Thursday, October 18, 2012

A Bounce With Greatness

My Great Big American Adventure 6.

Most of Tuesday was spend trying to write the article on my visit to the Daily Show, but I couldn't because my mind was still set on English and it had to be written in Dutch. I kept thinking of great opening lines, but they were in English. At one point I wanted to open the article with: "Don't do a look behind the scenes," they wrote. "We've seen that a thousand times already. And don't do a piece about how the Daily Show is a bigger source of information to young people than the normal news channels." Which was suppose to be my way of getting that information in anyway. But I just couldn't do that in Dutch, so I skipped it. Maybe I should write the whole thing angain in English for you guys. It would probably be a better artcle.

Anway, the visit was great and here were tons of stories invoved, but you'll have to with until the article comes out. One thing I couldn't include in the article, was the fact I did get to interview Jon Stewart after all. Not before the show, of course. You have to be God to get an appointment with Stewart and even he has to send the holy ghost to negotiate. I did see him when I got a tour of the offices, or at least I saw the back of his head behind a cubicle in a glass conference room. "Is that Jon Stewart," I whispered. "Yes, he is," the press ladies replied and immediately pulled me away before he could turn around and see me. After that, while we were standing in the hallway a five foot two guy came towards us and the girls immediately jumped aside. "Hi ladies," he pitched in that high voice he uses whenever he is angry. I sort of felt bad I did not wear a skirt.

After my interview with Steve Bodow I was seated in the audience, front row, very good seats. We had the best view of everyone in the audience of the cameras. Before the show Jon (I can call him Jon) does a question and aswer session with the audince to show he can really improvise to questions he has been asked two hundred times before. I thought I'd throw him a curveball and raised me hand. He pointed to me and said 'yes'. The audience went quiet and rehearsed the question in my head. They had just announced that later in the week President Obama would visit and I thought I'd be clever: "When are you getting Romney?" I said. He put his hands up and said: "Sorry, I am not answering foreigners. The audience exploded. "No, I'll tell you. I have been trying to get Romney to get on the show forever. My people were in touch with his people. I even wrote him a letter. Well, it wasn't really a letter - I cut out some letters out of a newspaper and pasted them on a piece of paper." Again, the audience showed their apreciation. "So I guess what he is saying is - and that's really out of character for a Mormon - he is saying 'fuck that'." If that joke was improvised I'll improvise a hat and eat that.

Todays picture - on the floor of the conference room where the first writers' meeting takes place every day, I found the secret behind their creativity.


In the evening I cooked Dutch food for Craig and Clizia and Michael and his wife at Craig's place. I had chosen to do a trio of Dutch mashed potato dishes. We usually have one at the time, but I really wanted to show what huge effects can be reached with this one principle of adding vegetables and meat to mashed potatoes. I had a carrot and onion mash with fish stick that were fired in butter, one with leeks, egg and bacon and one with i=undercooked belgian andives with smoked pork sausage. Of course I had made to much, or at least I think that's the reason so much was left over.




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