Carson Daly Show & Advertising

The homeless men are practicing advertising. They twirl the corrugated, laminated signs with pomp and circumstance.

“We Buy Ugly Homes For Cash!”

“Shaw’s Going Out of Business Sale! All Wigs 75% Off!”

Advertising pays minimum wage, and so does seat filling at NBC. As I sat with my roommate in the North Hollywood park, killing time for two hours, I wondered if the same people who were offering “Free Yum Yum Donuts with Every 12oz Coffee Purchased”, were sitting next to me at Carson Daly yesterday. I don’t know why I went to the taping of the show. Wait, I do know, it paid $7.50 an hour and when you’re suffering from workers block (that is mental blockage from doing any sort of work), you’ll do just about anything to get out of the house. The ad I responded to asked that we wear casual business attire, polo shirts, button ups, no ripped jeans, and defiantly no sandals. Based upon my advanced mathematical calculations, mainly some cheap addition, I was able to determine that 10% of the seat fillers lined up at Soundstage 9 on the northwest corner of Bob Hope and Warner, were wearing sandals. Additionally 18% of the line were wearing shirts with logos, 7% were wearing ripped jeans, 22% of them smelled awful and 36% of them were not sane. Waiting in line, inside a security area, having gone through a metal detector, would normally not be the place to sell drugs, drink beer, and shout at the scantily dressed woman at the head of the line (they had obviously been there for a few hours, waiting for those precious front row seats, in hopes that they would be noticed by Carson or one of the 15 people who watch the show).

But they were all crazy. And they smelled. One woman was toting six plastic bags full of clothes. Her hair was dreaded up and she was wearing a black windbreaker. It was 85 degrees outside. Several people were missing teeth and had random shaved patches on the sides of their heads. I didn’t ask questions. I was there to collect my $7.50 an hour and get the hell out of dodge. I clapped like a madman, cheered when prompted, and laughed when prodded with the branding iron.

The MC shouted, “This is late night television. The jokes are always funny.”

And I laughed.

The past few days have been tedious. Los Angeles has me spinning my wheels. Too much stimulation. Did I really just say that? You can’t take time off. This city moves, not in the way that New York moves, at a breakneck speed, but rather with a slow deliberate pace. Everyone says they are busy all the time. What are they actually doing? Everywhere I look the coffee shops are full of young people talking away, sipping mocha crappa lattes, reading scripts behind sunglasses that look like they were stolen from the U2 Zoo Tour of ’95. People say that to provide the illusion that they are actually important, that they are actually in a meeting, busy making deals, authorizing mergers, writing scripts. Everyone is working on a script. Everyone.

I’m leaving for tour on Monday. Flying LAX to Edmonton, then Edmonton to Calgary, then Calgary to Vancouver, then Vancouver to Las Vegas, then Las Vegas to London, then London to Paris, Paris to London, London to LAX, LAX to Phoenix, and then finally Phoenix to LAX, arriving back home two weeks later. I’m packing a vial of Vicodin. That should do it. One night in Paris, c’mon?

Yeah, I know.