Electrodes of Freedom

Day 4.

It was another glorious day. I believe this was the day I overslept and was the last to emerge, discovering that Amy did the brioche run on her own. It was good stuff, of course.

The planned event of the day was the Daily Show. It was the event that I suggested and arranged with the aid of Rian and sus (as tickets were only four per person and there were twelve of us). With it in mind that I had to be at the Daily Show doors around 3pm, I didn’t expect to do much that day.

It was suggested that we seven go back to some of the locations we had gone through while doing Accomplice. And so we found ourselves back at the Brooklyn Bridge. This time we all went to the first tower (on foot) which was further away than it looked and a nice little walk. I talked to Em about Spider-man for most of the time. Not obsessed, honestly. Brooklyn Bridge was recognisable to me as the place Gwen Stacy died at the hands of the Green Goblin (though I thought that the actual place was the George Washington Bridge- oddly enough it was named as the George Washington but drawn as the Brooklyn n the comic… well, I find it odd). To add to the whole Spider-man thing, the bridge was an astounded mass of cables making me feel caught in its web.

We didn’t feel that it was worth crossing the entire bridge and so came back to Manhattan. We bought lunch at a bakery (I was glad to have some tea with my bland “Thai” wrap as I couldn’t wake up that morning) and sat in the park where we met the blind guy in Accomplice. Q spent much time and effort trying to capture the squirrels on her camera.

We walked a little way to Ground Zero. When I went there over three years ago, there was nothing but a fence around the site and tarpaulin over nearby buildings that still bore the scars. This time there was a plaza with a fruit market, some tourist information and a gallery of photographs as well as the expanse of cleared and unused land. It wasn’t hidden away anymore; it was more of a promise of new ideas. However, I found it quite offensive to see the poster showing off the proposed “Freedom Tower”. And apart from that was quite bored and couldn’t see why biped and sus were keeping us all there. Q, Em, daisy, Amy and I waited patiently and then impatiently. Amy spotted biped and ran up to her tapping her on the left shoulder and then moved to the right making biped do that humorous “huh?” look when no one seemed to be behind her. Though we had rounded her up, it took even longer to drag sus away.

We walked up Broadway and ended up in Chinatown. We headed west and looked into the odd knock-off shops on the way. I saw perfume called “Angelus” and then “Spider-man”. I doubt either was good. We spent a while in a shoe-shop that sold some rather nice boots for $30. Daisy and Q indulged. Another shop boasted cheap t-shirts so Em, Q and daisy went in.

Sus, Amy and I took this opportunity to vamoose without the hassle of obtaining group permission, aware that someone had to hold a place in the Daily Show line if we were to get good seats or indeed any seats at all since even a ticket couldn’t guarantee us that. It was easy to find the Daily Show studio and we sat in the queue munching on cookies and drinking water that we had bought from a nearby store. People behind us in the queue were studying chemistry and though she tried, Amy utterly failed to start a conversation. I feel that I have been remiss in my retelling of the days for not mentioning how dreadfully some of the Harlemites were bitten. Amy and I were okay but certainly the “itch cream” was passed around the others quite a lot (often in public which I found amusing for no apparently reason). Anyway, point is that it was at this moment sus realised that she had the cream and no one else did. She cackled in evil glee as she applied it generously.

After we had been there for an hour, people started to join us. Rian and Paul arrived first with Lars and also the remnants of the Harlem Seven shortly after. Dana arrived just in time as an organiser was handing out numbers to us for admission (we got numbers around 200). Our wait continued though, broken slightly by being informed that we could not bring food or drink into the studio. We scoffed the cookies and drowned ourselves in water while Dana and sus spent the time testing Latin vocabulary on each other and Amy and I played I-spy.

Finally the queue started to move albeit extremely slowly. It was painful to shuffle forwards a metre and then wait even longer. As we neared the front of the queue, entering doors with the legend “abandon all news ye who enter here”, we saw that the reason for the slow movement was the intense security. They checked our bags thoroughly and made us go through metal detectors. All water bottles had to be disposed of. We were pretty grumpy by all of this and I couldn't have been the only one thinking that the American television studios were overly paranoid.

Except that they weren't. Because the guest for the night was the President of Pakistan. Suddenly it made sense that there were impressive people with guns all around us (we thought they had just heard that we were coming...).

The set looked surprisingly shoddy. I don’t know why I expected anything more than a desk and projection screens. The projection screens showed a mish-mash of landmarks oddly including the Big Ben tower. One stage-hand had the very important task of putting a pen on the desk. That was the sole adornment.

The audience was in three sections and we took up an entire row minus one seat in the largest section directly opposite the desk. The two smaller sections on either side were the ones that had the camera pan over them at the start of each segment of the show. A warm-up guy tried to rouse some cheers from us in our sections. I find that rather pathetic. He did better by doing the old “ask people where they are from and insult them” trick. One guy he picked on he recognised from a previous show. Not as hard as it sounds as this guy looked like Sigmund Freud and was indeed a psychiatrist. Would you trust your sanity to someone that likes to play dress-up?

We didn’t need some fake warm-up routine. All that was needed for us to make a noise was for Jon Stewart to come onto the set. I wonder how his ego copes from the worship (mainly) students give up to him. He always seems a little bashful and embarrassed at the attention but you know that is just to encourage people to give more of it. You see it a lot… “Oh, I’m terrible at this.” “No, you’re not! You’re really good.” “Really? I don’t think so.” “You are. You are excellent, quite simply a genius.” I hate that kind of fishing for compliments…

But to get back to events, Jon Stewart offered to answer questions from the audience. One girl had a long speech to make which ended with a question she could have asked right at the beginning: How do you prepare to speak to President Musharraf? Stewart shrugged and said that it was just like any normal show… he wheels in drunk at 5pm… Much laughter.

The show was started just as abruptly as it is on television. I expected some faffing but these were all well-practised professionals. I don’t think a single line was fluffed. Stewart sat behind his Kevlar-reinforced desk and did the first section of the show based on footage of Bush proudly stating that he didn’t understand the Geneva Convention. An expert was brought in (some English comedian called John Oliver) to explain how “outrages upon human dignity” changed depending on the person’s level of dignity observing how what would be degrading for Desmond Tutu would be fine for Paris Hilton. There was much fun involved in just watching them try not to crack up during the spiel.

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The middle section was the main event. The President of Pakistan entered. Jon Stewart offered him some Jasmine tea… and a Twinkie: an American delicacy consisting of purely inedible ingredients which when put together become edible. As always, his interview was carefully balanced between serious issues and humour. Musharraf played along well. Biped was sitting next to me and would occasionally whisper over that this was amazing, to witness such a rare event as the President of Pakistan on a comedy chat-show and also how this was the first Hobbmeet protected by the Secret Service.

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The interview spanned two portions and then we had a break before the epilogue with the obligatory teaser for what was on the brother show, The Colbert Report, and Moment of Zen. During the break they “tested the link” between Stewart and Colbert in his studio with a very amusing piece of witty banter. How much of what they do is off the cuff and how much is rehearsed is totally unknown to me.

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After the “Moment of Zen” I expected us all to be ushered out after this twenty minute show but we were kept back for one more piece. It was being recorded for something later this year. It starred Dave Gormon of Googlewhack and other fame. I was a bit too excited but still couldn’t muster a whoop, just a hearty round of applause. He did a piece on statistics which is always a source of much humour.

Alas, the show ended. Rian, Paul, Dana and Lars declined our offer of dinner at the apartment but promised to come around later for goodbye drinks. Shunned yet still happy from the entertainment, we Harlemites and Charity went merrily to Whole Foods and bought a selection of goodies. We actually gathered a great selection of food (roast chicken and salads mainly) in super-fast time for us. We took it all back to the apartment and set it out as a buffet in the kitchen, eating all together on the glass dining table. It felt very civilised and it was probably the best meal I had during the holiday. The food was great of course. The location perfect. The company unsurpassed. The conversation was a little too music-heavy for me but I was well entertained just being in the moment.

There were brownies for dessert again. And ice-cream.

Charity thought enough of our company to invite a friend over to share it. The nine of us talked through the evening with what remained of the alcohol purchased the day before. The music from the ipod was set to 80s with the odd 70s track creeping in including Bohemian Rhapsody which, of course, got everyone singing again.

Rian phoned some time during the evening to apologise that they couldn’t visit even after dinner as Lars was ill. This was met with a little scepticism but we agreed that we could just meet up for breakfast instead.