Ricki-Palooza (Part III)

Landon and I decided that if she came near us after taping we would recreate that scene to the best of our ability. We finally got our chance. After taping wrapped she came down to shake our hands in the front row. As she approached, Landon and I prepared...When she was right in front of us we launched into it as loud as we could. We reached our peak at "OUR BOSOMS ARE OUR WEAPONS!" We had the whole thing, even the chest shaking. It was perfect - She completely lost her “talk show host” demeanor and cracked up. She looked at us like we were from another planet and said, "Oh my gosh. You guys were the ones that saw that movie!" Everyone was cracking up at this point, and after a little (ok, a lot...and it wasn't pretty.) begging she did it for us. Classic.

After taping, they took us back to the hotel. Since we had wasted our first day in the city, we headed out for a few key points. We headed down to Ground Zero. That was an experience yet to be equaled. We spent some time just walking around, talking to some other people visiting. After a walk around some of the memorials, we headed back uptown. We didn't really care to do all the tourist things. Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, blah blah blah. I did manage to see the Flat Iron Building, which has always been my favorite building in New York...and we definitely took advantage of the 3/$10 NYC t-shirts being sold everywhere as gifts for people at home.

We were scheduled to leave early the next morning, but we figured since we wasted one night we better make the best of this Friday night. At the hotel we got all primped and headed out for the subway station. I don’t remember where, exactly, we were supposed to go, but it was on or near Christopher St and the servers were drag queens. We got about halfway to the subway stop when it started pouring. We bought an umbrella and soldiered on...we were not to be deterred. Well, when we got to the platform we were told that the one train that would take us exactly where we needed to go had been closed for the weekend. The transit guy said something about a crosstown bus and I tuned out. We said screw it and headed back to the hotel, stopping along the way for pizza at Ray’s. I don’t remember if it was Famous Ray’s, Ray’s Original, or World-Famous Original Ray’s...but it sucked. No offense to people that eat New York pizza...but coming from Chicago, it was horrible. I’ll stick with my Chicago pizza...and a Chicago dog is still the only hot dog I will eat.

Anyway, we got back to the hotel and had a couple beers in the bar there before heading to bed. Early the next morning we went downstairs to meet our car. Guess what...no car. I had an itinerary from the producer that said we were supposed to be picked up at a certain time and a contact number for him. Well, about 20 minutes passed and no car showed up. I went inside to call the producer, and, of course, he's not in the office on Saturday. I tried to call the car service to no avail. We waited until literally the last minute and I finally haggled a cab driver down to $20 for the ride to JFK. We got to the airport JUST in time to make it through security. This time we didn't have the Ricki Lake Gods on our side, and it took a little longer. We flew back through St. Louis and into Indy. There was a car waiting for us in Indianapolis, but we bypassed him. We had called Mollie's father from St. Louis and he agreed to pick us up at the airport in Indy. We made it home and made a silent pact to pretty much never speak to each other about the fiasco that the trip had turned into.

The episode aired about a month later, and some of our friends had organized a 'screening party' at the local gay bar. Mollie and I were so over the experience by this point that we skipped the show and arrived just as the credits were rolling. (There were free drinks to be had, you know.)

I know some of you have commented and e-mailed about wanting pics and/or screen caps. Unfortunately, Ricki doesn't provide a video copy of your episode. One of our friends recorded it for us and gave us the video. Well, it hasn't survived the moves since then, and I don't have any record of it at all. If anyone out there might happen to know someone that works for Ricki Lake or the syndication company...I think enough time has passed that I might like to see it again.