Pledge Drive Show - Minute By Minute

4/2/05 Pledge Drive Shot by Shot

9:40 - Sandy picks me up Grace and Inner Lakeshore.

10:00 - Arrive at Navy Pier, four hours to showtime.

10:05 - In Justin's Office Shiow is editing the "Indiana Jones pledge sketch." We wrote these little sketches that are pledge-centric. In this scene I, as an Indiana Jones archetype fight off Dr. Nemeesis from Episode 34 (or whatever one had the Angry Volcano in it) and he saves himself by dialing 1-877-DONT-WAIT to pledge to CPR. After he does this Gretchen Helfrich, Steve Edwards, and Carlos Hernandez Gomez drop out of the sky in a helicopter and save him. This bit was written on Tuesday, Recorded on Wednesday and being edited Four hours prior to airtime. We get a good laugh because there's all kinds of new elements to it, like Steve Edwards and some of his improvised lines, also Carlos saying "Grab onto my fedora!"

10:20 - Justin, in full producer mode, sends us to the studio to rehearse and overrehearse the live spot we will be doing. He'll be in later.

10:35 - Sandy and I work on Ted Dinnerbansky Spot. Three times during the show Justin will toss off to me int he pledge room (LIVE!), and I will give an update and talk about the volunteers, and then I will put a "volunteer" on the air, the first time this is Kate as Zoey, the second time it's Mark Hanner as a guy who used to do the automated phone tree for SBC Ameritech and therefore makes all the people call in think they're on hold and they all hang up. The third time i get interrupted by Ted D. who offers up a matching challenge, for every 10 million dollars we raise in the next hour, he will give us a million, it's full of great rich guy jokes including the fact that Ted not only has the personal luxury Jet and Helicopter, but also an Akula Class Submarine, which is rich extravagance taken as far as possible.

11:00 - Zoey Dunkle, this is hilarious, Zoey is obsessed with Steve Edwards and has a blog called Eight-Forty-Date Me Steve Edwards, and as we rehearse she's frantically making entries in Blogger to make it look like Zoey's been doing it for a while. I wouldn't surprise me if Steve puts Zoey's Blog as an option under our Blogs, I would read Zoey's blog.

11:30 - Justin pops in, drops the schedule for th e night and says keep rehearsing.

11:35 - I rehearse my bit with Mark as the Voicemail guy who doesn't understand why he's getting lots of calls but no members, and then we listen into a call and he says "Doors open on the right at North & Clybourne...are you still there?...i'm sorry you're having trouble...goodbye..." This wraps into the final bit in which earth is going to crash into the sun so the crew has to engage not the hyper-drive (which we gave ritalin) not the warp drive (which is owned by Paramount) but the PLEDGE DRIVE! One last call to save the earth, but then Mark answers with the phone tree guy and we say damn, nobody there and the earth crashes into the sun.

12:00 - Since some of the characters will be answering the phones after they are introduced, we are walked through how to make someone a member.

12:30 - We rehearse again with Justin in the room, he adds some bits and the live bits are really rockin' now. It's going to be a great show.

1: 45 - Fifteen minutes until airtime. Pre-show nerves kick in, we all hit battle stations and get ready to give the audience the show our lives.

1:59 - Pope Dies

2:10 - We all go home.