My Year as a Page for The Late Show with David Letterman Part 5 of 7

Tattletale Saturdays

Saturday and Sunday the office was closed but the box office was opened.  The pages worked the box office giving out tickets.  The majority of those week’s tickets were distributed to tourists who walked in on Saturday/Sunday looking for tickets later in the week.  These were the worst working days because they were 8 hour-long days coupled with hours of downtime.  A busy workday goes fast, a slow workday sucks.  We couldn’t stand outside and solicit people to see the show because remember we wanted genuine fans.  So we sat around waiting for potential audience members (PAMs) to come in. 

What’s ironic is when they were low on ticket distributions The Late Show would send audience coordinators out during the weekdays to solicit people to see the show.  A page could not do the same type of promoting in front of the box office though. 

Angelo's pizza opened in 2004/2005.  The double Monday pizza was from Luigi's.

I would work either a Saturday or a Sunday but never both days.  If I was a millionaire I’d have requested to only work during the actual tapings because these days were truly brutal.  Unfortunately the bulk of my paycheck resulted from working these days and I needed money for beer and I guess college books.  They’d assign 4 Late Show pages to work the day and 2 audience coordinators to run their assessment mojo. The doors opened at 9am and closed at 5pm.

Remember I was in college at the time so I was usually hung over those mornings.  Starting out I was usually paired up with a rotating roster of uhh Megan, Mario, Elmer, and Eric (I really suck at making up fake names for people).  They were such a pain in the ass when it came to closing up shop.  They would never close before the 5-o-clock whistle.  The audience coordinators would take off at 4:45pm or sooner if they hit their required audience numbers for the week.  Without the coordinators there would be no one to screen these PAMs.  The pages would insist on sucking every last minute out of keeping that door open.  I wasn’t saying close-up shot at 3pm, but 4:55pm wouldn’t have killed anyone. 

Well it turns out they had good reason to run the clock out to the last possible second. Prior to my working weekends, Megan and Eric held a competition to see who can keep their arms above their heads the longest.  It got rather comical when PAMs came in.  Megan and Eric had to come up with creative ways to hand out Late Show ticket applications.  The PAMs thought it was amusing that people were having fun at work, which fit with the overall theme the pages were supposed to be selling the audience on in the first place.  An audience coordinator by the name of Han Solo (I named her Han Solo because she dressed like the renegade during Halloween) complained to the higher ups that the pages were not being professional.  This trickled down the chain of command and caused a bit of paranoia and tension between the pages and the coordinators. 

Megan and Mario were the senior pages working the weekends and had an understanding with me.  I let them know Sundays were difficult for me to arrive on time.  My bus and train ran less frequent and much slower on Sunday.  In fact the F train made local stops on Sunday that added an extra half hour onto my commute.  Even though I was leaving an hour earlier and walking to a different bus stop to do what I could to get there on-time I could be anywhere from 5-15 minutes late.   I’d usually cut my lunch short or work through it completely to make-up the time.  The mornings were slow and all I missed helping out with was set-up.  On Saturdays when I got there early, I wouldn’t wait for the pay clock to start, I would just set-up. 

After Megan and Mario completed the program they created a new position called Key Page.  It was basically putting someone in charge to make sure everything ran smoothly.  Rather then put the most senior page in charge, which would have been Elmer they decided to assign it to David Letterman’s biggest fan.  We’ll call him Roger.  Roger was a former intern and graduate of Ball State University.  The same college Letterman went to.  Roger would constantly talk about how he created a show just like The Late Show in college and he was a bit of a celebrity on his campus.  I never had the heart to tell him no one watched college TV.  I knew this because at the time I was taking classes at the TV studio in my college, and no one watched.

Roger’s dream was to work for Letterman, and my guess is have his love child.  He was exactly where he wanted to be.  That was all cool stuff, that he was on track to accomplish his goals in life.  I gave him “mad props yo” for pulling that off.  What was fucking annoying, was how overly serious he took his position.   When PAMs walked in he’d be the first one up to pass out that ticket application.  A page would have to compete against him to get down there and help the person.  The applications were further back in the lobby and he’d grab the materials and rush to the front of the entrance.  It clogged up the line for people coming in behind them.  If he was patient and waited for the PAMs to approach the table where all the paperwork and pages were standing around it would have allowed other PAMs to enter with ease.  It was a constant cluster-fuck if we got flooded with ticket seekers.  Luckily weekends were about 2-4 people an hour so it wasn’t usually an issue.  But he made it impossible for anyone else to step up and assist PAMs because he had to be the first one up to help them.  I love keeping busy at work but he seemed like he really wanted to be the guy who spoke with everyone and I just let him.  It was less work for me. 

Thank you Roger sunny person.

Roger became the guy checking audience members in at the door before tapings.  Sadly, I was the guy sending people to him.  Roger moved a bit too fast with the check in process.  The point of the line process wasn’t to rush people in.  You were supposed to move efficiently but also make small talk so the audience so as to keep their spirits up.  He’d constantly rush them into the lobby and overfill it.  It would clear the line outside too quick and audience members who had notices telling them to lineup outside were lost on where to go because the outside line disappear inside.  This was because they couldn't find people on line outside.  They were all crammed inside already.  It was utter confusion when he pulled this crap.  I would try to slow the line down just so people arriving later would know where to hop on the line.  Roger would constantly complain to me that the line is moving too slow.  He’d balk that Bob was yelling at him to move the line.  One, Bob never yelled. Two, I could see into the lobby and knew exactly how well the lineup process was going.  

His other malfunction had to do with IDs.  Audience members were instructed on their paperwork to have IDs ready when they arrived for check in.  They were reminded by every single page they spoke with while lined up outside.  I personally told each one of them as they passed me and walked up to Roger they needed their IDs out.   Roger still insisted on yelling as loud as possible that IDs needed to be out when they arrived at his post.  What was really insulting was he made certain to do it every time Bob was outside or within ear distance so as to make it look like I was not informing the audience of the line-up process. 

I never could understand how anyone could stand to listen to him talk about how great of an employee he was and that’s why they made him Key Page.  I’m sure his Key Page title got him a few extra cents an hour, and he certainly needed it.  He was living with his girlfriend Linda and another college friend of theirs, Jen.  All of them were pages at The Late Show.  They shared a two-bedroom apartment and his dad had to give him money to help make the rent.  Growing up in the Midwest his parents were divorced and his father wasn’t really in his life.  He’d talk about his mom with a lot of pride and she seemed like a really cool lady.  He mentioned how she led a movement to educate women on the importance of breast-feeding.  He insisted that she contained vast knowledge about marriage and divorce through her direct working something or other.  He was also a Mets fan and would constantly syphon off their player roster when his spoke sports, as if it would help them win more games.  If I had a nickel for every time he talked about how the Mets had Carlos Beltran and how he was their best player, I’d have a lot of nickels.  I never met a person that could be such a jerk and so boring at the same time. 

His conversion to jerk was at the flip of a switch too.  One moment you’d have a pleasant conversation and the next he’d just snap, raise his voice, and box you out.  The Britney Spears Vegas wedding scandal broke during our tenure together and we were discussing it.  He said he didn’t understand how she could have gotten the marriage annulled.  I tried to explain it was a legal annulment and not a religious one but he started flipping out saying I was wrong and he knows this because his mother worked on these things.  Since he was yelling at me I decided to get a little snarky back and told him his mom might know what she’s doing but that doesn’t qualify him as an expert.  He whatevered me and declared that I knew everything.  Which was the only correct statement he managed to make in that conversation. 

The dude wanted to be a comedy writer but I never heard him tell a joke.  His girlfriend was also a Ball State Graduate and former intern.  They were this dynamic duo of bland.  I tried my best to not talk around or to them but also not be rude and ignore them.  I wanted to focus on the job, but 8 hours days with minimal audience traffic made it really hard.  When Megan was running the show she complained to me saying that I was too quiet during the weekend shifts.  I was usually hung-over but I tried to put in an effort to be more personable.  Whatever I did was no win.  If I kept quiet they complained to me and if I spoke they were attitude-y about it.

One particular Saturday I was exceptionally hung-over, I mean sick.  I called the box office and informed Linda I wasn’t coming in because I was sick.  She actually sounded caring and concerned.  I’d never seen that side of her.  My usual interactions with her were a monotone voice and what may have been jokes or mean comments made at my expense.  I’d really like to think she was joking.   

The following Monday, I informed Bob that I called out sick on the weekend shift.  Bob wasn’t aware I was out, he thanked me and adjusted my hours so I didn’t get paid for time I didn’t work.  What happened afterwards is all speculation on my part.  Bob must have went to Roger and told him about how I was sick and Roger needs to send that up the ladder.  Roger then must have thought he was getting in trouble decided to narc on me.  Roger had expressed his dislike to me that I was late on Sundays and then passed it along to Bob.  I think Roger said I was not talking to the PAMs that entered the box office, which was an impossible feat considering that Roger was dry humping their leg the moment they came through the door. 

What I do know is that I get a message on my machine from Bob about an adjusted schedule and a really pleasant and professional message telling me that it’s important that I get there on time because he’d heard I was slacking off a bit.  That was not the case at all though.  I was commuting to Manhattan from Queens on a Sunday morning.  It wasn’t impossible but it was a pain.  I did not have the luxury of living in a studio apartment in Manhattan with 5 other people and being able to hop on one train and be there in 5 minutes.  I also didn’t live a few blocks away from the Ed Sullivan Theater; Roger didn’t see it that way.  He must have felt it was a blight on The Late Show institution that he so loved.  I know I was doing a good job because even the Han Solo audience coordinator complimented my work ethic.  She appreciated how on point I was with everything.  I guess I just wasn’t as on point as Roger was.

So my solution was to wake up super early and arrive at the theater hours before I needed to be there.  Sometimes the building wasn’t even open when I got there so I had to wander around Manhattan killing time.  I know midtown really well because of it.  Then during the actual shift I grabbed a clipboard with the ticket application and hung out upfront talking with the security guards most of the day.  This way I could beat Roger to all the PAMs that wandered in.  This is how I ran out the weekend clock for the remainder of my tenure there.  The very first weekend after his voicemail Bob told me he heard I did a really good job.  I debated telling him how I always do a good job and even Han Solo can attest to it and that Roger made it impossible to help anyone because he was so overzealous but no one wants to waste his or her time with this petty bullshit so I just thanked him.  What pissed me off about the compliment was that someone was reporting back to him about my progress.  I could see Linda eyeballing me every weekend we ended up working together from that day forward.  But I couldn’t tell if Linda or Roger or both were informing on me.   

I did get to know security really well.  They were cool people.  I learned that the security company was not affiliated with the Late Show.  They were affiliated with an outside company affiliated with the building.  The security people were some of the coolest people working there and I related to them much easier than Roger and friends.  There was Jimmy who was from British Guiana and explained how Social Security worked.  We had a man named Leo who constantly told a story about how he gave a homeless woman a dollar everyday and when she died it turned out she had 8 million dollars in cash in her smelly shopping carts.  One of the more interesting guys was Jack, a retired army sergeant who did security, ran a dog walking business and was trying to convince me to join the army and work in their USO program.  I was really close to graduation so I was open to career options at that point.  I became really close with Carlton who was only a year younger than myself; we hit it off really well.   He’s another person I wish I’d kept in touch with.  All the guards there had a sense of humor and laughed at my lame jokes and I never felt boxed out or not included by them even though they were security and I was a page.  I don’t think I had a single life experience similar to any of them but it was never a factor. 

They were super awesome!

PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, PART 6, PART 7

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My Year as a Page for The Late Show with David Letterman Part 4 of 7

From Intern to Page

Close enough

Like any entertainment venue, The Last Show made a habit of exploiting this concept of free labor called interns.  The interns would gain hands on TV experience by doing all the crap work no one getting paid wants to do.  Some perks were that the interns could roam around the studio with a bit more freedom than the pages.  They also got to shift through a box and help themselves to some free promotional items.   The perk of being a page was you actually got paid for all the work you did.  If there was an intern who was particularly liked by the staff they would give him a job as a page. 

The pages who were previously interns were their own little clique.  They bonded by interning together and also dealing with the same people running the intern program.  From the stories they told the folks running the intern program were some characters.  Since it’s all hearsay I won’t include the stories.  Another perk the interns got was getting the rundown of the who’s who at The Late Show.  They were able to become chummy with the head writer and lucky enough to apply and submit writing samples.  If he liked what they submitted they would be allowed to submit monologue jokes on a freelance bases.  If their jokes were picked they’d get a check for $75.  For a writer, the opportunity to have your work assessed by a “professional” is intriguing. 

I can't find a photo that fits the topic so just watch this music video of Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield.

Ben Schwartz made a website called www.rejectedjokes.com out of his joke submissions that never made it on Letterman.  The website assisted in increasing his social media popularity and then overall acting demand. 

I asked a few pages who the magical man was that could possibly let me submit monologue jokes.  The pages would always reply the magical man wasn’t accepting any more applications for freelance joke writers.  This would have been believable is it wasn’t for the fact that every other new page talked about the monologue jokes they were submitting. All I wanted to do was meet the guy and see for myself.  I wasn’t looking for them to give me a professional reference on my writing ability. What would be the harm in pointing the man out to me or heaven forbid introduce us.  Well it turns out that the more submissions for jokes there are the less chance that a freelance writer’s joke will get picked.  None of the freelancers wanted extra competition for their submissions.  I guess I should feel complimented that they believed I was funny enough to get accepted as a freelance writer.  [NOTE TO SELF: INSERT SOME FUNNY ONE LINER ABOUT PENIS SIZE OR SOMETHING].  My other idea was to wander the halls of the office asking everyone if they were writers for the show and how could I become one too.  Sadly doing stuff like that in an office tends to get people in trouble. 

I was hoping to wave down the warm-up guy Eddie Brill in the hopes that he might point me in the right direction but I could never find the guy when he wasn’t ass over backwards busy.  The warm-up guy was the guy who would tell a few jokes before The Late Show started to get the audience relaxed and ready for some hour of wacky fun times.  So after all the dots are sat upfront and the 2s are tossed in the balcony Eddie Brill would come out and do a little standup bit.  He did the same exact standup routine every night.  It was perfect B comedy material that got the same range of chuckles every time.  It was super redundant for the people working in the studio but we weren’t there to be entertained, the audience was, we were there to work. 

Why are we always told when Sue Simmons takes a vacation?  Who's sitting around wondering why the local news anchor isn't on the show one night?
We get  our weather from meteorologist. They're dude's that study meteors, what do they know about the weather?
He did the same routine EVERY DAMN NIGHT!

Brill was also the guy that gave money to any audience member wearing a Late Show t-shirt.  During the warm-up Letterman would come on stage and do some quick banter with the audience.  If he noticed an audience member wearing a Late Show shirt, he’d call them out on it and highlight how overpriced the shirts were at the CBS store.  He’d instruct Brill to pay the fan for the clothing.  Brill would reach onto his pocket and pull out a $100 for the person.  It was the page’s job to make sure anyone wearing Late Show paraphernalia was 2ed and sent to the balcony.  People could easily slip by in the winter when they were wearing coats.  He must have given out about $300-$400 when I worked there. I hope Brill remembered to expense those cash giveaways. 

Another classic staple of the warm-up was a video showing highlights of Letterman’s best moments.  For any of you who saw the final show it looks like they reused that warm-up video when Letterman cut to his best moments throughout the years. 

How many times did they dig this Taco Bell clip out of the closet over the years?

PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, PART 6, PART 7

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Anticipation (NES) - T.V. GAMES: EPISODE 11

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My Year as a Page for The Late Show with David Letterman Part 3 of 7

The After Party

Except for a few inside audience jokes the shows were fairly generic instead of topical.  So the shows workweek ended on Thursday and to celebrate the pages would get a few beers somewhere close by.  It was usually a new place every night. 

I was 20 when I got the job so it could be difficult for me to get into some bars in Manhattan.  So during that summer, I would skip the end of the week get together.  I didn’t want to deal with the embarrassment of getting carded and turned away.  I also didn’t want to place any obligation on my new coworkers to have cancel or rearrange their plans because I was underage.  

Since the page program was a constantly rotating roster of employees a new clique was in place by the end of the summer; I had also turned 21 by that time.  But when the fall started I had a scholarship to maintain, classes early on Friday (about 6am) and had to rush home to capture this luxury called sleep.  So classes prevented me from socializing with my coworkers after the week’s final show.  This left a bit of a bonding deficit because all they got to experience was serious work Joe and not fun college drunk Joe.  By the time winter break came around and I had the time actually go out because I didn’t have a Friday class they were giving me the runaround. 

If only that were true...

The worst was when my friends from Virginia came up to visit me and I promised them the chance to hangout with some of my coworkers.  I asked every page where the party was that night.  I told them I had friends visiting from out of town and wanted to show them a fun time.  I tried to see where everyone was hanging out but they were giving me the same runaround, the same “I don’t know,” answers.  What made it insulting was working the Saturday box office and discovering everyone went out that Thursday and had a fun time together.   I tried a couple of times after that incident but just didn’t really care or feel the need to make friends with people who were so aloof.  I had my friends who all lived in Queens and they were more than happy to spend time with me. 

There is this big anti-bullying campaign in the USA right now but what I was experiencing, wasn’t bullying.  No one was outright mean, disrespectful or confrontational to me.  They were just so closed off.  It was either “you’re allowed in the club and we’re your best friend” or “I’m sorry you are too short to ride the bumper cars but you can watch us drive the cars laugh and have fun from the line outside.”  You might think as you read this, I must have been a huge douche to these people but it truly wasn’t the case and while you only have my word to go by I can attest to how well I got along with the people I worked with before the Late Show and made it a point to always be friendly with my coworkers after my time at the Late Show. 

This pretty much sums it up.

My only reasoning for their standoffish attitude stems from when I coached my girlfriend and sister on how to get tickets for the show.  To get tickets to the show you could mail away for tickets, request them through the website, or show-up to the box office on weekends and weekdays when the show was not taping.  Most of the tickets were given away at the box office.  A Potential Audience Member (PAM) would arrive to the lobby of the Ed Sullivan Theater and a page had them fill out a form and told them they were being placed in a lottery for free tickets.  The page would check their sheet for accuracy and return the sheet and send the PAM to an audience coordinator.  The coordinator explained the process to the PAM again and made some small talk about The Late Show. 

What was really occurring was that there was no lottery (the show was free, deal with it).  The Late Show had specific audience demographics it tried to fill for every show.  They preferred more men in the audience than women.  They wanted genuine fans of the show and not just tourists.  They also preferred older more mature fans.  The rule was 18 and over could see the show but young looking audience members always got 2ed and sent to the balcony.  They were scared the youngins might act out during the taping.  So the audience coordinator needed to make certain the PAM was a fan of Letterman.  It really makes sense; you want an audience member that is going to laugh at the jokes versus someone who’s just taking advantage of the NYC tour.  They also had to be on the lookout for people who were only going to see the show for a specific guest.  That was a guaranteed denial for tickets.  You needed to be a Letterman fan or decent at faking the fact that you were a Letterman fan.  If you were there to see Avril Lavigne you weren’t getting in, unless they were really desperate to fill the seats that day.  The coordinator would ask a few simple questions like what’s your favorite bit on the show or who’s your favorite regular.  Fans could answer in moments; tourist or people only there to see Moby had a tough go of it.  The coordinator also had to gauge if the person was a psycho or on that list of crazy people we needed memorize. 

Look at all those men attending the taping of the view.

I learned all these nuances on how to get tickets and passed the knowledge onto my sister and girlfriend.  They were successful in getting called and when they arrived for filming I introduced them to a few coworkers.  My sister proceeded seek out our distant relative/the page’s direct boss who’s fake name is still Bob and exclaim to him in front on the majority of my page colleagues that she was my sister and his 8^th cousin twice removed on her great uncles side and how she remembers him from the most recent family funeral and/or wedding they mutually attended.  I would have to say when the bulk of the pages discovered this relation that’s where the negative vibes came from.  No one wants to hangout with the bosses relative, no matter how cool of a boss he might be.  They also don’t respect a dude who got his job because of a blood relation.  Even though the bulk of them got the job through someone else and they didn’t have to interview with the head of the department David Kay, it was still an invisible black mark on my cool points record.  There wasn’t much I could do, their opinions were set and I didn’t want to waste my energy trying to befriend people who judged me inferior because I used a family connection to get a job.

I had a few years to think about these experiences.  I wanted to convince myself I was being paranoid because the bulk of the people I dealt with were so nice.  It was only a small few that were so odd in how they conducted themselves.  But I always go back to a conversation I had with Danny.  When he got a fulltime job and was leaving the page program we were making small talk about his new position.  He was talking about his new job and how it was exclusive to Columbia graduates.  Then out of nowhere he drifts into the interview process for the page program.  He asks me how long it took before I received the offer.  I told him a week and also said I interviewed with the bosses boss because the nepotism thing was well known by then.  He goes into how he walked into the office, made such an impression with the boss and was offered the job right on the spot.  He even went on to talk about how he was complemented on his interview skills and being the best possible candidate and didn’t need to interview with anyone else or wait for a call because he was just that awesome.  Then he quickly left the locker room. 

I didn’t say or really react to what he was saying.  I just nodded to acknowledge I heard him.  I didn’t really understand his point.  I felt like he was taking a pot shot at me for not being offered the job right away or implying I didn’t deserve to be there.  It was weird, especially since Danny was always a nice dude.  He always acted so pleasant and normal.  I get that the entertainment industry is cutthroat but I couldn’t understand why his goodbye was filled with a laundry list of items that never needed to be said.  He left not too long after that and I kept my distance because why would you want to associate with someone who would take the time to belittle a person like that?  The tactic was very clever though.  No one would outright be mean because that’s not professional.  But there are certainly passive aggressive ways to let a person know they aren’t welcomed. 

Celebrities

Zoom Zoom

I’ve talked a lot about some of the jerkier experiences I came across while there but I should follow it up with some of the nicer ones.  There was the time Amanda Peet walked by and said hello to me.  She looked really pretty.  I saw Gwen Stefani, who had fabulous legs btw.  Tom Brady walked by me too, I thought for a football player he’d be bigger than he really was.  Denzel Washington whizzed by me at supersonic speed one evening.  I was moments away from meeting the Beastie Boys, there isn’t much of a story there, just regret.  I missed out because I couldn’t leave my post till a commercial break and they left the lobby area to setup for their entrance from the street. 

I spoke with one of the members of the band Franz Ferdinand after the first double show.  His girlfriend was taking a picture of him under the Letterman marque.  I told him he did a good job.  He was so appreciative of the compliment and thanked me.  I think he wanted to stop and chat with me a little but his girlfriend rushed him away.  He seemed so excited to be on The Late Show and in New York City. 

Since it was New York City and we were outside working the line it wasn’t uncommon for random celebrities to walk by super quick.  You wouldn’t even noticed them if you blinked.  David Hyde Pierce and Frank Azaria regularly walked by superfast while we were working.  They were both in the play Spamalot which was performing only a few blocks down.  Mark Summers was spotted trying to get people to beat the physical challenge. 

The oddest interaction was the woman who came into the box office and name-dropped she was Jeff Daniels’ sister.  I was skeptical that she was legit but the other pages pointed out to me that there were other more interesting celebrities you could pretend you’re related to.  So I can tell you here and now that I met Jeff Daniels’ sister and brother-in-law 

I double dare you to take the physical challenge.

Back at the show I would see the stage manager Biff Henderson running around all the time.  He was always so down to earth and nice.  The cue card guy Tony Mendez was always floating around and being super chill. 

The announcer Alan Kalter freaked me out the first time I met him but was actually also a cool dude. I was on the lower platform and it was my first month there.  Alan notices I am new and walks up to me, shakes my hand, and introduces himself.  That’s all really nice personable stuff to do, especially when you’re in the talent pool of a TV show.  He then stands eerily close to me and continues to shake my hand.  The handshake lasted a bit to long and the personal space violation freaked me out.  It makes for funny reenactments though.

This is Kalter on a good day.

I saw Letterman interview presidential candidate John Kerry, former President Bill Clinton, and then Senator, now President Barak Obama.  I got to see some of my favorite musicians perform.  People like Green Day, Sting, and Kid Rock. 

Kid Rock actually performed on one of my first days there.  I was talking with a page named Ben Schwartz.  You may know Ben Schwartz as an actor and writer who worked on Parks and Recreation, This Is Where I Leave You, and House of Lies.  Ben was probably one of the nicest dudes I ever met in life.  When he noticed I was a bit lost during my first few days he told me to follow him as he snuck into rehearsal.  We watched Kid Rock warm up and perform Only God Knows Why.  I was one of a handful of people in the Ed Sullivan Theater listening to Kid Rock play the guitar and sing Only God Knows Why without any of that shitty auto tuner that’s on the album version.   Rock was only a few feet away from where I was sitting.  Not many people could say they had that experience in life. 

So true.

Ben made it a point to invite me out to places and really tried to be a friend.  He’d try to get me to check out some of his comedy shows in the city.  Unfortunately every time Ben had something going on I seemed to have plans.  It wasn’t just me that he was welcoming too.  He really tried to make everyone around him feel included.  He was the anti-Betty.  I wish I’d taken the time to get to know him better because he was genuinely nice dude.  He tends to play a caricature of his personality in the movies and shows I’ve seen him on.  If you learn anything from this, be a really nice and welcoming person to people and you will do well in life. 

It pays to be nice and talented. Please reference Kid Rock picture above.

PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, PART 6, PART 7

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Let's Play Anticipation (NES)

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My Year as a Page for The Late Show with David Letterman Part 2 of 7

We Had A Stalker List

I couldn’t really fault him for being standoffish from his staff.  Back in 2005 a man named Steven Rubenstein was hired to do some work on Letterman’s estate and then took the opportunity to plot the kidnapping of his son.  Luckily Rubenstein was arrested before he could carryout the plot.  It’s still a scary experience for someone to go through.  I completely understand why a guy would prefer to keep his distance and keep his confidants to a small circle. 

There was a list of names all the pages needed to memorize and notify security if we came across those people.  The list consisted of people who mailed death threats to Letterman or sent one too many fan letters.  It wasn’t a physical list we could keep so we were made to orate it out loud like a choir during a preshow meeting for 2 weeks straight.  The only name I remember was most likely the made up name of Katie Jacklyn Bovier Onasis Kennedy Cosby. 

UPDATE: It turns out she's a real person who plays bridge with my mother every other Sunday.  She was just very upset that Letterman smoked cigars on the air.

Fans would sometimes bring gifts for Letterman.  Our instructions were to take the gifts and tell the fan we would pass it along.  Sadly, the gifts never got to him and would just sit in the box office.  Sometimes they were flowers other times food.  I never saw anything extravagant but others pages told me stories about some nice artwork or personalized mugs and other expensive stuff they helped themselves too.  Whatever to gift was, rest assured the pages made good use out of it. 

I was always reluctant to eat the food fearing that it might be poisoned but that didn’t stop others from scarfing down the grub.  Was it wrong of me to want someone to contract minor food poisoning from eating a tainted box of chocolates?  Most of them were from middle America and a bit too trusting.  Having grown up in Queens and it being only three/four years after 9/11, I was convinced everyone was just waiting for the opportunity to kill us all. 

I had a different upbringing then many of my Late Show colleagues.  I grew up in New York City. Queens to be specific.  Most of them came from the Midwest to try and hit it big in the TV industry.  The best they could land at this point in their lives was a part-time job on a late night talk show.  They had student loans closing in on them, dropping $800+ a month on rent while sharing an apartment with 3 other roommates.  They could barely afford a $50 monthly cellphone payment let alone support themselves.  I’m certain many of them were eligible for welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid.  I could guess it was a disappointing transition when only a year ago they were living the fun and fancy-free college dorm/party life and dreaming about how they will break into the entertainment industry.  They left behind their family and friends only to realize life’s a cruel bitch and experience it first hand. 

I was going through a different life experience than they were.  I was still in college and hadn’t yet been kicked in the balls with the job-hunting vacuum.  I was fortunate to be graduating college without student loans to pay thanks to a partial academic scholarship and my parents paying the difference.  I also lived with my parents in Queens and wasn’t charged any rent while I was in school.  Financially, life was relatively easy for me.  I only had to juggle my classes and part-time job. 

Double Thursday/Double Monday

The Late Show used to tape two shows on Thursday, the Thursday and Friday show.  Then one day Letterman had to do some Nascar thing and needed to leave early on Thursday.  They decided to tape Friday’s show on Monday.  So Double Thursday became Double Monday for one day only.  But Letterman liked the early dismissal on Thursday so much he made Double Monday the standard.  The double shows were always tough because while one show was being recorded with half the pages monitoring the audience the other half was performing the line-up for the other show that would tape immediately after.  They bought the pages pizza on the double show days because we were working through dinner.  That was really cool of them to do. 

I felt the quality of those Friday shows were weaker than the rest.  That 4 day difference caused the jokes to be less relative because they were missing out on key current events.  Letterman would sometimes take the opportunity to poke fun and the faulty time change like the time he interviewed Tony Danza on Monday for a show that was airing Friday.  Danza was promoting his live morning show and playing along with Letterman, pretending it was Friday.  Danza mentioned the guest he had on the show and said it was a fun episode.  Letterman decided to up the stakes and asked Danza for a specific event that happened on the yet to be recording live Friday broadcast.  Danza stumbled for a bit, which caused a giggle in the audience.  Danza then said people would need to tune in if they wanted to know what happened on his show. 

I'd ask you all to call me Wayne Brady but I only play guys named Tony.

PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, PART 6, PART 7

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