I had a Bentley (Azure, 2008) for the past four days — I blogged about it for work — and it was sweeeeet.

Well, except for when I ran over some guy. That sucked:

We stayed at a whack bed-and-breakfast in rural N.H. this weekend. We knew we were in for a good time when we pulled up into the rather large driveway, saw a sign that said, “Park along the edges. Thanks,” then went to the edge of the driveway and saw another sign that said, “Thanks. No parking.”

I’ve stayed in a few B&Bs, and signs seem like a pretty standard thing to have throughout: They’re a way to inform guests of how to work quirky toilets, or where to find some snacks. But this place we stayed at went nuts with the instructional signs. They were everywhere — on the AC (which said, mysteriously, “Our favorite guests”), on the walls, on the TV. On the TV! And they always said, “Thanks.” In the hallway, above a little basket of store-bought snacks and a nearby coffee machine, a sign explained that the items were “50 cents, thanks!” and “75 cents, thanks!” But my favorite was this one:

“Use common sense, you assholes. Tell the kids. Thanks!”

Did you catch Bill Clinton and I on the Daily Show last night? Bill was being interviewed, of course, but I was off camera. Screaming and laughing. Amid 250 people.

Two wonderful friends managed to snag four tickets to yesterday’s show, and so off we went, four of us, to watch Comedy Central magic. The tickets are free, which means, like all free-ticket shows, they give out too many tickets and then let people in on a first-come-first served basis. The show informed us that taping would start earlier than usual, and that we’d want to show up by 2:30 — and we decided to play it safe and show up at 1:15, by which point there were already about 10 people in line (which means sitting along the wall, on the sidewalk, starting at the studio door).

The studio is in a nondescript part of Manhattan, about a dozen or so blocks from Times Square. And there, we waited. And waited. Every so often, a Daily Show security guard or intern would come out to inform us of something — that we should pick up our trash, that we can’t bring weapons into the studio — and then disappear, giving no indication of how long we’d continue to wait. That was probably smart: There was lots more waiting to do. We grew bored, and stared at the other people in line. One was dressed in a full army uniform, and carried a large blue shopping bag with some frilly paper sticking out of it. He eventually left the line to give the gift to the security guard, and from then on, he was allowed to stand in a seperate, VIP line.

By 2:30, which is when the Daily Show actually suggested we show up, the line was pretty large. Ten minutes later, it was capped off, and ticket-holders were moved to a second line along another side of the building. At 4 p.m., we were finally ushered through a metal detector, then crammed into a large, bare ”waiting room,” where we continued to wait — something we had become experts on. Within an hour, the doors to the studio finally opened. The VIPs were let in first — they announced that one of them, the army guy who gave away the blue bag, just came back from Iraq. Everyone applauded. Then the rest of us went in.

The Daily Show set is simultaneously larger and smaller than you might think. Larger: This thing is serious, loaded with cameras and hundreds of lights, a fully realized set you don’t quite get to appreciate on TV. Smaller: There’s Jon’s desk, three large screens behind it (ones to the left, right, and directly behind it), a little island of a set nearby with a podium on it (which was never used, and I couldn’t recall seeing an episode that used it), and then seating for 250 people (mostly facing the set straight on, but also perhaps 50 or so seats on stage right). And that’s it. It’s surprisingly intimate.

There was, of course, plenty more waiting. Then some guy came out to warm up the crowd. He paced in a circle like Dane Cook, shouting into a microphone, “DO YOU WANT TO MEET JON STEWART!?” Screams from us. “DO YOU WANT TO BE ON TV!?” Screams from us again, although we all knew, from watching the show, that the cameras never show the crowd. But whatever. He yammered for a while about how valuable we are — we’re the energy of the show! — and poked fun at some of the audience members, and then got sober, somber even, and urged us all to go to his stand-up show in a few days. “It’s going to be a really great night,” he said. “It’s in a really nice venue.” I got the feeling this guy’s best gig is right here, right now.

Finally, Jon came out, and the crowd went bonkers. He asked if we have any questions, and a few people fire off dumb ones. Then someone asked, “How did you like your present?”

“Oh, are you the doctor?” Jon asked.

“No, it’s that guy,” said the audience member, and pointed to the army guy, who’s been seated in the front, corner seat on stage right.

Jon greeted the army guy, and explained that he was sitting in his dressing room this afternoon when a staffer came by and delivered a blue bag. Inside was a bronzed jock strap, and a nice note addressed to Jon. “It now has a prominent place in my office, just next to my Stephen Colbert bobblehead,” Jon said.

Then it was time to start the show. Jon sat down at the desk, and immediately, the crew snapped into action. Four big TV cameras were rolled out on the set, the lights changed, the music came on, and we all went nuts. Jon’s all business during this: He’s intently focused on whatever camera his director points at, and just chugs through the script. It’s odd, almost: When you watch the show at home, you feel as if Jon’s really playing to the audience, the way a stand-up comedian does. But on the set, there’s no connection. Jon’s playing to the camera (as he should, really, considering there are far more people in TV land than in the studio), and his pacing is in response to the director, not us.

As per usual for the show, there was a segment with a correspondent, who was “reporting” from the set of Kid Nation. Turns out, the correspondent is standing in front of one of the screens next to Jon’s desk; the screen is turned green, so they can insert the background on TV. So there they are, Jon and correspondent, mere feet apart, staring at different cameras as if they’re seperated by miles.

During commercial breaks, a bunch of staffers huddled around Jon and talk, while music in the studio blared (presumably so the audience can’t shout at them). Then they cut back to the show, and Jon introduced Bill Clinton. The crowd roared and gave Bill a standing O — and then out walked the president, looking a little tired and weak, but still, shit, it’s Bill Clinton. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to a president. Bill smiled at the crowd, then sat down and gave a rambling, somewhat boring interview. The show’s director was constantly signaling to Jon to move the interview along, but Jon, as he’s wont to do with major guests, just let Bill ramble.

Then, commercial. Bill and Jon sat at the desk, chatting away. A girl in the audience, wearing a low-cut blue dress (with major boobage), who was sitting next to my friends, started waving at him. She was slight about it — just a little, constant wave, hand at about shoulder level, and she kept saying in a low voice, “Wave at the girl in the blue dress. Hi. Look at the girl in the blue dress.” And then, I kid you not, Bill Clinton looked out into the audience, smiled broadly and waved at the girl. Weird.

They cut back from commercial, and Jon and Bill did another somewhat bland interview segment. Still, we laughed and cheered, and when it was over, we gave Bill another standing O when he left. Bill’s a shameless glad-hander (or so I’ve read), but for his exit, he only waved at the crowd, shook the army guy’s hand, and then took off.

And that was about that: They cut back one last time for the “moment of zen,” then the show ended, Jon thanked everyone for coming, and we all got up and left. On the way out, we looked up at a sign at the entrance to the studio: “Abandon news, all ye who enter here,” it said.

A Pizza Hut commercial for its “dippin’ strips” has been running on high rotation lately, and each time its lack of logic grows a little more irritating. Perhaps you’ve seen it (although unfortunately I couldn’t find a version of it online): Two dudes are sitting next to each other, each holding a dippin’ strip (read: a rebranded breadstick) in one hand, and a cup of sauce in another.

The guy on the right dips a partially eaten stick into his sauce, which exasperates the guy on the left.

“Did you just double-dip?” says Left Guy.

Right Guy responds affirmatively — smiles, nods, says “yes,” something like that — and then Left Guy shakes his head in disgust. Then the commercial cuts to the sales pitch.

Now, fine: Pizza Hut’s trying to emphasize the single advantage of its dippin’ sticks (which, in case you missed it, is that they’re able to be dipped), and this exchange, while dumb, does emphasize that. But here’s the problem: These two guys each have their own cups of sauce. They’re not sharing anything, so why would Left Guy care if Right Guy’s double dipping in his own sauce? Pizza Hut, you’ve clearly missed the point.

Amusing contrast: Here’s an earnest, amusingly straightforward Pizza Hut commercial from 1986. It doesn’t make me want their pizza any more — in fact, the pizza in the commercial looks downright disgusting — but at least the damn thing makes sense.

 
Some of Larry’s latest hard-hitting interviews.

Los Angeles is naming a city block after Larry King. There’s no stop sign there, so drivers always coast right through it. Hey-ohh!

Los Angeles is naming a city block after Larry King. It includes Easy Street. Ba-bang!

Los Angeles is naming a city block after Larry King. That man should fucking retire and learn how to use the Internet. Sha-zam!

…was that last one too literal?

From my other blog: Britney Spears plus Massachusetts politics equals maximum quotage.

ABC 20/20 last week ran a solid smackdown (article, video clip above) of Dateline NBC’s regular sleazefest, To Catch A Predator, by digging into the disaster that befell a Texas town when Chris Hansen stopped by to play. The concerns raised by ABC are weighty and valid, although my longtime complaint about the show is more simplistic: Hanson always says his shows are investigations, but after running multiple set-ups with the same result, how long can you reasonably call something an investigation? Does he think we’ll learn something new by repetitively orchestrating the same stunt? It’d be like me buying a donut and saying, “I need to investigate if this donut is any good.” I eat it, it’s good, and then I buy another one and say, “Now I need to investigate if this donut is any good.”

But here’s the tough part about criticizing To Catch a Predator: doing so earns you praise from people who, uh, take Chris Hansen’s efforts far too personally. Like “oceanstreat,” a 46-year-old on YouTube, who described the show thusly underneath the 20/20 video:

They’ve ruined many people’s lives for nothing but profit and ratings. They’re nothing more than soft-core porn masquerading as “saving children”, while at the same time playing off the sexuality of young people.

Yikes. Someone needs to sic Chris Hansen on this guy.

The Boston Globe and New York Times both ran amusing photos of Mitt Romney squatting this weekend, presumably as he tries to connect with children who support lifelong diaper use. (But don’t buy the flip-flop: When he ran in Mass., Romney was totally against adult diaper use.) I especially love the one on the right, from the Globe, which legitimately looks like Mitt’s trying to squeeze one out. Now there’s someone who knows how to clean up the “ocean in which our children now swim.”

I’d Photoshop a toilet into one of these photos, but, well, I tapped that joke three years ago.

The Smoking Gun has been posting mugshots of strippers who are swept up in some breathless Houston police crackdown (because apparently the Houston police have already arrested everyone else). Via a link on Fark, I just stumbled upon yesterday’s offering, of five gals nabbed at a strip club that boasts its girls “make more money in one shift than most make in a week!” (The club’s claim is made here, but it’s pretty NSFW.) And say what you will, but the club may be right. Here’s this girl from the mugshots on her MySpace page:

Unless those are all singles, that sure looks like more than I make in a week. Well done!

(Ok, I admit, I have no intelligent excuse for looking these girls up on MySpace, outside of the sheer curiosity of whether high-end strippers would be on there. And sure enough, three are. Of the other two, she is here, and she is here. All semi-SFW.)

When newspaper reporters leave the business, it’s typically for cushier gigs in public relations, where the pay is better and the hours are regular. But not all go that route. Last week I got an e-mail from a woman named Ellen Braunstein (right), who left a reporting gig at The Press Enterprise of Southern California to write people’s love stories. (She had stumbled across this post of mine.) Through her business Courtship Stories, she told me, she now chronicles how couples met, and then turns each written story into booklets for guests at weddings and anniversary parties. See a sample page here.

This fascinated me: While I very much sympathize with wanting to leave small-town reporting, which I found to be repetitive and insular, I just couldn’t imagine love-story writing would be an improvement (and surely, it’d be a lot cheesier). Ellen was kind enough to submit herself to a little Q&A with me, to explain what her job’s all about.

HappyScrappy: You left a newspaper job to write stories about happy couples. What happened, were you writing for the obits section and needed a complete change?

Ellen: Fine obituary writing celebrates life. But I was covering City Hall, and that can be deadly. So I welcomed the change. At first, I planned to write life legacy books about everyday individuals — a collection of essays that would capture the most significant aspects of their lives. I tried a sample chapter, a courtship story, and realized that of all life-changing events, this had the most narrative momentum. I’m not really a romantic, but courtship stories are definitely the perfect match of writer to assignment.

I assume you have some back-and-forth with the couples when you’re writing their stories. Who’s the tougher editor: A hard-nosed newspaperman on deadline, or a bride-to-be before her wedding?

I hated daily deadlines, so you can imagine which editor I would prefer. The bride and groom relive the courtship in separate interviews, which run 90 minutes or two hours over the phone or in person. I never write close to a wedding day, and couples usually approve the first draft — 1,500 to 1,800 words — with minor corrections.

True-life love stories are like vacation photos: The people involved in a story think it’s fascinating, and everyone else has only a passing interest. As a chronicler of people’s love stories, that leaves you with two options — write to the couple’s indulgence, or write with their audience’s attention span in mind. Is there a middle ground here?

Besides closest friends and family, people who don’t know the couple well, or at all, will enjoy these stories. The couples I chronicle want real stories — sweet, not sappy or cliché. They understand that overly sentimental details will lose a reader’s interest. The word “love” is used sparingly, for example. I mine details for themes and make connections that give readers the big picture of why these two chose each other. Guests have a long attention span for a good story.

Do you ever have to struggle to make a story sound romantic? Because I bet not every story is a charmer. Say a couple meets at a bar, gets sloppy drunk, ends up naked in some alleyway, and four months later they’re tying the knot in front of an Elvis impersonator in Vegas. Are you in a pinch?

As long as there are colorful details, every story has its charm. The couple is not sloppy drunk; they are emboldened by a beer or two. I keep it G-rated, skip mundane details, past relationships and stupid fights. I focus on the first encounter, the proposal and anything that moved the relationship forward, even if it was a setback. “Tying the knot in front of an Elvis impersonator?” That’s a story for “Vows” in The New York Times. My stories end with the proposal — not with what the officiant wore.

Boston magazine has a great monthly item called Fashion Masochist, and I took one for the team in the latest issue by walking around for two days in this disaster of an outfit. The leggings weren’t as uncomfortable as I thought they’d be – they are by far the tightest thing I’ve ever worn (in public) – and you’d be amazed how quickly you get used to walking around town in silhouetted nakedness. I even went to see the Transformers movie in them, which was only terrible because the leggings kept slipping down and exposing my bare bottom on the nasty theater seat. But for the far more embarassing parts, though, you’ll have to read the story. Does this officially make me a slave to fashion?

While driving on the Mass Pike tonight, I saw a Fung Wah bus being towed away…

…and thought, “Well, that’s a good sign: At least it hasn’t burst into flames.” (Or flip over, I suppose.) But then, that probably isn’t the standard to which a bus company should be held to, eh?

If two people walked down the street with a bag full of burgers and yelled, “Free burgers!”, I’d assume they were laced with polonium-210. But here’s what I learned at work today: When faced with free food, people are surprisingly alarmingly trusting.

A stop sign I saw in Hveragerði, Iceland:

Pretty amazing. And also from the Echos of Old School Rap Department, check out what AARP members will be doing between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. at the organization’s annual Life@50+ event: It’s “Morning Fitness with L.L. Cool J.” Grandmamma said knock you out!

This Icelandic chocolate bar was everywhere, and although I’m not much of a candy lover, I tried (and enjoyed) two: one with little candy crunchies in it, and the other with balls of licorice. But it was the name that tickled me most. Just imagine Icelanders — a mostly blonde, beautiful bunch — advertising their candy to the outside world: “Where my Nizza at?” “That’s my Nizza!” “Don’t mess with my Nizza.”

I was making jokes to this effect the entire time we were in Iceland (which got old to everyone but me), but a little Google action shows Nizza isn’t as randomly unfortunate as I thought: There’s a notable city in France called Nizza, which in English is translated to “Nice,” and apparently that translation holds in Italian. Perhaps that also explains the hotel and pizza shop.