And without further delay...the report.
Friday – The Tonight Show need I say more?After waking up early, I found that the drive down to the Green Bug Lot a.k.a. SeaTacPark.com isn’t as bad as I thought it would be considering it is a Friday morning when a lot of business and entertainment travelers would be out and around SeaTac. I have an enjoyable conversation with Michael the tram operator, he mentions that he has a side business in lawn maintenance and that he was glad to hear that rain was in the forecast – because “without rain there are no lawns to maintain and without lawns, I (Michael) have no business!”. Noting the tall soy chai latte I had in my hand, he then openly complained that there were no Starbucks that had drive-thrus large enough to accommodate his work vehicle. Who knew that drive-thrus needed to accommodate trams?
Security through SeaTac was as expected, so I wasn’t taken by surprise until I somehow got in line behind a couple of which the woman thought she was Gwen Stefani. She looked as though she had just stepped out of a Hollywood costume shop. The Gwen-wannabe was wearing 4” black ankle sandals which took her 5 minutes to take off during the Security checkpoint. Good times.
I managed to upgrade my 15C seat to 3C – first class, very nice. Upon reflection I don’t know if I would do it again on such a short flight (SEA to BUR is a little over 2 hours of flight time). The service was nice and it was pleasant to have a continental style breakfast and consume beverages out of real glassware, but at the same time the other 11 first class passengers were uh…well… if this can be believed, bigger than the seats. As I type on my return flight from Burbank to Seattle I am again in first class and again, I am the smallest person in both girth and height sitting in first class.
Back to Friday -- I land and Heather picks me up rather quickly – she then drops the bombshell – she got us tickets to see a taping of
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno!!
We proceeded to spend the next couple hours discussing what we thought it would be like over a snack (Trader Joes – you have amazing frozen pre-cooked chicken and coconut egg rolls). We arrive at the NBC studios right before 3pm and the line had already been formed. We find out rather quickly that NBC purposely distributes more tickets than there are available seats as we were one of the last people to be let into the doors. We had to go through airport style security, so purses were checked and they made very certain that all cell phone were off and stowed away. After being screened we are told that we “will be sitting where the band sits”—to which we are like what??? What does that mean? We thought perhaps we will be sitting close to Kevin Eubanks and the Tonight Show Band. Turns out it meant that we got to sit stage right in the VERY FRONT – where apparently the guest band may chose to sit. The Goo Goo Dolls were the guest band and lucky for us decided to not sit in their audience seats.
When you actually sit in the studio it is SMALL. Unbelievably small; Jay Leno’s desk and the sofa set-up are only about 8 feet away from where the Tonight Show Band sits. There was the usual round of get the audience pumped up with swag (of which neither Heather nor I received any swag). There were some older women (i.e. 55 years and up) who were overly bronzed/tanned wearing short-shorts and sparkly tank-tops who earned swag by dancing in front of everyone as though they had just gone clubbing. I wish we could have taken pictures of that because they were skanky. And then as soon as the old leathery woman were off the stage with their new swag the taping began—which was pretty much real time so it flew by. You can see Heather and me at the beginning of the show – as we were told that we had to rush up to the stage and shake Jay Leno’s hand. Heather was successful (as you can see, she is the person in the light blue Scotland soccer jersey) whereas I am standing there looking dumbfounded and obviously star-struck. If I hadn’t been so scared or shy to actually stick my hand out and have Jay shake it, then you would have never seen this stupid picture of me. As you can see Heather's light blue shirt and the back of her head, and then me holding my arms up and a dumb look on my face.
The guests were Steve Carell, Kevin Smith, and The Goo Goo Dolls. I’m not sure what else to say other than it flew by; it was AWESOME and so fun. Heather and I want to go again the next time that I come down to visit. All of the guests were a lot smaller in stature in-person which I suppose proves somewhat that TV does add pounds, etc.
The taping concluded outside of the studio because during the summer months The Tonight Show has this “summer concert” series – so there was this huge outdoor stage set up and The Goo Goo Dolls performed out there. There was this couple standing in front of us during the performance and they thought it would be an ideal place to make-out. I was surprised that it wasn’t caught on camera, but then again who wants to see an ugly couple making out on TV? We finally walked back to Heather’s car and we both felt like nothing could top that. So we drove back towards her end of town and ended up having dinner at Stevie’s Creole. We walk into Stevie’s and Heather picked up on this immediately (Of course I am oblivious to all of this until 15 minutes later) – that we were the only non-black people in the place. I don’t know if that contributed to the lack of service for our table, but who cares as the food was delicious. Heather ordered the seafood gumbo and I had some special dish with “special sweet/spicy sauce” – which was good! We saw James Pickens, Jr. – who happens to play Dr. Richard Webber on Grey’s Anatomy walk in and sit down at the bar.
Ruben (Heather’s friend) called after we got back to her apartment and invited us to go see a movie, but we declined in order to call more people to tell them to watch The Tonight Show – and of course we had to see The Tonight Show for ourselves! We were both falling asleep though and then at last 1135pm rolls around and we see ourselves. How fantastically freaking awesome! Again from the pictures how could you NOT see me? Derek calls and is like “I didn’t see Jonell at all…” uh hello? How drunk were you Derek? Thanks to Chris and Joe for getting the photos.
Saturday – Did you want pickles with that?
Originally we were going to go The Grove (in the Hollywood area) to have breakfast and drive-by Paris Hilton’s house to see the paparazzi. However, as Paris went back to jail so quickly we figured there were no paparazzi (plus we didn’t know exactly where her house was, we were going to drive around aimlessly) left to see, so we instead went to Jerry’s Famous Deli for some early lunch. Jerry’s was great; it is this diner-style restaurant that has everything on the menu. We are seated and our waiter brings us our iced teas and asks us “Would you like some pickles?” – To which we both were thinking “What the hell would I do with a pickle in my iced tea, am I supposed to dip the pickle in my iced tea?” Heather immediately asks “Uh, why would we need pickles” and he responded with “well sometimes people like to eat them”…OK???!! What kind of explanation is that? How about “It is complimentary, but we always ask” or “Jerry’s always provides pickles to our patrons”, but no it was “people like to eat them”. We noticed he kept looking at Heather we concluded that he must have thought that she was Jewish. Then I looked around the restaurant more closely and sure enough every table had these huge silver dishes of halved pickles and people were noshing on them. ANYWHO…Heather ordered the mile-high pastrami sandwich. Holy crap it arrived on a plate that was too small for it and it was at least 3 or 4 inches tall. She ended up taking some of the pastrami out and I said “You know, some people would be in utter horror to see you doing that”. I ordered an avocado chicken sandwich – delicious. Jody would love this place and they had everything on the menu. I almost ordered an Egg Crème, but figured it would be too much so early in the day.
As we are eating we see Larry Birkhead and some older woman (I would hope it is his mom?) walk in and then no less than 30 seconds later, a tall man walks in with half a dozen camera lenses and a huge camera…paparazzi! Heather tried to find out where the photographer was hiding, but could not find him. As we left Jerry’s we spotted Robert Guillaume and he even smiled at me.
Our next adventure was to Warner Brothers Studio to take the tour, but we found out that they are closed on Saturdays. We head over to the Sherman Oaks Galleria (big outdoor mall if you can call it that), we each treated ourselves to some new shoes, some ice cream and saw Ocean’s 13. I recommend seeing Ocean’s 13, very funny and I loved the parts with Oprah. After all of this we took a small break at Heather’s apartment and decide to head over to Universal Studios. Unfortunately the operating hours for Universal Studio is 9am-7pm and we didn’t know this until we walked through the Universal City Walk. Yeah….so we browsed through the City Walk and discovered a LARGE group of Raider’s Fans waiting in line to get an autograph from #24 Michael Huff. Heather and I didn’t know him off the top of our heads, admittedly I had to google him.
Although slightly disappointed, we didn’t let it stop us from having fun so we went to this place called SushiDan and had some sushi. The restaurant had this bright orange wall with a mess of signatures of various celebrities. We were hoping to see more celebrities but it was not to be. After sushi we relaxed at her place and watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which was not a bad movie but I am glad that it was on TV and I didn’t pay money to see it.
Sunday – There is a serious lack of Starbucks in SoCal.
Waking up at 6am we thought we would grab a quick bite at the 1950’s Diner, but they were closed. We ended up at the Laurel Canyon Starbucks (which is a 15 minute - that's crazy talk even for LA standards) to which one of the baristas saw Heather’s UW shirt and came over to talk to us. BJ the barista recently moved from Seattle to Burbank (she is a dancer), but she worked at the Starbucks on 75th and 35th (the closest one to my house); what a small world! I think we made her day being able to talk about Seattle stuff even if only for 5 minutes.
And that brings me up to now. I am writing this to get all of my thoughts in order, but mainly so I don’t forget anything! We have started our descent into Seattle so I had better get this laptop put away.
(cut to "now" which is approximately 821pm Sunday, June 10th)
And that was my Adventures in Burbank California. Thanks again Heather for the laughs and a place to stay! I can’t wait to go again! And what is with the pickles? I will find out the next time I visit.
Labels: vacation
