This second time around the pages let us go up into the mezzanine and go towards the ticket booth or window or whatever there was there which might give us the actual physical tickets and the wristbands we were told would guarantee admission to the final taping. Up one of the many three-step stairs popular in buildings constructed before anyone knew the wheelchair-bound liked doing things was a line. This line of people started at a desk and little portable ribbon-barrier device where several pages congregated, with two or three near the wall in each spot, stretching back from the desk to the steps, and then jumping across the hallway and to stretch back a couple dozen feet.
One page there asked, ``Are you here for Late Night?'' And I did, at least, I could take out my e-mail showing I had tickets reserved and he approved, and put me in line. And there we waited until, we were told, about 3:00 when tickets and wristbands would be given out. Until then we should wait there and not sit on the floor, due to fire code regulations. The pages in the 90s were also big about people not sitting on the ground floor of Rockefeller Center because of ``fire code regulations''.
As we waited my father started talking with the people behind us, who'd come from Cleveland and so we naturally had the summer trip last July to talk about, and we ended up attempting to take pictures of them and they of us. Their pictures of us on my camera were a foredoomed effort, because I like taking arty pictures and you have to know how to hold the camera to make them come out at all, and there's just no explaining it or swiftly getting my camera back to normal settings. Compounding things is the interior of Rockefeller center was designed in that early 30s Art Deco Happy style, which while pleasant is also made up of dark floors and walls with brass highlights and therefore is a lighting challenge, or nightmare, in the best of cases. The pictures of us were kind of blurry and unfocused, but I swore that was fine because that was more convenient. (They also took some pictures of us downstairs, later, by the mezzanine sign, and those turned out a bit better.)
Trivia: The first major league baseball player to have only one eye was Bill Irwin, who pitched for Cincinnati's American Association team in 1886. Source: Great Baseball Feats, Facts, and Firsts, David Nemec.
Currently Reading: Animals In Space: From Research Rockets To The Space Shuttle, Colin Burgess, Chris Dubbs.