days earlier and venture downtown to 30 Rock. (Of course the subways were still down, so I had to take a very slow downtown bus.)  I arrived at the NBC Store at 2:00, I asked for a ticket to Jimmy's Monologue Rehearsal, and I was told I got the last one, and was handed the following ticket:

I was so excited to have gotten the last ticket that I didn't read it closely and just headed off into Time Square to find some pizza to eat before I had to be back at 2:45. But when I checked back at 2:45 as I was told to do, I was informed that the ticket I had was not a ticket to the Monologue Rehearsal, but rather a Standby Ticket to the actual taping of the show!  (I should have been tipped off by the fact that it said "STAND-BY TICKET" on the top.)  The Monologue Rehearsal group had already left, so that was no longer an option, so I figured I'd stick around and test my luck on Standby to attend the show.  As I mentioned, I got the last ticket (number 150), so I thought my chances were pretty slim, but as it turned out there were a lot of no-shows (presumably due to the hurricane damage) so I ended up making it in!  I was given an actual ticket to the show, and eventually made it in to the studio!

Two Fun Men

As was the case before, the warm-up guy worked the crowd by making fun of the few people in Halloween costumes and gave us some ground rules for the show. Then The Roots came out and gave us a little pre-show concert, featuring a special performance from Two Fun Men.  Sadly, Higgins wasn't there, but head writer A.D. Miles filled in and announced Jimmy Fallon as he walked out and the show got started!.  It was a great show featuring Ryan Seacrest rapping, Bobby Cannavale doing Al Pacino, a fun Halloween video (which I realized was actually the same one they showed a few years ago), and a performance from the aforementioned Two Fun Men.  But best of all, I got to see a live performance of Jimmy singing "Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet" as Bob Dylan! Here's a clip of the song.  When he runs up into the audience, you can see me in the crowd singing along!

Overall it was a great show and a lot of fun, especially since I had no intention of going when I woke up in the morning.  Maybe one of these days I'll actually make it to the Monologue Rehearsal, but until then I'll gladly settle for attending a taping of the full show.