Joining the NYC Program, I had several goals for myself before I left the city in May. With my deadline fast approaching, I had seen The Producers, spent a day at the Met, walked Central Park, and completed numerous other distinctly New York activities. Yet, I had not made it to a taping of my favorite show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I've been a fan of the show for ages, alas getting most of my news from the late night program. I had called about getting tickets, but they were sold out until August. Things looked bleak, and I thought I would have to settle for watching a taping of TRL. But MTV held a lottery for its interns to win free Daily Show tickets, and I won one of the five tickets.
On Wednesday, I made the long trek from my apartment to 54th street for the taping. Of course, I left the apartment an hour early because I didn't want to risk getting lost and missing the show, which meant that I sat in the waiting room with its lovely prison décor for an hour. They ushered the contest winners into the studio first and put us in the front row. I was temporarily blinded by the sharp studio light and deafened by the DJ's preference for pop punk music. Without my senses to ground me, my excitement ran rampant to the extent that I had to sit on my hands to keep from biting off all my nails and was forced to do Lamaze-type breathing to calm myself. The slightly less fanatical interns next to me began to make comments about my obsessive enjoyment of the show. That's when Jon Stewart came out to warm up the audience by answering some questions. I watched like a slack jawed idiot as he answered questions about the NY Mets' upcoming season, his opinion about the upcoming presidential election, and the Equal Rights Amendment (that question coming about 25 years too late.) He asked us to play fair and not boo the guest. Too bad for me, for the guest was Karen Hughes, the former Bush communications director. The taping finished all too soon. Before I knew it, I was walking out of the studio and leaving nonsensical, high-pitched messages on my friends' phones about making eye contact with Jon Stewart.
As I rode home on the subway, checking off another item on my "New York Must Do List" I realized that we are sprinting towards the move out date. Contemplating a summer without the city quickly drained the smile from my face and I wondered, and still wonder, if I will ever get to play the role of New Yorker again.
