thomas managed to snag tickets for yesterday's taping of the colbert report in zellerbach -- it's the first time they've brought the show on the road, and they're here to cover the primaries (april 22nd) and be generally awesome. i wouldn't say that i was the world's hugest fan of stephen colbert before this, but i do love seeing the stuff that happens behind the scenes on tv shows, which explains the one time i suffered through the who wants to be a millionaire taping in singapore with fs, in which we try our damndest to provide the wrong answer every time they polled the audience (it failed.)

even with pre-ordered tickets, the line for admission began at 4 pm, which meant i had to invent an excuse to get out of class early. i normally would have no qualms about this, but our 2-5 class on mondays is ethics. you can go figure that one on your own. anyway, i chose to live with the guilt, and we joined the line, and ate big oversweet almond cookies, and enjoyed the spring sunshine. with the metal detectors and whatnot, it took about 2 hours to get inside. the circular daily show desk had come on the trip from new york, but everything else on the set was custom-made, including a colbert report kite, and a fake 18th-century escritoire complete with quill.

they had a not-very-funny comedian warm us up, and then after a million years stephen came out and answered a few questions while not in character ('have you had a cheesesteak yet?'). he's not altogether unlike his onscreen persona, just...less so? i think it's the voice that makes him. anyhow they started taping, and the first surprise was that the show is edited together pretty much on the spot -- WYSYWIG. he did a duet of the star-spangled banner with penn alum john legend before the cold open. michael nutter and chris matthews were guests, and it was let slip that both michelle obama and hillary were going to be on later in the week, which kind of sucks balls, since we had a choice of which day we wanted to go on. there was a lot of frantic rewriting during the breaks, and i fell even more in love with the job of tv writer, which is on the list of careers i'll pursue if i drop out of grad school (somewhere just after selling beach umbrellas in koh samui).

it was a pretty cool evening, something different from going home to read endless journal articles anyway. more like those, please?