By NIA KIESOW
There is such a rolling sense of relief after having waited hours in line, striving for a desired outcome, and finally laying your hands on the prize. In the case of a handful of overly-enthused King’s freshmen, that prize came in the form of a flimsy blue ticket with the names Megan Fox and U2 printed in black, capped letters on one side.
Why the hullaballoo about a seemingly insignificant piece of paper? This ticket gave us a possibility of attending the live taping of the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, with the host being the budding Transformers starlet Megan Fox and the infamous Bono-fronted U2 as the musical guest.
Louis Klein, a true diehard SNL fanatic who has attended the majority of tapings since the show’s first in 1975, revealed that prior to this season premier, all stand-by tickets for U2 showings had been voided due to a full house for both the dress rehearsal and live taping.
Suddenly bearing the cold and the thirteen-hour overnighter seemed a bit silly and just a tad too whimsical. Impromptu Ultimate Frisbee games in the middle of 49th Street and curbside pizza deliveries from the compliant Domino’s Pizza passed the time perfectly fine, but the worrying feelings in the pits of every one of our stomachs seemed to put a lurking dark cloud over the atmosphere.
Not to mention the snide remarks cast towards our high-spirited group. Many of the comments were to drop notes about how the number of people in our group seemed to fluctuate throughout the night, growing and retracting like a stretching rubber band. One such commentator, a middle-aged woman, no doubt high-strung from lack of patience and lack of manners, chastised us, stating how antsy the people towards the back of the line were growing because of our fickle numbers.
In a stern, pitchy tone, she then proceeded to demand a final number of show-goers in our innocent and wide-eyed collective that were there to stay. After slightly repressing our reciprocated animosity, and perhaps a few curse words welling up like bile in our throats, we curtly replied that we had eleven members who would certainly be staying the whole night.
Despite the high levels of peevishness amongst the crowd, we found ourselves enjoying the night, and the morning, more than we expected. Sporadic trips to McDonald’s, Magnolia Bakery, and Starbucks kept our spirits stimulated with irregular sugar highs, allowing us to ignore the hardness of the concrete in the wee hours of daybreak.
And returning to NBC Studios in Rockefeller Center at 7:15 in the evening, with hopes of filing into a cramped elevator that would lift us to the old 8H studio was sheer surrealism. The bickering crowds were back, the uncertainty of getting into the show returned, and that excited knot twisting in your gut kicked in again.
But we made it. Just as we hoped, the elevator was filled with us. The moment the doors closed, we let out a chorus of obnoxious shrieks. It was an appropriate reaction for a few handfuls of SNL virgins, I’d say.
And the show? It was completely worth the wait, the blazing glares, and the early morning cold. U2 has nothing but perfection to offer and Megan Fox sure can pull off costume changes and slapstick humor in a jiffy.
