Massive Trip Report Part 1: Arriving in the Big City
Massive Trip Report Part 2: Hanging Out Before the Big Show
Massive Trip Report Part 3: The Big Show!
2001: A Dave Odyssey
Massive Trip Report of DaveCon2001
by Helen P. Read
Introduction
I've been a big fan of David Letterman since the early days of Late Night with David Letterman, though I was in college at the time and could only see the show on a sporadic basis. After college and graduate school, I got my first VCR so that I could see Dave every night, and I've watched ever since. The only time I ever miss the show is in the event of power failure, the world coming to an end, that kind of thing. I have been hanging around alt.fan.letterman (AFL) since late 1993, barely missing the Time of Trouble, that terrible, troubled time for AFL during the hiatus between Late Night and Late Show during the summer of 1993. Then when Dave had his Massive Quintuple Heart Attack in January, 2000, I somehow found myself organizing AFL's donations to the American Heart Association in tribute to Dave, and even got CBS to join us and pony up some dough. [See the AFL-AHA Recap for more information on the AHA fundraising efforts than you could possibly need.]Still, in all these years watching Dave, I had never been to a taping of the show. Then sometime in the months after the Big Massive Heart Attack, I got an e-mail from Traci, AFL's Pie Baking Bitch-Goddess and Trip Organizer, inviting me to DaveCon2000. So, in June, 2000, I flew from Vermont down to New York to see Dave. [See DaveCon2000 trip reports]. It was an amazing trip. There were many firsts for me last year: arriving in the big city, meeting AFLers, walking up Broadway and seeing the Late Show marquee from a few blocks away, sitting in the theater and seeing the beautiful, sparkly set up close, hearing the band play live, seeing Dave run out onto the stage from 10 feet away, and on and on and on. After the taping, we were lucky enough to meet many Late Show staffers, chat with them and pose for pictures. (We went to the early taping on a Thursday, so they were popping in and out of the theater during the break before the second show.)