Once Upon a Time in New York City

What luck!  Seldom do the planets align in such a way that the plans of mere mortals work out so perfectly. 

Last Christmas, my son Michael and his wife Jamie gave my wife and me tickets to see Hamilton.  We had a fairly long wait to collect our present; our tickets were for September 6.  But that gave us nine months to get excited about seeing the musical that everyone wants to see.

 

In the meantime, Michael and his juggling troupe, Playing by Air, received an invitation to appear on national television in the latest incarnation of The Gong Show.  They flew to Los Angeles in May to tape their appearance, but did not find out for several months when it would air.  Was it mere coincidence or the hand of Providence that scheduled it for September 7 when my wife and I would be in New York City to watch it with him?  In either case, it couldn’t have worked out better, because my wife and I would be in a hotel with cable television.  Like many millennials, my son doesn’t have a television.  He and his wife have computers, smart phones and even a large screen, but they use them to watch online entertainment, not broadcast television.

My wife and I were excited to host a Gong Show party in our hotel room.  We bought snacks and beverages and ordered pizza.  Michael and Jamie arrived around 7:00 PM, even though the show didn’t air until 10:00 PM.  It had taken us a little bit of time and effort to figure out the hotel television when we first arrived at the hotel.  So my wife insisted that there would be no channel surfing in the time leading up to the show.  She put on the ABC channel at 7:00 and announced that it would stay there until The Gong Show was over at 11:00 PM.  So we suffered through Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Battle of the Network Stars while waiting for the show we all wanted to see.

When a second Battle of the Network Stars came on at 9:00 PM, I was tempted to suggest that we switch to CNN to see what was happening with Hurricane Irma.  But my wife is usually right about these things – in fact, she is always right.  I didn’t want to be the guy who ruined the party if for any reason we weren’t able to get back to ABC.  So I held my tongue, and we continued to watch actors from shows we had never watched compete in contests we didn’t care about.

 

Then at 9:30, the screen suddenly went black.  We started furiously fiddling with the television controls, but couldn’t get anything.  I called the front desk.  Someone would be right up I was told.  Two or three minutes ticked by and nobody came.

 

“Go down to the front desk, and demand that they give us a room where the television is working,” my son shouted.  I started for the elevator, turned around and saw that my wife was coming with me. 

“Michael insisted that I go too,” she said.  I understood.  Hell hath no fury like a woman concerned that a hotel would deny her the opportunity to see her son on national television for the first time.  But before we could say a word, the guy behind the front desk informed us that the cable was out for the entire hotel.

With this information, I literally ran out the door and up the street to the hotel next door.  Perhaps they had a television in their lobby that no one was watching.  I ran into that hotel and desperately started looking for a television.  The only one I could find was in the bar.  A couple of surly looking guys were watching football.  Were they interested in the game, or might I convince them to switch to The Gong Show?  One of the guys cheered something that happened in the game.  A lost cause, I surmised.  My phone rang.

“We’re catching an Uber and going to Michael and Jamie’s.  We’ll try to figure out how to watch it on one of their computers.  Get back here,” my wife said.

I ran out of the hotel and back to the corner where they were waiting.  Within a minute or two, an Uber driver picked us up.  On the trip over, my wife and daughter-in-law were on their phones trying to get information that would allow us to connect to the show.  Time was running short.  We arrived at their apartment at 9:55.  My wife amazed us all by getting the show on my son’s laptop in a matter of minutes.  Then Jamie got it running on their large screen as the clock struck 10:00.  We had left all our snacks and drinks back at the hotel, but the party was on at their apartment.

We watched act after act, and Michael told us this was definitely the show that he was on.  However, sometimes they cut acts, and when 9:40 rolled around and his group hadn’t been on, Michael began to get worried that his act might have been cut.  This would have been pretty embarrassing as we had alerted hundreds of friends and family to watch the show.  At 9:45, they cut to commercial and we began to consider the possibility that his group would not appear.  We watched a commercial and then, the screen went to a test pattern that had the ABC logo and the message, “We’ll be right back.”

“This has happened before,” said Jamie.  “They must be taking a long commercial break, and they don’t show them all when you’re watching online.”

We waited, but the screen didn’t change.  We called our other son, Samuel, who was watching in Pittsburgh.  The commercials had just ended and the show was back on, he told us.  Our screen hadn’t changed.

“Oh my God!  We have the same internet service as the hotel,” Michael was on the verge of panic.

My wife did a quick search on her phone and discovered that the cable was out of service for most of the Borough of Queens.  It was 9:50.  The show was nearly over.  Again, we called Samuel in Pittsburgh.

“Can you Skype it to my phone?” Michael desperately asked his brother.  Samuel started streaming the images from his television to Michael’s cell phone while my wife texted Samuel directions for how to position his phone so we could see.

Tommy Maitland said, “And here’s the last act of our show, Playing by Air!”  And there was Michael with his juggling partners.  The four of us watched them on his cell phone screen. We could barely hear the audio.  But we could see that they did great, and the judges awarded them a perfect score – three 10s!  Unfortunately, the judges had given three other acts perfect scores and awarded the top prize to one of them.

Of course in this age of electronic devices, Michael was able to post a link on Facebook to a YouTube video of his Gong Show performance by the next morning.  My wife and I had recorded the show on our DVR and watched it when we arrived back in our home the next evening.

 

But there is something special about watching your son on a show in real time as it is being broadcast on network television, even if the planets have to align, albeit imperfectly, to make that happen.