Scoring a Ticket to a 'Last Week Tonight' Taping and Wading Through 18 Miles of Books

Today started with a tour of the Lincoln Center campus, which includes the Juilliard School, the Metropolitan Opera House, the David H. Koch Theater (New York City Ballet), and David Geffen Hall (New York Philharmonic Orchestra).

My tour guide was excellent ---- knowledgeable, passionate, and funny in equal measure. Every guided tour I’ve taken in NYC thus far has been superb!

The tour started at David Geffen Hall, the home of the New York Philharmonic. But first, we talked briefly in front of the Revson Fountain, whose jets can shoot water up to 40 feet (it also lights up at night). This plaza is where many of the scenes in “West Side Story” were filmed — the Lincoln Center site used to be in the heart of the worst neighborhood in NYC!

Then it was on to the Philharmonic space, which is gorgeous (here it is in action).

There was a white screen on the stage, which our guide explained was for blind auditions. The orchestra has dramatically increased the number of women in its ranks in the past few years, in part due to the blind audition process. The screen drops down, a carpet is rolled out, and the women kick off their heels so the judges can’t tell the applicant's gender from their footsteps.

Our next step was Alice Tully Hall inside the Juilliard Building, home of the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra.

My guide said this concert hall has the best sound of any in NYC — there isn’t a bad seat in the house ( there are just under 1,100 of them).

Outside on the plaza is a sculpture by Henry Moore.

I saw students moving in to the Juilliard dorms and toting large Bed, Bath, & Beyond bags — I was like, ‘Hey, that was me a month ago!’

The Vivian Beaumont Theater, where I’ll be seeing Broadway’s “My Fair Lady” with Laura Benanti Wednesday evening, is also nearby.

Our guide shared a fun story about a 7 a.m. tour he woke up early to give a few months back for a very special guest — Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones! Richards said he was the best tour guide he’d ever had and sent him a gift a few weeks later — a Picasso etching, which our guide has appraised and discovered was worth $20,000! That sets the bar high for tips.

From there, it was on to the Metropolitan Opera House, where I saw Misty Copeland dance in the American Ballet Theatre’s production of “Jane Eyre” a few weeks ago. Fun fact about the grand staircase steps: They’re so short because they're meant to accommodate fashionable ladies in heels and long gowns. The designers brought in Jackie Kennedy as a tester, and based the height of each step on the length of her stride.

Across the way is the Koch Theater, home to the New York City Ballet. The atrium ceiling is 18-karat gold, the largest gold ceiling in the country. I’d love to see a show if I were here longer!

Next up: The really wild part of today’s adventures — A “Last Week Tonight” taping! I’d tried unsuccessfully to score free tickets in the digital lottery for weeks, and today was the second-to-last possible Sunday I could go while I'm in New York (the show is on hiatus until July 28). So, I went the standby line route.

I knew this was a long shot: When people cancel, “LWT” fills their slots with other entrants from the digital lottery, many of whom live in New York and can come to a taping at the last minute. BUT you can try lining up on West 57th Street below the “LWT” awning before the show in the hope that someone cancels and they can’t get another lottery entrant to fill the slot.

Sadly, John Oliver doesn’t get a big marquee like Colbert has at the Ed Sullivan theater. It's just a small tented awning outside the CBS Studios.

I was the first person in line at 2:45 p.m. (the show tapes at 7, and people with tickets arrive at 5:30). If you get a postcard from me in the next few days, this is where it was written! I got rained on twice throughout the afternoon, but I survived. The heat index was 103 degrees today, so it actually felt nice!

The second person arrived around 3:30 p.m., and the line grew after that. He was a finance intern from the Czech Republic, and said his friend got a ticket to last Sunday's taping by waiting in the standby line (though his friend said only four or five people from the standby line got tickets). I had to try, though — I love John Oliver and “LWT”!

At around 5:15 p.m., a “LWT” staffer came out to take our names, emails, and where we were from. There were about 10 people in line at this point. He said he couldn’t promise anything, but since it was such a nice day, they’d probably get some cancellations. Hooray!

We were told to come back at 5:45 p.m. Then we checked in again and re-formed the line in the same order. Finally, at around 6:15 p.m., I got good news — I was in! It felt a lot like waiting to get into a bar (and the burly staffer even looked like a bouncer in his dark sunglasses and black t-shirt and pants).

Once inside the studio, I could see why so few people get tickets — the set only seats 250, and every seat is super close to Oliver's desk! Since each season of “LWT” has around 30 episodes, that means only around 7,500 people each year get to see a taping.

John came out at 7 and did a Q&A for 15 minutes before the show taped from 7:15 -- 7:45 p.m. (yes, he does it all in one take!). He’s even funnier unscripted than he is on TV, and he has a gift for hilarious off-the-cuff responses. It’s uncanny how much he looks exactly like the person I’d been watching on TV for years. His nose is even more prominent in person.

As for the taping itself, you can tell they spend all week fine-tuning the episode. John talks so fast and the graphics (though they aren’t really there) are all seamless on the TV screens above you in the studio. Tonight’s episode was about e-commerce and how Amazon exploits their workers.

Some more details you don’t catch on TV: In person, you miss some of what Oliver says because he talks so fast and doesn’t wait for the audience's laughter to die down after a big joke before continuing. So he’ll be two sentences in to his next point before you can hear him again.

Also, it was strange to watch him prepare his next chuckle or reaction three seconds before his cue, while the clip playing on screen was still serious — it was a clue that there was a joke coming, but his reaction was out of sync with what we were seeing because the camera hadn’t gone back to him yet.

He also adjusts his tie and mini-coughs nearly every time he's not on camera (because, again, he talks so fast).

Overall, this was so much fun! The episode flew by, and now I need to watch it again on YouTube.

After the taping, I visited the famous Strand Bookstore near my apartment in the East Village. 18 miles of books! I wandered around the levels for nearly an hour (yep, another store that’s so big you need a map of it).

In today’s food adventures: Spicy shrimp wontons from Vanessa’s Dumpling House on 14th Street in the East Village. They have chicken, shrimp, spinach, and mushrooms inside, and are most reminiscent of shrimp mixed with strong onions. In other words, yum!

Also, I ate all the adjectives on this Mulberry & Vine plate (it really does taste like “healthy” incarnate):

-Quinoa with corn & smoky lime vinaigrette (+ red bell pepper, onion, cilantro, cumin, sea salt, coriander, & chipotle pepper)

-Thai Chili Noodles (zucchini, carrots, green onion, yellow squash, cilantro, thai basil, thai chili, red wine vinegar, olive oil, & sea salt)

-Mediterranean braised freebird chicken (w/ lemon, capers, chili flakes, garlic, onions, oregano, parsley, & sea salt)

Tomorrow evening I’m taking a Broadway ghost tour, which I’m looking forward to.

Finally, in unrelated news, if you’re in Indy, you might’ve seen my five-page Living section cover story in the Indy Star today. It'll be my last Star story to run in print. It’s neat that even though I’m in New York, I’m still in Indy!