SNL-One of the last ones in

I preface this blog by apologizing for the length of this entry, but the details of this story are almost unbelievable that I had to include them in here. -JLM

Yesterday, September 29th, I got up at 6am (who honestly gets up at 6am on their day off?), walked down to the subway stop with my friend Jason, and headed down to 30 Rockefeller Center to stand in line for stand-by tickets to see the premiere of Saturday Night Live. We arrived at the Rock around 6:45 to find ourselves in a long line of people who wanted to do the same.
The chances of us getting in with the line in front of us where slim to none. Once we got there, we found out that we can either choose to see the rehearsal or the live show. Thinking our chances were better with the rehearsal we chose to get rehearsal stand-by tickets.

So one would think that the story couldn't get any better, right? I mean we got tickets for the show and our chances were better than going to the live show, and we have the possiblity of seeing NBA superstar LeBron James and Hip-Hop artist Kanye West live. Pretty I cool. That's a story in itself and my day would have been a good one even if we didn't get in. Well folks, the story gets better.

While standing in line, I noticed a diminutive young lady who reminded me alot of a girl I went to college with. I stood there staring for a couple of minutes wondering if who I was seeing was Molly Jeter (She's now married and I didn't ask what her last name is now). I stepped into the street to get a closer look, and I spot another girl who I recognized from Chapel Hill. Right then, I knew that it was Molly I saw because with her was Julie Deladdy, another college friend, along with Claire Whitehill, Terri Gentry (at least that was her last name in college, she's married now), and Julie's older sister Betsy (whose expecting her first baby in Feb). All Carolina girls! What a small world we live in! Who would have thunk that I would run into old college friends that I hadn't seen in six years in New York City? Well I certainly did not. The girls were having a bachelorette party for Julie who is getting married and watching SNL was what she wanted to do.

We all got our tickets and came back to NBC studios at 7:15 to stand in line again and hope we would be one of the stand-byers in to watch the rehearsal. The girls also had tickets for the rehearsal. Oh, I forgot to mention that Jason had accidentally washed his ticket with his shorts earlier in the afternoon and all he had left were three tan balls of washed paper. You know what I'm talking about, the paper all balled up that you take out of your pocket and realize it was a number you needed or a receipt you were looking for. For Jason, it was his way into the show! So he took his little balls of paper and showed them to the NBC people, told them the story (to about three different NBC people) and got another ticket! Unbelievable. I thought, no way Jason is getting in with his paper ball remains of a ticket. He's way too nice to just come down with me thinking they weren't going to let him in line. I was so glad that he got another ticket.

So the first group goes through the metal detectors and half of Julie's bridesmaids go through including Julie. So at least she got her wish, but that left the other half out and we were a few people behind them. Then they said to bring the next ten through, and low and behold I was the tenth one. I got in!
The show was awesome. The studio is small and it was really cool to see how all the skits on SNL were shot. The definitely maximize the space of the studio. Sets are moved by a batallion of set crew workers. After each skit, the actors run to the back to quickly change into their next skit costume.
LeBron was pretty funny and Kanye West was definitely the highlight. The man can put on a show whether or not you like his music. Being at the rehearsal allowed us to see all the skits they were thinking of putting on the show and an extra performance by Kanye.
I think that's one thing I will definitely do again. That is one Saturday I will never forget (other than the studying in between getting tickets and the show!)!