The Nights Who Say Geek versus MPT

For the third week in a row we have left our role playing game characters in game limbo. That’s okay as we have done other fun stuff, except for that week when some one was sick so we cancelled. As they say… sick happens (GROAN). Last week we watched George Romero’s 1978 horror classic, Dawn of the Dead. I can’t think of a better film to watch when playing a horror role-playing game where you are trying to survive a zombie hoard! Last night we headed off to the Maryland Public Television studios (MPT) to be audience members for a show called Improving Your Memory and supporting our game master and mentalist extraordinaire, Mike Hughes who was the opening act for the show.

The opportunity to go to the MPT TV Studios seemed like photography karma striking because this week’s Theme Thursday challenge is Television. What better place to go for television theme photos than a TV studio! I figured I could shot some images while there. I arrived at 6:30, checked in (they had no problem with me having my camera in the building) and started noshing on the free eats. It was rapidly apparent that photo karma was not going to strike at MPT. The areas we were allowed in were pretty boring photographically speaking. Beige hallways and a big conference room with two giant screen TVs. I was thinking that once in the actual studio I could shot some images. Well I sat and noshed on a turkey club wrap while waiting to find out if we would be selected for the audience. I thought because we were invited we were shoe ins, but over a hundred people were invited to an event with only 77 spots for the audience and as fate would have it we weren’t selected. Members were seemingly selected at random and the folks selected were mostly senior citizens. Seems they wanted a much older crowd for the show Improving Your Memory. My thought was that they don't need an entire audience of old people because it's far too late for them, as most have already lost their memory and have little chance of improving it, much less getting it back! Hey, I kid, I kid. The best folks are old folks. Am I right? Well this turned out to be a blessing in disguise though. Once selected for the audience you were locked in for the taping of the entire show, which they said could take over two hours! Mike Hughes was only performing for about fifteen minutes and we were only there to see and support Mike. As it tuns out we did get to see his act. They put a live feed into our conference room on two giant screen TVs. With Mike’s performance over we could go home and weren’t stuck having to sit in a TV studio smelling like Ben Gay and listening to some doctor guy we didn’t know drone on and on for two hours. So we ate some free food, didn't get selected for the audience, and watched Mike Hughes on a big screen TV. For our troubles we received a nice parting gift of an MPT tote bag, with a cook book that I gave to Jenne, a couple of MPT pens and a pencil, and bunch of health booklets for old people it (file in oval filing cabinet). I was home by 8:30, changed into sweats and worked my photography karma at home with a beer and The Simpsons.