Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Martha Experience

Yes. It's true. We got to see Martha. We were in the same room with Martha. I am not typically the star struck type at all. But seriously, it's Martha freakin' Stewart!! It was kind of surreal. We had to be at the studio at 8:30am. When we left the apartment at around 7:50 it was six, yes 6, degrees outside! But when we rounded the corner after getting off the train and I saw her name on the building I started getting giddy with excitement!!
This is my dorky-ness as we stood in line outside of the studio. Once we were inside the entire experience was so worth braving the cold!! The holding room was lovely, the wait was long but I didn't care, I was too excited. There was a funny warm up guy - if you watch the show you know who Joey is and he is more hilarious in person. They don't have a very large studio audience so we were very close to all the action.

I've got to back up a bit and explain the getting-on-the-show process. Tom applied for me and we heard back after about a week that we got the green light. When we accepted we received the "instructions". There was a pretty serious and lengthy dress code: a short list of dos: bright colors preferred, Martha likes a cheerful looking audience; and a loooong list of don'ts: don't wear black or gray, don't wear t-shirts, don't wear any patterns or prints, and more. Tom and I followed the directions to the T, I did not want to get kicked out of Martha for God's sake!

The studio was SO impressive. It was quite large, bigger than it seems on tv, unlike Letterman which was like a postage stamp in reality! She had a kitchen space, a craft space, and a gardening space, in addition to a HUGE test kitchen where several people were working like little elves throughout the show. There are about a bajillion lights and a bajillion and one people scurrying around the set the whole time. During the commercial people descend on Martha like ants on a dropped bit of sugar cookie! She gets lint rolled, lip glossed, hair placed, and powder puffed! And then they disappear only to swoop back in during the next break. It's nutty. I'm not sure how any lint happened to land on her while she sat discussing a Cleopatra biography with the author, but she gets the lint roller any way. It's crazy fascinating!!
So, here we are in our Martha approved ensemble. Tom sporting lovely lime green wool sweater and me in a peony pink cardy and hat (that I made!!!). It really was very fun. If you are a Martha fan I highly recommend visiting the crafty, culinary queen if you are ever in the city.