On March 8th, 2007, I appeared on The Daily Show in a segment called "Aclockalypse Now." The segment was making fun of the "controversy" that the media spun up regarding the change in Daylight Savings Time.
For some years now, I have been writing computer security course material and doing other work for the SANS Institute. Additionally, I am one of the Handlers at the Internet Storm Center. On Jan. 31st, one of my fellow Handlers, Deb Hale, wrote an article on the change in daylight savings time.
After some of the press stories about the havoc that is bound to happen, The Daily Show found this article and contacted Deb, who in turn, contacted the Handlers in general for volunteers. Some were otherwise busy; others were apprehensive about being on The Daily Show (and not without cause considering how some interviewees are made to look). I was one of the only ones whose sense of vanity outweighed the apprehension and was also available at the time.
The Daily Show then got in touch with me and asked me some questions about the change. After a few phone calls, they flew me out to New York City on Monday, March 5th. Tuesday afternoon we filmed my portion of that segment. All in all, the 40ish seconds of airtime that made the segment translated into about 3 hours of taping and associated work.
The way The Daily Show operates is somewhat different than the news. For instance, they won't really let you know where they are going until they're running tape. They like getting "first reactions" for their segment. In this case, it wasn't a big deal because I ended up being of the same mind that they were about the DST controversy… it was mostly media hype over little more than minor inconveniences for us IT guys.
I did not know until midway through the taping that they sent a camera crew to Cleveland to get some video of Flavor Flav for the same segment. That made the appearance that much more awesome. Not necessarily because I'm a big Flavor Flav fan, mostly because I thought it was pretty damn funny.
All in all, it was a very fun experience. They paid my expenses to get out there and I got to be interviewed for The Daily Show. The only downside was that I need to seriously work on my Dick Cheney posture. You can see the clip below.
Yes, he is holding a Thinkpad and calling Dell tech support. :)
Article comments
1 - Elvira Black
John, you be the Man! That was hysterical! Loved it!!! Congrats!
PS--My Mac made it though the (almost) End of Days, but it's still about five minutes ahead--so maybe next time you get flown out here, you can come fix it, 'k? Thanks!
2 - Michael J. West
You seemed so much less angry on TV than I always imagine you being on Blogcritics! :-)
Tell us about the part with the hilariously obvious dialogue splicing. Obviously some of those phrases you actually said ("red with blood," for example); was any of that stuff that they coached you to say, or what? How did that work?
3 - John Bambenek
The original line was "It will not be hell on earth, the streets won't run red with blood, our nukes won't launch on Tehran". Dan responded "can you say that more dramatically, except this time don't use the word 'not'".
The line that the cut up was "It will be hell on earth, the streets will run red with blood, our nukes will launch on Tehran", so they actually spliced the spoof line instead of the real line. :)
4 - Eric Berlin
Finally had a chance to watch this John, really hilarious stuff! And you did a great job and luckily didn't get skewered like so many Daily Show interviewees often do.
5 - Dawn
Well, Flav was good, but John was WAY funnier. Everyone needs a straight man, and man, you are straight!
6 - Doug Moore
AWESOME!!
7 - EmptySet
Similar to an earlier question, can you comment some more on how the TDS interview process worked? e.g. How many more questions did they ask you that were not included? How long did the real interview last? Do they tell you anything about what the final product might look like? Or do they simply leave you in the dark like us? That kind of stuff… I've always been curious what parts of TDS and Colbert were real, prompted, or just spliced. Oh, and great job!
8 - John Bambenek
All in all, I think there were about 25-30 questions. They had to be filmed twice because they only had one camera to begin with so they had to film the entire set from one direction, than the other.
I had a basic idea how it was going to turn out, I knew that they were making fun of the media hype and that I was the "voice of reason". He practiced the "Holy F***" for about 5 minutes, so I knew that was going to be in there.
I didn't know they were going to cut up that one part, like I said above I actually said the line about how it was going to be horrible and terrible because I was queued to do it. I obviously knew about the background because being in front of a green screen only means one thing. :)
I actually thought the editing was funnier than where I thought they were going.
All in all the got about 90 minutes worth of tape, the other 90 minutes was set-up, changing stuff around, technical problems, Samantha Bee wanting to get out of her office, and then running off to the airport.
9 - Tan The Man
Very funny. Great stuff. That's cool how they paid your expenses. Did you get to meet Jon?
10 - John Bambenek
Nope, didn't get to meet Jon Stewart... I was there when he was rehearsing Tuesday's show.
11 - Zedd
This is beyond funny. I watched it several times and laughed every time. You were really brave to agree. I think my vanity would probably over rule as well. You were awesome! Flava Flav was alright. I guess he added to it by taking the ridiculousness of it to the enth degree, but your part was hilarious because you represented us the viewer. The Indian tech support dealy was funny too.
If your ever invited to anything like that again. Do it!! I'll start a fan club and interview imbalanced hot girls for potential stalkers.
12 - tim
Daylight Savings? Ah. I remember that stuff.
13 - devolute
You were overshadowed by Flavor Flav, but only just ;)
14 - EmptySet
Thanks for the extra behind-the-scenes info. Pretty interesting.