I feel it is my duty and privilege to immortalize the events of last Friday afternoon in journalistic fashion.

The setting: The Convention Center here in Denver.
The cast: Myself, my love, Pat Sajak, Vanna White, and a live studio audience.
The event: Wheel of Fortune television taping.

We received free general admission tickets in the mail several weeks ago. My better half noticed they were coming to Denver and pounced on the opportunity. According to Pat, the last time they were in Denver for a taping was 1997, and they had to cut out early because of a snowstorm. On Friday, however, we were blessed with nothing but fair Spring weather.

Overall I don't have too many negative things to report. The worst was having to wait in a very long slow-moving line without even holding tickets that guaranteed a seat. Until we reached the security checkpoint we were worried about even getting inside since the line seemed to stretch on to infinity. The security was another con. They had three metal detector things to pass through, which was obviously not enough to handle the demand. Not only that, but we've all been to the airport and seen how well the general humanity deals with such things. Things went generally smooth after that point, but they placed us, literally, in the second-to-last row of seats in the house.

From our vantage point we had a crystal clear view of the entire stage, albeit a distant view. Luckily they had a couple large monitors in place to zoom in on the action a little. After they cram everybody in, Charlie the announcer comes out to chat a bit and give everyone directions and rules and such. They're pretty strict about cell phones, getting up during the middle of a show, and audience members yelping out the solutions to the puzzles. I was actually surprised to see that almost everybody seemed to follow those directions, particularly the cell phone bit. They did have a problem with people getting up to leave right before the last take of the show, right after they complete the bonus round. It's like trying to herd cats, though, keeping a couple thousand people in their seats for 45 minutes straight.

A few other things of note... They have people that actually coach the contestants on how to spin the wheel and clap. Of course they do this to the audience as well. If you ever pay close attention to the show, you'll notice they clap at EVERYTHING. With a taping session of three shows, this gets old almost immediately. The only exception was the last show in which the lady racked up like $93,000, when it was really exciting.

Of course they also have a couple moments where they get shots of the audience flipping out over something that happened two minutes ago or for some footage they'll throw in somewhere else at their leisure. When $93,000 lady won the bonus round, they filmed the reaction of family and audience after the fact, because her kids had looks of complete confusion on their faces the first time.

Pat Sajak is a riot. That guy is seriously funny to watch because he's so goofy. He wandered into the audience a couple times during the "commercials" just to shoot the shit with people. He really seems like some dude you'd meet on the street who happens to have a very sharp wit. I suspect he's very approachable and down-to-earth in person. I imagine he's also very tolerant of strange contestants after so many years on the job (people who want to "buy" consonants or vowels when they have no money).

Overall it was a very fun afternoon. It was interesting, to say the least, but I just wish we had better seats. I think we'd definitely attend another one if given the chance.

For the record... The three shows we saw were part of their Great Outdoors week and will air 05/01, 05/02, and 05/03. You definitely won't see us on television, but who knows, it might be of interest to someone out there!