NYC: A Whirlwind of Adventure! Warning: This is a LONG Post!

Being a good journalist, I will start with the Lead which is what the majority of people want to know, so here it is:

Sadly, Caleb will NOT be appearing in the Hot Seat for Who Wants to be a Millionaire (WWTBAM).

Here's the behind the scenes process of auditioning for WWTBAM:
In your e-mail, you are given a time to show up. Caleb' s was for 6:30. Well we get to the address, and there is a line curling around the ABC Studios building (it's the studio in the upper west side, not Times Square) and it looks to be about 100-120 people. We get in line, and a man with a clipboard and headset highlights Caleb's name on a long list and says to me:
Producer: You can't go inside. Either take the test or wait outside
Tricia: (keep in mind it's like one thousand degrees) So I have the option of taking the test too?
Producer: Yep, go get in the stand-by line.

So now I'm pumped because we are doubling our chances of becoming millionaires. Everyone in the stand-by line makes it into the room, which is the ABC cafeteria, but it's after hours, so no famous people are lurking ( I would have pooped my pants if Diane Sawyer or Charlie Gibson walked in). Everyone is seated at the cafeteria tables and there are tons of WWTBAM pencils piled on each table for us to use (I stole all of them on my table, so it wasn't a complete waste of time). We were given a test and had 10 minutes to answer 30 questions.

The test questions were basically hit or miss- it was all over the place. I thought I did pretty good, though- I didn't embarrass myself. They took up our scantron answer sheets and had them graded in little over a minute. Then they called out about 6 or 8 numbers (we were identified by numbers, not our names) and those people went on to the second round which was the on-camera interview. Unfortunately, neither of our numbers were called, so the whole process took about 15 minutes. Boo.

Outside, the next round of potential contestants were lined up outside. From 5-7 each afternoon, they test four groups of people, so we estimate that about 400 people audition every day, 30 each day go on to round 2, and then only about 10 percent of all of those people actually make it on to the show. The odds are amazing. But now you know how that works....

We had a great dinner after that at a restaurant in Little Italy with our friend who works in NYC, Hendi (Hendy?) and then walked around for a while.


The next day we really packed it all in: Metropolitan Art Museum all morning, then we had to be at the David Letterman show at 3 to get our tickets. This is where the fun begins:

There are about 20 college interns organizing everyone as it takes a while to go through the line to get tickets. You slowly snake your way through the line until you finally get to this guy at a podium who acts like all he is doing is highlighting your name on their Master List. But he is doing so much more.

This one little guy makes the decision as to where you get to sit in the Live Audience. We get up to the podium, and he nonchalantly says, "So you like the Letterman Show?" to which we go, "Yeah! Woooohhh!" in our natural redneck way. And with that, he put a yellow sticker on our ticket and asked us to go to stand off to the side and wait. Other people were added to our group while other people walked straight out. After a while, another intern led our little group out separately onto the street and delivered this speech (it will help you to give this intern a "Motivational Speaker" voice):
Intern: "Because of your enthusiasm for DAVE and for the positive attitude YOU exhibit, we are rewarding you with FRONT ROW SEATS tonight! But with great honor comes great responsibility- YOU are the first people DAVE will see when he steps onto that HISTORIC STAGE. SO! You have to give it ALL you've got. CHEER, CLAP, DANCE, whatever. You are Dave's cheerleaders- YOU have to lead the audience into cheering Dave on. "

And with that inspirational monologue, we were later led into a holding room where we received the biggest pep talk of our lives and were forced to practice our cheering and clapping. Now, what Caleb noticed is that all the people in the holding room with us were all very normal looking- the men ALL had on a solid colored collared shirt and the women were dressed nice. No one was wearing any logos on their shirts or were gothic or anything. So we think our personalities had nothing to do with it- they just want to put normal looking people up front.

Anyway, they pep rally for Dave kept going on into the holding room until music started blaring and then suddenly these doors opened up to the studio and they MADE US RUN into the studio like we were basketball players running onto the court. Everywhere we turned, there was an intern clapping his/her heart out to the music and a smile plastered across his/her face.

For the next twenty minutes, we were told to clap to the beat of the music and if we didn't participate in the spirit of things, we might be moved out of our front row seats and replaced by someone who had more spirit. Well let me tell you, we were NOT going to be replaced. Caleb and I clapped to the beat of the music like we have never clapped before. Our hands ached, our face was cramping for our spirited smile, but we would NOT risk being moved.

A comedian came out to get us laughing and then at 4:30 the show started. It's like we had trained our hands to clap because ANYTHING Dave said was suddenly hilarious and we just naturally and automatically clapped our hands- it was like we couldn't help it. Anyway, the guest stars were Mark Whalberg and Alanis Morisette and then some guy that has been abducted by aliens. It was all SO MUCH FUN and we were so lucky to have that opportunity!

After the Letterman show, we raced to the TKTS booth to get discounted broadway tickets and got two to see "Young Frankenstein." The show was a lot of fun and Karen from Will and Grace was in it, so that added a fun bit to it all. We flew home the next day, so technically, it was a one-and a half day trip, but it was just so much fun!

I have some other things to write about like Caleb's birthday and our good friend Will and Calen's wedding but this post is so long that I will save it for another time.


I will end by saying (if anyone is still reading this) that I will be 6-19 through7-02: The first week is for a PowerPlant project in Sioux Falls, SD and the second week is for Caleb's work conference in Denver, CO. I'm flying from one to the other. PLEASE keep the PowerPlant project in your prayers, that we will not only get the word out to the community that there is a new church in town, but also pray that the youth participants will catch the vision that church is not just about a building, but about a family of believers that work together for the kingdom. I will definitely blog about the project when I get back, but for now I have to pack!