"Says You," Part 2

I spent a part of the afternoon bemoaning my misspent youth...but I'll get to that in a minute.

First, we went out to Denny's for breakfast with Steve and Michael and found out what grown men do when they go out to breakfast on a Sunday morning.

(It's a good thing that most of us drink our coffee black!)

By the time Steve had dismissed us all and was ready to get the hell out of there, it was too late to "do" anything and really too early to head to Skirball, but we did it anyway. Not surprisingly, we were the first in line! Another guy wasn't far behind us, though. But he wasn't interested in socializing. He had come prepared for the wait, with a chair, dark glasses, big earphones, and his iPod. As the crowd began to grow and chit chat with one another, this guy sat resolutely in his chair, keeping the rest of us out of his little private world.

More people began to gather. The next couple behind us was, oddly enough, from Citrus Heights (where my cousin Kathy lives) and had driven all the way down for the show. We chatted with them a lot. This was their first time, but probably won't be their last.

Also, I hope someone can help me with this. Can you identify this logo? A woman in line had a bag with this logo and it looked like exactly the kind of bag I'm looking for to replace my 15+ year old bag. Let me know if you know what it is! (Isn't a zoom lens a wonderful thing?)

They finally opened the doors so we could pick up tickets and pass into the next waiting area. I hope this doesn't sound terrible, but it seems strange that in a Jewish Center, people would be herded into a small, cramped, hot room, packed like sardines, with no place to sit and have to wait for an undetermined amount of time. (I will admit that you could buy food in there, but still...)

This time we were prepared and in front when the doors opened, so we had much better seats and it made the show much more enjoyable, being able to see the entire stage rather than just half of it.

During mic check. Tony Kahn referred to yesterday's blog entry and my comment about the ceiling decoration reminding me of a giant shuttlecock. (It was fun being acknowledged, but thanks, Tony, for not pointing me out in the audience!)

As the show progressed, we were reminded of why it's so much fun to go to an actual taping since there is so much that doesn't make it to air. This year seemed to be particularly flub-heavy and while that was great fun for those of us in the audience, the flubs and offhand political comments will be edited out of the final broadcast. They were also able to re-do bits that hadn't gone right the night before. All seven of those guys (6 panelists and host Richard Sher) are such quick wits that the humor flies back and forth like a ping pong ball over a net and it's such fun to listen to.

And you always learn something. Where else can you find out that mpeg actually stands for "Motion Picture Expert Group" or that an "Elephant" is a sheet of paper measuring 23x28? And it was nice to learn that "Yabbers" was not the name of Fred Flintstone's backup singers.

We also would have missed the fact that one of the young scorekeepers had to be replaced mid-way through the second taping because he apparently didn't appreciate all the humor and banter that was being tossed about and was having a hard time staying awake.

But then we came to my lament over my misspent youth. The guest singers, who open the show and fill in during bluffing rounds, were the Scattered Tones (I think that was their name), an a capella group from UCLA. They were used in one game round to sing bits of songs that were the answer to the question. The task to the panel was to name the very first track on six well known albums. There was a lot of tittering about how little the panellists actually remembered during the period when these albums were popular, how some songs went best with brownies, etc., etc.

It made me sad because I only recognized the title of ONE of the albums, don't own any of them, and didn't know any of the songs they were naming. While many on the panel were enjoying the likes of Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the Beatles and smoking up a lot of funny smelling stuff, I was listening to crooners (Crosby, perhaps, but Bing) and belters (like Judy Garland) and girl band singers (like Doris Day). And even though Walt and I didn't marry young by the standards of 1965 (he was 25, I was 22), I was rockin' babies instead of rockin' and rollin'. So there is a huge group of people who are slightly younger than I who had a completely different experience of the 60s than I do!

All things considered, I am probably the better for it (given my addictive personality), but it was sad that I was sitting in a house full of people nodding appreciatively at not only the music, but the memories, and Walt and I were sitting there just listening. It had not been our experience.

When you add up the cost of tickets for two tapings, the cost of air fare, car rental, motel, and eating out for five meals, this ain't a cheap date, but boy was it worth every single penny. I can't wait for them to come back again.