Helen's DaveCon 2003
Trip Report
Part III: The Post-Show Festivities
As soon as Dave leaves the stage, they bring up the lights and start shooing everyone out of the theater. Now, we were hoping to "stay after" with Tony Mendez, but we hadn't seen him come back out yet (he has to go dump the cue cards first), and the pages were trying to get us out the doors. (I think they were sending people out the back this year, instead of out onto 53rd St.) We just stayed put, and told the pages we were waiting for Tony. Sure enough, a moment later Tony came back out with Walter and Jay, and they got us all up on the stage. A couple of interlopers who had never even heard of the Tony Mendez Show tried to crash the party, but Tony sent them away.
So here we are, up on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater. This is where I get all distracted looking at the set up close, talking to staffers, taking pictures, and generally walking around in a state of sensory overload. Walter told people to line up so he could take close-ups of each person for that night's TMS, but I somehow missed that, so there's no close-up of me in the show (oh, well, I'll get over it). I talked to Kenny Sheehan for a minute, mentioning the Oprah transcripts, but somehow forgot to tell him what a big kick we get out of it when he gets a very long ash going on his cigarette.
Remember that Pat Farmer had told us earlier in the day that there might be cake for Show #2000? Well, they didn't bring out the cake during the show, but in fact there was a great big sheetcake. Jay had a big box with about a quarter of the cake in it, which he said was for us. That just blew me away. What a sweet and touching thing to do. Seriously.
Tony led the group (the newcomers, especially) on a backstage tour, while Mike McIntee followed behind to make sure we didn't get into too much trouble. You can tell Tony really loves working at the Ed Sullivan Theater with all the history that it has, and loves sharing that with people. He took us down to the control room and the downstairs green room (I think I missed the upstairs green room this time, the one that's painted yellow), showed us support beams that were put in the theater so the floor wouldn't collapse when elephants came out on the Ed Sullivan Show, and lots of other cool stuff. I've done this before on the last two trips, but I never tire of seeing the stage and the backstage areas up close. Nick had finally relieved Jay of the cake, by the way, and was carrying it all around the theater during all of this.
When it was about time for us to go, Tony took us back out to the lobby and had us all get in a group shot for Walter. This was what they used for the opening of the June 16 Tony Mendez Show, with Tony doing the intro "Welcome to the Tony Mendez Show [etc.] with my co-hosts..." So the first scene that you saw on the TMS was actually the last thing they taped before we left.
We left the theater around 7:15 and got the group gathered together on 53rd Street. Tony said good-bye, but told us he was definitely coming over to McGee's later. While we were milling around, Donz pulled out a seriously huge stack of blank blue cards given to him by Mike McIntee, and distributed them among the group. When we were hanging around the stage, I had asked Mike if he had any blue cards (no), so I guess he must have gone and gotten a bunch. Thanks, Mike!
Some of the others in the group had gotten cue cards from Tony, Micah picked up a script, and I came away with a copy of the rehearsal schedule for Show #2000. There's a lot of stuff in the rehearsal schedule that was not used in the show. They always plan more than they can use, and Dave picks and chooses on the fly. I would have really liked to see a couple of the things they didn't use. In the Act 1 schedule, they had stagehands modelling some of Hillary's hairstyles ("4 GUYS IN BACK LIVE"), and in Act 2, there was a bit where Alan pleads with Hillary and gets beaten up by the Secret Service. Too bad we missed those.
The last page of the schedule had an outline for the entire week. Thursday's Act 5 was slated for "Person with cape"; I like how it doesn't say who the person with cape would be.
After saying good-bye to some AFLers who were leaving, we walked over to McGee's (just a couple of blocks away), where Traci had reserved the upstairs room for the evening. For $50 a person, we had an open bar for a couple of hours (whatever; I don't drink), and a selection of appetizers. The food was good, and even though it was only appetizers there was enough to fill up on (potato skins, chicken, pigs in a blanket, and some other thing that I didn't have), plus we had the cake, which the McGee's staff cut into huge slices and served with ice cream. The price was a bit steep for someone who doesn't drink--basically $50 for ginger ale and appetizers--but I agree with Traci that it was a better setup to have a room where we could walk around and mingle, instead of a sit-down dinner where you only get to talk to a few people sitting near you.
Tony came over to McGee's as promised, and regaled us with stories about Dave and the show. One thing he told us about the show we had just seen was that Dave did a joke in the monologue that wasn't on the cue cards. There were several "It's so hot" jokes, and one of Tony's favorites (the one about the rabbis rolling a keg down the street) wasn't planned. Tony really wanted Dave to do that one, and he did. Walter and Stephanie stopped by briefly, and somehow nobody asked Stephanie if she had seen or touched any monkeys.
Walter told us that Wednesday was going to be the 1000th Tony Mendez Show, which sounds about right, since they've been doing the TMS since about 1998. They've done 2000 Late Shows in just under 10 years, so 1000 Tony Mendez Shows in about 5 years makes sense. They do a TMS every night that a new LS airs, and even kept the TMS going when Dave was out with the Massive Heart Attack (remember Tony showing us a model of Dave's heart?). There have been some guest hosted Tony Mendez Shows, though; I wonder if Walter is counting those.
After Tony, Walter, and Stephanie left, Traci helped the bartender cue up the Tony Mendez Show on a computer hooked up to the TV, and after a few stalled attempts (you know the drill: "buffering..."), we got to see ourselves on the big screen. Fun!
I stayed at McGee's about 45 minutes longer than I should have, and finally left a little before 11:30. I watched part of the Late Show in my hotel room, but I was half asleep and didn't really get to look for us in the audience shots. I'll have to check the tape.
Tuesday morning, I got up and had a mediocre breakfast at the hotel. I was deeply offended by the fake syrup that they served with the thin, rubbery pancakes. I mean, we're talking Aunt Jemima's Original Syrup. The word "maple" appears nowhere on the label, probably for legal reasons, considering there's not one drop of maple in it. The stuff is essentially corn syrup with food coloring and some artificial flavors. That's just wrong.
The plan for the day was for a bunch of us to go to the Einstein exhibit at the Natural History Museum, then the Museum of Sex, followed by dinner at a Greek restaurant called Gus's. Some of the others were also going to a comedy club later, hoping to see Dave Attelle. I had some time to kill before meeting up with everyone, so after breakfast I went out for a walk down Broadway, back up 5th Avenue to Central Park South, and down 7th past Carnegie Hall, stopping to take a few pictures along the way.
Traci and Carl met me at my hotel around noon, and we took the train uptown. We met up with Karen, Kathie, and Steve at Karen's apartment, and walked over to the Natural History Museum. The Einstein exhibit was terrific. It had a nice balance of Einstein's science and his personal life. I knew the science, so for me the best parts were mostly the personal artifacts, e.g., pictures of Einstein and his sister as children, a magnetic compass that Albert had been given at age 5, a high school report card, letters between Einstein and his various wives and mistresses. About the coolest thing they had was Einstein's Nobel Prize medallion and certificate. On the science front, highlights included a really nice visual explanation of why time slows down for an observer moving at high velocity, a neat replica of the Michelson-Morley experiment, and an area with hands-on activities. We got to play with magnets, and we rolled balls of various sizes and masses around on a two-dimensional sheet that warped under the weight of the balls, illustrating how gravity causes space to curve around a massive object (of course, it actually happens in three dimensions, but that's a lot harder to visualize). I tried to get a couple of the balls to orbit each other, but as Steve pointed out, there was too much friction.
I wish we had had a little more time for Einstein, and for the Natural History Museum in general (there was also a chocolate exhibit going on that I would have liked to see, and some new ocean stuff including a blue whale), but it was time to move on to the Sex Museum. (In retrospect, I should have gone to the Natural History Museum by myself as soon as it opened in the morning and met everyone else there, instead of waiting until noon to meet up with Traci and Carl. Oh, well.)
Before heading down to the Sex Museum, we all took a quick bathroom break, which I normally wouldn't bother mentioning, except that in the bathroom Traci got out some hair gel and spiked my hair a bit. I kind of liked how it turned out. I wouldn't do it every day, but I might get some gel and spike it again some time. Possibly.
On the way out of the Natural History Museum, we stopped at the food court to pick up some snacks and lovely beverages to bring on the train, because, as Carl succinctly put it "Helen needs a cookie" (I may make that my new catchphrase). I really did need a cookie, after a long walk in the morning, no lunch, and all the walking around the museum.
The Sex Museum was, well, okay. It could have been better. The first exhibit that you see when you walk in is about the gruesome murder of a prostitute in the 19th century, which doesn't exactly set a happy tone for the rest of it. Most of the displays had to do with the more public aspects of sex (brothels, peepshows, striptease acts, burlesque, etc.). A lot of worthwhile topics were barely touched on (so to speak). For example, I don't think there was a single mention of the birth control pill, which pretty much revolutionized sex. A more general problem with the museum is that the displays are not set up to have any kind of visual interest or appeal. And, everyone agreed that there should be more porn :-).
We stopped in the gift shop on the way out to pick up some souvenirs to send to Tony Mendez, and for Pat Fleet as a thank-you for the wax lips. Oh, and we met up with BostonBill, who had already gone through the Sex Museum by the time we got there, but had waited while we went through it. After the Sex Museum, we headed to Gus's, where we had a 5:30 reservation (they offered a 20% discount if you arrive before 6:00 and pay cash). Dave Sikula and Rona met us there, and true to form, Dake did not order any food. He mooched some bread, but left long before dessert, so he didn't get to have any crème brulée this year.
We had a nice, leisurely dinner. The food was excellent, the waitstaff was accomodating (to the point of taking a picture of the group on Karen's camera), and they were in no hurry to rush us out the door. I had the braised lamb shank (which looked like something Fred Flintstone would eat), served on Greek pasta with a cinnamon-tomato sauce. In truth, I couldn't taste the cinnamon at all, but it was very good nonetheless.
Back at the hotel, I dozed off in front of the TV, but managed to catch part of Tuesday's Late Show. Now, at some point on Monday, Kathie and I were talking about Dave hardly ever leaving the theater anymore, and Kathie thought that the last time he had gone outside was when he arrived on a snowmobile during the last big snowstorm. So, Tuesday night, I'm half asleep in the hotel, when what do I see but Dave riding a motorcycle up Broadway during Act 5. What?! And then on Wednesday's show, Dave went outside to ride the Segway scooter. I do hope we'll see more of this.
That's about it. Wednesday morning I headed to the airport to catch my flight home.
And thus ends another DaveCon trip. It was great to see everyone. Thank you Renee and Traci for making this all possible. And thanks to David Kay for arranging the group tickets (and the excellent seats), and to all the Late Show staff who took time out of their workday to talk to a bunch of starry eyed fans. A big, big thanks to Jay and Walter, Mike McIntee, and our favorite Cue Card Stud, Tony Mendez, for all their kindness and generosity. And thank you David Letterman, for putting the Dave in DaveCon.
Helen Read