DaveCon 2002
What's the Deal with AFLers and Giant Trip Reports?
Helen's Huge, Massive, Big Honkin' Trip Report
by Helen P. Read
Part V: But Wait, There's More! After the Post-Show Festivities
After a long, adventure filled day at the Late Show and the Tony Mendez Show, I finally fell into bed. I got up the next day (Friday), and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had been to the Museum of Modern Art on both of my previous DaveCon trips, but never to the Metropolitan Museum. It was spectacular (and *huge*), everything it's cracked up to be. I decided to focus on ancient works (from Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, South America, ....) I really got into the ancient terra-cotta pots and urns and things, all of which had the most intricate, detailed decorations. It's a very cool thing about the human species that even thousands of years ago when life was a lot harder than it is today, when people set out to make some utilitarian object--a water jug, say, or a chair--they went out of their way to make it look pretty. I imagine ancient artisans thinking "I know, why don't I carve a nice symmetric pattern on this, and then paint a row of horses all around the edge to make it look cool." Whatever they were making would have worked just fine without the painstaking artwork, but they clearly took a great deal of pride in making functional objects that were also aesthetically pleasing.
After covering a good deal of ground on the first floor of the museum, I took a snack break before heading upstairs (it's a Read family rule that one is not allowed a full fledged lunch break when visiting a museum; you get a quick break to rest your feet and have a cookie and a beverage, then keep moving). One thing that I really wanted to see upstairs was the musical instruments exhibit. Well, I walked around and around, and saw some really cool things from South America and the Pacific islands, but could not for the life of me find the musical instruments. I found a route on the map that appeared to go right to it, but twice I came to doors that were blocked off. Time was running short by then (I had to get back to the hotel for the "chick" party), and I was going to have to go all the way around to the other end, cutting through the photographs and European paintings to get to the musical instruments.
I did stop to look at some gorgeous black and white photographs taken in New York City (early to mid 20th century, I think, but I was in a hurry and didn't read the blurbs too closely), and then I did the patented Read museum-fast-walk through the drawings and European paintings, hardly giving them a glance as I walked by. It's not that I have anything against drawings or European paintings, I just sort of felt like I've been there, done that, and I had other things to look at on this particular day.
Finally! After walking through room after room of European paintings, I made it to the musical instruments. The very first display case that I saw held a nice assortment of early trumpets and horns. I was pleased to see the museum use the correct terminology for the instrument that I play, the horn; I didn't see the misnomer of a prefix "French" anywhere in sight. They even had a nice explanation of the difference between a trumpet (cylindrical, straight) and a horn (conical, round). The bells of most of the horns, by the way, were exquisitely decorated, in yet another instance of making something look pretty because you can. At the other end of the exhibit were non-European instruments, which came in all the same categories as the European instruments that I saw first (horns, trumpets, fiddles, percussion, etc.) It's interesting that they split it up that way, instead of putting all of the horns together, all of the trumpets, etc. There were lots of other cool instruments to see along the way, like basset horns (a funky brass instrument with keys instead of valves) and whatnot, but I had to Read-walk through the display, because it really was time for me to go.
I made it back to the hotel just in the nick of time, before the AFL women began arriving for the annual DaveAnon party. On my way out in the morning, I had stopped off at the concierge desk and arranged to have a VCR brought up to the room for us (technically, it was a VCP; it would play tapes, but not record), and it was all set up and waiting for us when I got back.
Libby was the first to arrive, soon followed by Karen, Renee, Cheryl, Traci, Ann, and Rona. It took a while to get organized about food, but eventually we called out for pizza and something from a Chinese place (soup dumplings or something--they went so fast that I didn't even see them, let alone try one). Meanwhile, we sent Cheryl and our Pool Boy out for beverages and snacks, and they rode down the elevator with B.B. King! (I had seen someone in a B.B. King T-shirt earlier, apparently a member of B.B.'s entourage, but hadn't realized that B.B. himself was staying at my hotel.)
We had a great party, hanging out and talking about Dave, the AFL, other stuff. At long last--I was near collapse from low blood sugar by then--the food arrived, and we all chowed down on pizza, assorted junk food, and some nice chocolate chip cookies that Karen had brought. Around 9:00 or so we finally rolled some videotape. We opened with the annual viewing of the White Drawstring Pants, taken from one of Dave's game show appearances in the late 1970s. This footage comes from Password Plus, with your host Allen Ludden. Marion Ross was the other celebrity guest on the show with Dave, and you can see her eyes keep darting down to check out Dave's, um, pants. (Dave was actually quite good on gameshows--he's witty and quick on his feet, and has an excellent vocabulary--but we didn't watch the actual games this year, just the clip of the pants.) We followed this up with some old Late Night footage, including some favorite crash-and-burn interviews (Crispin Glover, Van Johnson, Harvey Pekar) and a very funny, early Jack Hanna appearance. Then we watched most of the Late Night 4th Anniversary show (the one they did on the airplane), which was tons of fun. We didn't quite get to see the end of it, because it was 11:35 p.m., time to watch "our" Late Show. I'm glad we got to watch it together, and relive everything that happened when we saw it in the theater. It was after 1 a.m. by the time the party broke up, and everyone was wishing we had more time.
Saturday morning, I walked up Broadway to meet up with Traci and Carl outside the Ed so that we could pose for pictures in Carl's convertible under the Late Show marquee. From a block away, I saw a bunch of men in sailor suits and assumed Traci must somehow be involved (yes, she did get a picture with them).
(Oh, and an odd thing happened earlier that morning: when I went to turn on the shower in the hotel room, my hands turned all green, and for a moment I couldn't figure out what was going on. Turns out one of Traci's candy necklaces had been left in the shower when we posed for the picture in the bathroom.)
After taking pictures outside the Ed, we popped into the Hello Deli to pick up sandwiches for Traci and Carl (Rupert wasn't there), then drove way downtown to dump the car. I had never been that far downtown before, so Traci pointed out some sights, and walked with me over to the seaport while Carl went upstairs to "freshen up." We saw a performance artist draped in white cloth and American flags from head to toe. Not sure if it was anything or not, but she must have been broiling.
From there we took the subway back uptown to the American Museum of Natural History/Rose Space Center/Planetarium. This was my very first NYC subway ride, by the way. I really don't know my way around public transportation (there isn't any to speak of in Vermont), so when I come to the DaveCons I either walk or take cabs when I need to get somewhere.
We had an absolute blast at the museum. The new space show (the one that debuted in March) is fantastic. The theme is extraterrestrial life. Harrison Ford narrates; it was written by Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's widow) and someone else whose name I didn't quite catch. The graphics are stunningly gorgeous.
After the space show, we checked out various exhibits in the Rose Center (Powers of Ten, The Big Bang, and the Hall of Planet Earth, which had all kinds of cool stuff about volcanos and earthquakes and things). Oh, and we saw some of the beautiful lunar photos from the Apollo missions. Then we headed over to the main part of the museum, where we went through exhibits on meteorites, minerals and gems, and watched part of the meteor movie, narrated by none other than Tony Randall. The word of the day: meteoriticists. Tony sounded kind of surprised at how the word tumbled out of his mouth, and it sure surprised the heck out of us. We were running out of time by then, so we bombed up to the fourth floor for the extinct mammals (mammoths etc.) and dinosaurs.
I can't tell you how much fun it was going through the science museum with Traci and Carl, who are confirmed science geeks as I am. We talked about the finer points of chemical compounds, geological processes, and whether or not Pluto is anything. (No, Pluto isn't anything. It's just a Kuiper Belt object, an oversized ice chunk. It was nice to see that the museum agreed with us on this, and did not count Pluto among the planets.)
After a quick stop in the gift shop as the museum was closing, we took the subway back downtown, for a lovely dinner at the Second Avenue Kosher Deli. When we sat down to eat, exhaustion suddenly caught up with us, after three long, action packed days, eating at odd hours and not getting enough sleep. The food was great at the deli, but I was almost too tired to eat it. Traci somehow managed to carry the conversation, while I occasionally nodded and eked out a word or two in agreement. At one point I looked across the table at Carl and saw that his eyes were completely glazed over. Yup, it was time to go home.
I grabbed a cab, and got back to the hotel, exhausted, by around 9 pm or so. I arranged for a wake-up call in the morning so I'd be sure to make my plane on time, and watched TV in bed until falling into a deep, deep sleep.
It was a great DaveCon, everyone. My thanks to Renee (our ticket queen) and to Late Show Audience Executive David Kay, for getting the group tickets and getting us all dotted so we could sit right up front, close to Dave; to Traci, for all her work organizing the big event, and for the DaveCon buttons; to Karen, for handling the dinner reservations and sweet-talking the restaurant into holding our table while we appeared on the Tony Mendez Show (!); to Karen and Brad for the T-shirts; and to all my wonderful friends from AFL who made this trip so memorable.
I'd also like to give a big shout-out to David Letterman and all of the Late Show staff and crew for putting on such a great show in the first place, and making all of this possible. There would be no DaveCon without Dave. And a big, big shout-out to Mike McIntee, Walter Kim, and our hero, Tony Mendez. The three of them were unbelievably kind and generous with their time, at the end of a long work day, no less.
Next year we meet Dave, right? :-)