Hey Malinky - Saw a taping of the LLS last week

Hey Malinky -

Sorry to hear about the power going out and hope Craig reads one of your emails sometime soon!

So last week I was down in LA for a trade show, and made a point to get tickets for myself and some friends to see a taping of the Late Late Show while we were in town. It was a great experience (of course!) and something that you as the YouTube LLS superhero would definitely enjoy.

We saw the 'second taping' on Thursday June 4th, for the "friday" show which aired on June 5th.

A few observations I thought I'd share...

0) the LLS studio is a lot smaller than it looks on TV - no wonder Craig complains... (the studio holds just over a hundred people in the audience, and there's only one 'stage area' (the desk is slid over to the side until after the monologue)

1.) When Craig first comes out he taped the monologue first, then the intro

2.) The intro seemed to be entirely ad-lib, as we heard Craig wondering out loud what he was going to do next, and then after saying he wasn't going to do puppets, he spotted a telephone on a table, grabbed it, and stuck it under the camera and did the whole 'call from Dave' thing on the fly... awesome!

3.) We didn't actually see the segment with comedian Henry Cho get taped - we did get shown an 'aquaman' clip on video (which wasn't part of the broadcast show) but the entire stand up and interview segment with Henry Cho didn't happen during our taping (maybe they did it during the first show taping that day?). The downside to this, was that our taping session did seem a bit 'short' (minus a whole ten minute segment!)

4.) The Chris Kattan interview wasn't edited. You mentioned in your comments that it seemed like a weird edit, but what aired was the entire segment as it was taped. I do agree that interview took a turn for the worse (calling Craig a racist! yikes!) and wonder if it had anything to do with perhaps the last minute guest booking of Kattan. You see, when I ordered the tickets, the CBS site said that the guest was going to be Sean William Scott, and Chris Kattan showed up instead.

5.) The CBS candies are very tasty! (and the warm up guy who tosses them out is pretty funny and is the same guy who plays the london guard during the prince charles segments)

6.) If you are going to go -
GET TICKETS HERE: http://www.cbs.com/late_late_show/tickets/

6A.) get in line early! We arrived an hour before the taping at 5pm, and there were already a good 20+ people in line ahead of us. We still got good seats, but if you want a shot at being in the part of the audience that sometimes gets seen before they go to commercial break, you need to be there early!

6B.) Bring some canned food for the homeless shelter that's mentioned on the ticketing site. There's a Cost Plus market just down the block from the CBS studios for the 'last minute' canned good purchase (tix to the show taping is free, so you can put that cash you would've spent into helping out a neighborhood charity!)

6C.) Watch out for security if you try to take a picture. After the taping, we went back to our car and tried to take a photo of ourselves outside the CBS studios... before we could say 'cheese' there was a CBS security guard in a golf cart saying they could take the camera away as there's no photography allowed on CBS property - yeesh!

6D.) Bring some money if you want some LLS swag. There's a small stand in front of the waiting area - They don't have a huge range, but there's a so-so T-shirt, a mousepad, a shot glass I think, and a couple of mugs (not the cool snake mug though!) - of course if you're in NYC, I bet you could go to the CBS store next to the Dave Letterman Late Show and find the same stuff.

6E.) and keep your fingers crossed and he may just do a puppet segment during the show that you attend (like the funny Dinosaur eats the Penguin bit as the Friday night ending, which of course I've since added to the "Puppet Power playlist" that I put together for all things puppets on the LLS.

LLS Puppet Power Playlist link -
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=ADE95078F07DAF61

Anyways, just thought I'd share the experience - thanks again as always for being the best source of LLS's online! Your efforts help me and my friends laugh all week!

- Pest169