Zeno's Paradox
December 22, 2003 - The Daily Show

Last Monday, Holy and I waited for a couple of hours in cold New York City winds to see Jon Stewart's Daily Show live. We saw the filming of the episode right after the capture of Saddam Hussein and this episode was sandwiched between an appearance with Wesley Clark the day before, and Natalie Portman the day afterward.

Since you all trust me when I say it was cold, I won't dwell upon that too much.

At around 4:45 PM, we were allowed to go inside to the a room outside the set. There were a number of VIPs there and the other peons like us. After a quick announcement by some girl, we were ushered into the studio.

A few thoughts on the studio. First of all, it was tiny. I was expecting a fairly large area as I had seen on TV, but that was not to happen. I doubt that the studio was any larger than two of my living rooms placed side to side. Thus the spaciousness you see on TV is a clever lens trick.

After we sat down, a warm-up comedian came in and he was pretty funny. His job was to get us loosened up and laughing so we would be primed for the show. To say that he was successful is an understatement. I was freezing cold for the two hours prior to sitting down and in a foul mood. After a bit of his jokes, I was also laughing.

After the warmup guy, Jon Stewart came in and chatted a bit. He seemed to be a pretty down-to-earth guy and I probably enjoyed the back and forth with the audience more than the show itself. When the time came, he took his position behind his desk and the tape started rolling.

Since the topic of the day was Saddam, it wasn't all that hard to laugh at the jokes. Not that they were bad or anything -- they were actually pretty decent. I'm always a bit annoyed when they bring in the 'guest correspondent', and this time was no different. The thing that surprised me was that they filmed that part right by Stewart, with the guy in front of a green screen. I always assumed they did that off stage or something.

The guest of the day was Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was promoting her new movie. The back and forth between her and Stewart was pretty good and I enjoyed it. (It probably didn't hurt that I found her particularly attractive.) They quipped and talked about her new movie.

After the end of the show, we were ushered out and it seemed like the staff was interested in getting out and getting home. I was interested in getting back to Holly's friend's place and getting my stuff to take to Princeton.

(Apologies for the disjointed and incomplete character of this review. I have coding haze at the moment and wanted to get this out of the way.)

Posted by br284 at 02:59 PM

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