merylinabarrel

Last night after a dinner of Chinese food and Subway, Colin and I hopped a bus and headed over to the Navy Pier. We originally weren't going to go there because it's all touristy, but earlier in the afternoon he had declared that because it was such a nice day, we should just go and walk around outside.

So we went and we walked around and there was the big ferris wheel and everything and it was all very nice. Then we headed inside where all the shopping is and we were going down a flight of stairs when I see one of those navigation boards that has things like "Haagen Datz" and "Build-A-Bear" with little arrows pointing you in the direction of each store. At the bottom of the list, I happened to catch where it said "WBEZ" (As in, "From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.") and there was a little arrow pointing to the right.

"Double-you-bee... Oh my god! Oh my god, Colin! Why does that say WBEZ? Are their offices here?"
"I don't know."
"Wait, why would they have their office in the Navy Pier? Doesn't that seem weird?"
"I don't know. Kinda."
"Well we have to go! Oh my god, what if their offices are here!"

So we followed the pier back that way and after a few minutes Colin declared that there was nothing back there and then led me out a side door and we ended up walking back past the ferris wheel and around to the front of the Navy Pier.

I didn't understand what his problem was and I kept asking him what was going on. "I don't understand, why can't we go and follow the WBEZ signs?" I said. "I just want to see where their office and stuff is, if it's even there. It'll only take a few minutes, I mean, unless there's something else that we have to do now or something."

"Okay, okay" he said. "We'll go back and follow the signs."

So we make a one-eighty and get to the back of the pier and there's this little driveway where people can have their cars valet parked and through the doors I saw the outside of a section of the building where all the windows had these "Chicago Public Radio" stickers on them.

"Oh my god! That's it! That's the fucking radio station!"
"Let's see if we can go around to the other side."

We walked out the doors and avoided getting hit by the belligerent taxi drivers and went to the front door of WBEZ. All the lights were off inside and the door was locked, but I didn't care because all I wanted to do was look at the building and be like, "Yep, this is where it all goes down." But then Colin started pressing the little doorbell-intercom thing over and over.

"What the hell are you doing? Stop it, they're closed! I don't actually want to go in there or anything." But he kept pressing it and miraculously the door unlocked and he held it open for me.

"What are you doing!? They're closed! We can't go wandering around in there!" But he marched me in and ushered me into the elevator.

"Seriously- stop it! What the hell is wrong with you!? We can't just go riding the elevator and walking around everywhere! This place is fucking closed!"

Colin paused for a moment, then pressed "3" for the third floor and smiled. "Let's go explore."

"WHAT!?"

The doors opened and there was a small little lobby area and a middle-aged woman sitting at a desk.

"Jesus, Colin, there are people here. We have to go. We have to go. Oh Jesus, we have to get out of here."

I stood there petrified that we were about to be yelled at, but he walked right up to her, "Hi, I'm Colin Morris. We're here for This American Life. I talked to Todd Bachman..." and then he got too quiet for me to hear. The woman told us to sit down and that Todd Bachman (Todd Bachman!) would be out to get us in a minute.

"What the hell is going on? Seriously, what's happening? What are we doing here? Todd Bachman? How is... What is... AHHH!"

We were led to another waiting room and there were a handful of middle-aged people there too and then a tall guy with puffy hair and big square glasses walked in briskly with a big whiteboard and went into one of the offices.

It was Ira fucking Glass.

Then Colin finally told me, "We're going to sit in on a live broadcast of This American Life." And that's when I felt my eyes welling up. He had called the station weeks ago and set this all up for me. What a guy.

Colin and the middle-aged folk and I are led into the studio (the goddamned This American Life STUDIO!) and it's really small, but there are chairs around the edges and there's Ira Glass at this L-shaped desk with these big tape machines and two computers and this big board of all those little slide-y adjusting buttons. So we sat and after a few minutes the show started and most of it is on tape so we don't have to worry about making noise, but Ira said, "When I say 'standby' then you all have to shut the hell up." The feed that was actually playing on the radio was coming through the speakers on the wall and because it was pre-taped, we were hearing Ira Glass' voice coming from those speakers and then also hearing him talk right there in front of us. It was a total mindfuck. Sorry, I know I'm probably saying "fuck" too much.

During all the taped parts, the studio was freaking crazy. The show was being thrown together kind-of last minute it seemed, and they hadn't even decided if they were going to have a third act or just a longer version of the second one. Ira kept getting on the phone and telling an apparently new kid named Chris to bounce sound from this and record it onto that and burn a disc and get me a DAT of the other one. And then they were trying to figure out what the quote from Tory Malatia would be and how they'd set it up. Ira was also stressing out because one of the DAT machines was broken and wouldn't play the tape he needed and then they didn't have a song to fit between two of the stories and Chris brought a list of all these songs and Ira dismissed them all them for not fitting. When another girl came in and asked if the song situation is all straightened out, he said no and that, "He had some Paul Simon thing. You can't play Paul Simon on public radio."

The show ended in a mistake when a mini-disc didn't play track it was supposed to, but when the mic went off, everybody sat in silence for about ten seconds with their mouths covered before Jane (I think), one of the staff members, broke out laughing and then everybody else did too.

Then, before anybody could get up or I could say, "Hey, dude, you're awesome," to Ira Glass, a woman named Wendy came in from the pledge room (it's pledge week at the station, naturally) and she and Ira sat down for a half-hour pledge-push where he played the "Why should they even pledge, Wendy?" role with all this sarcasm and she was the straightwoman who kept giving out the number. At one point Ira launched into a story about why public radio is important and started talking about one of the stories they'd done last year. After a few sentences he paused and said, "Okay, I'm not finishing this story until someone calls. I need to hear that phone ring before I go any further," and we sat in silence until we heard the ringing from the next room and he continued.

I have to tell you, kids, Ira Glass gives one hell of a pledge drive spiel. Colin and I were covering our mouths and turning toward the wall to avoid our laughter being picked up by the mic. When they went off the air again at 8:30, all of us in the studio clapped and one of the women went over to give Ira a high-five. After a minute, all the other observers were getting up and putting their coats on and Ira was talking to them a bit and it was obvious that he knew all of them personally from somewhere or other. When they filed out, his attention turned to Colin and me.

"Um, who are you?" he said.
"Oh, hi. Um, I'm Meryl Swiatek," I said and shook his hand. "I'm from Ohio, I'm just visiting Chicago. I'm a big fan of the show."
"I'm Colin Morris, I'm a student at DePaul. I'm her buddy."
"Are you guys, like, pledge drive people? Is that how you got in here?"
"No," Colin said. "Um, I talked to Todd Bachman awhile ago and told him that my friend was coming in from out of town and she was a big This American Life fan and asked if it was possible to see the show if you guys did it live."
"Oh, what a sweet guy," Ira said, though he was becoming increasingly distracted by his computer screen.
"Yeah, *pause* I actually had a question," Colin said, "Do you guys have people in here every week or do you not allow people back?"
"No, we've never had someone misbehave in the studio to the point that they've been banned," Ira said.
"Ah, well then maybe I will do this again," Colin said.
"Yeah, good luck with that," Ira said, still kind of distracted.

As outrageously cool as I found Ira Glass, he really wasn't that friendly, at least to us people sitting in. He was really cool and fun with the staff and called people "honey" and stuff, but was really indifferent to the observers. Colin pointed out that he was under all this stress from that show going badly and I said maybe.

So we were heading out the door and right before we left, I suddenly remembered and turned.
"Oh, hey, congratulations on 300," I said because I, of course, knew that the episode we'd just heard broadcast was their 300th.
"Oh, thank you," Ira said.

Then we walked back through the series of waiting rooms, rode the elevator down and went out to the street outside the station where I collapsed against Colin and cried.