Now hold on just a minute before you get upset at me. I know I haven’t really had anything to say for over a week now. And I know that you’ve all been sitting anxiously, unsure of what to do with yourselves, constantly refreshing this page and waiting for a new post to appear. Or something like that.

It hasn’t been my fault. The last week has been crazy, to say the least. April rolls in, and all of a sudden things are due, projects are assigned, and things just get very busy. BUT NOT TO FEAR, I have some exciting(?) news to share with you: I recently took a trip to watch a taping of The Price is Right.

Yep, The Price is Right. As in, the game show that elderly people watch with the same level of enthusiasm that college girls display when watching Gossip Girl.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not exactly the show’s most dedicated viewer. Last time I watched it, Bob Barker was still puttering around on stage. Now he has been replaced by Drew Carey, who is funny but lacks Bob’s charm and senility. Nonetheless, I decided to go since the whole trip was totally free and was organized by our trusty ICLA RA Team™, an elite group of super-students who plan awesome events for ICLAers almost every week.

Anyway, what I didn’t realize is that attending a taping is nearly a day-long process. We showed up at CBS Studios at 9am and waited around for FOUR HOURS before the taping began. Four hours is a long time to be waiting outside of a studio. But it’s okay, we passed the time by making fun of the horrifically dressed tourists. (I kid you not, this one guy had a handlebar mustache and wore bright purple elastic jogging pants and an ill-fitting homemade t-shirt with an iron-on image. Another long-haired guy was dressed in leather biking gear and looked suspiciously like Tommy Lee Jones’ evil twin).

The producers do a brief 30-second interview of each audience member to decide who will appear on the show. The screening process seems like an exact science and they do it very quickly. I am pretty sure I blew my chances of getting on the show when I told them that I had no idea what I was doing. I’m not sure why I said it, but that’s just how it happened. Amy, on the other hand, talked about her homemade macaroni and cheese during the interview, which made me hungry but also made me feel better about my answer.

Of the sixteen Ithaca College students there, we were convinced that at least one of us would be picked to play. But nobody was. And neither was Georgia, the old woman who sat at the front and was celebrating her 97th birthday. So I occupied myself with wearing a name tag, shivering in the cold studio, and forcing applause for the incredibly annoying intern who was charged with keeping the crowd excited.

This isn’t to say the experience was bad. It was actually a lot of fun to see how shows like this are made and to watch the people freak out in person as they learn they are winning things like a trip to Japan and a plasma screen TV. (The people who lost got a bird bath as a consolation prize, which I think is just cruel. You might as well just give them twenty bucks and call it a day). It was a unique experience and definitely worth trying, even if you have to wait for four hours to see it. Plus, there’s always a chance of winning a bird bath!

This weekend I am planning a trip to the San Francisco area, where I will inevitably be up to some mildly amusing shenanigans which I can discuss in a future blog post. Until then, try not to cry yourself to sleep at night. This isn’t goodbye.