John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show

It started a couple of Mondays ago, when I came across a solicitation online to request tickets for a free taping of John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show.

The Daily Show correspondent was filming episodes of his Comedy Central show over the weekend at a theater at New York University, and Paul and I both thought it sounded like fun. I requested tickets and almost immediately received an email confirming two passes for last Friday's evening taping.

Then, a couple of days later, I received an email from a coworker. A friend of hers works for the show's production company and could get us VIP tickets. Were we in? Yup.

VIP tickets meant very little other than a purple wristband and the ability to wait for the show's seating to begin inside the lobby rather than in an outside line with the huddled masses. And I do mean huddled. It was a bitterly cold night, snow still on the ground.

Taping two shows took roughly three hours, and no one was allowed to leave the theater the entire time, bathroom breaks not excepted. John Oliver's jokes were spot on, as expected, but the eight comedians he introduced were hit-or-miss. Bashing bankers in business suits for our economy's crash, for example, didn't strike me as funny for two reasons:

1. The jokes were too easy.
2. My husband is a banker in a business suit.

I'm not sure when the shows will air, and the website for John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show didn't help me out on that front. And don't bother asking me what comedians I saw; I'm not really sure of that either. Overall, however, it was a fun experience with a good bunch of coworkers at an excellent price.