Well, I have this friend, and it was his major dream in life to get on TPIR. Conveniently, I, a good friend, lived twenty minutes from the studio, and being an airline employee (right now he’s a gate agent) he gets to fly whenever he wants if he can get a seat on a plane. So he made a buncha trips to see us and to, coincidentally, get to TPIR tapings.
I think I’ve been to something like fourteen tapings total. This was all some years ago, but I’m sure nothing has changed. It’s fun at first, but after six or eight I was getting tired of it. But he really really wanted to do it, and I thought he had a decent chance of getting chosen on the right day. It’s luck as much as anything else.
Finally, he showed up in town with four or five people he worked with. I must have gotten tickets ahead of time or something, so we stuff everybody into my mom’s car and head down there. I could have gotten a ticket for the carload, I bet, but we didn’t have much of a choice! I think it was being there with a group that finally got him picked, because he was all excited and there would be a group to go nuts if one of us got picked. You do a lot of waiting in line and then, on your way to go in, there’s a couple of production people who talk to you for a minute and choose who they’re going to pick. This time there was a new guy out there, and I got the sense that he really liked my friend.
So we go in and get settled and the show starts taping. It’s really impressive, they do it all in real time unless there’s a technical problem. It flies by! I’d have to dig up a tape to find out when he got called, but I do remember that after his name was announced and we all freaked, once he was gone I sort of fell back into my seat thinking, “My God, I never have to do this again unless I want to.” No insult at all to the show, of course, and given the chance now I’d love to go back. It was just that I’d been a few too many times.
He GOT UP ON STAGE (there’s a few seconds of me and his friends jumping up and down and screaming about it) and ended up with one of those piddly games where you just pick a price or something and he won! A carpet and a china cabinet.
So afterwards we wait around for him to sign tax papers and whatnot and a very happy carload leaves CBS. With a very, very happy and relieved driver.