Before the shit hit the fan last week Jul and I took a trip out to NYC to see the Daily Show.

We stayed at a wonderful hotel call the Roger Smith which is owned by Phoebe and her family, a friend of ours from Brown. The hotel is really something special. Each room is furnished differently and has really nice touches like stocked bookshelves and beautiful one-of-a-kind art. Phoebe’s dad is an artist so a lot of the art was done by him. On the first floor they have a art gallery and a wonderful little bar and restaurant. The hotel is in a great location in mid-town, about four blocks from Grand Central. It is a great break from the hotel chains — I highly recommend it for anybody visiting NYC.

The Daily Show was just as great as you might expect. Sadly they didn’t let you take pictures so I don’t have any good pictures of the studio. To be honest, it looks just like it does on TV. (Shocking, I know.) I risked my life by taking this picture but it is kind of blurry.

What was interesting about the show was it is taped in about 30 minutes. I think for some reason I expected multiple hours where they did retakes. If you have a VIP pass (which we did) you are guaranteed a seat, otherwise you need to make sure you get their earlier.

Once everybody is seated a warm up comic comes out and makes fun of you. This is entertaining unless he picks on you. Then John comes out and talks to you for a bit and makes fun of himself. He forgot his shoes at home so he was wearing these big hiking boots. It was a great look with a suit. (He is even shorter in person than he looks.) As you might expect it was really funny to watch Rob Corddry and Ed Helms ”on location” standing about four feet from John. After the show was over we sprinted four blocks to try to make the Colbert Report but didn’t make it in time.

The Daily show was amazing but we all know the real reason I wanted to go to NYC.