HMSFox

Susan Fox · @HMSFox

26th Oct 2010 from Twitlonger

My blog on Carnegie Hall--Part I, Carnegie

First off, a word of warning—please take this in the (mostly) tongue-in-cheek spirit in which it is intended. So, if anyone’s interested in my story of Carnegie Hall and meeting Craig Ferguson at a backstage meet-n-greet for 30 seconds, please read on. But for the true starting point of my Craig Ferguson story, we need to backtrack a bit…

The odyssey to see Craig Ferguson started, oddly enough, with an incredibly crappy day at work (this all becomes relevant, I promise…). Listening to an executive drone on and on about a very stressful situation, out of utter meeting frustration I started surfing the internet and the idea popped into my head to look for Carnegie tickets. I needed a vacation desperately, I had time off to use or lose, so what the hell why not? Little did I know...

Now I am a relative RSA newbie, I will readily admit. At the point I got the tickets, I’d only been watching Craig for a few months. I’d loved The Drew Carey Show, then lost Craig when that wound down. After my divorce I didn’t watch late night TV, so I completely missed the “He’s getting the Late Late Show” news. But this February I found the autobiography at Target. I was re-hooked--I read in it one sitting. (And I recently re-read it, taking more time to absorb it.) So when my schedule opened up I started watching, thinking “oh this’ll be a lark.”

Lark my ass—I was blown away. The man makes my stomach hurt laughing almost every night. It quickly became appointment TV—I DVR, so it’s the first thing I watch when I get home from work. Home, walk dog, Craig. I have tons of other stuff backlogged on the DVR because of this.

But what exactly is it that drew me in, and made me such an adamant RSA-er? I can trace it back to one moment—the day I YouTubed the “Look Out There’s a Monster Coming” lipsync, from the show that introduced Geoff.

That was some brilliant insanity, right there. It’s brilliant on its own terms. But for me there’s something else, something I realized when I was trying to pin down what, exactly, so draws me to Craig’s comedy. Go re-watch it sometime, and see what happens when he goes back from refrain to the verses. There’s this look in his eyes, of “Oh my God I can’t believe this is happening, this is so fucking awesome, I actually have a freaking robot!” It’s sheer delirious, deranged-in-the-good-way, joy.

And that is what we had at Carnegie Hall.

Craig said later at the meet-up (more on this in a bit) that he thought the earlier show was tighter. And he’s right, it was, and that show was spectacular in its own right. But (and no offense meant to those who only saw the 2pm) the 7pm was the better show. Here’s the thing (with all due apologies to Randy :-).

Yes, there were a few more word flubs and backtracking to pick up the train of thought in the 7pm show. But the 7pm show was magic. He only said “made myself laugh” once, but numerous times we got Craig giggling. Real laughs. The audience was having such a good time and its laughs were so big, it was infectious. We fed Craig and Craig absorbed it and gave it right back, in an ever-higher soaring feedback cycle.

At the end of the show, he said it had taken him 30 years to get back to New York—I suppose meaning his first trip there when he was 14 give or take, which was a happy experience for him. And return he did—it was triumphant. Craig took Carnegie Hall by storm. But standing there center stage, arms open, taking in the standing ovation, I saw the same look. I’d seen it throughout the night, and I saw it there again.

Memories will fade--I wish they wouldn’t, or I had a photographic memory. I know over time I’ll forget most of the show. But I won’t forget that look, or the feel of that energy.

Sheer joy.

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