stuff to do in the city: martha! :: UPDATED!

in my experience, if you're coming to new york for a visit and you want to see some live tapings, do see jimmy fallon, do see david letterman, don't see nate berkus whatever you do, and please, pretty please, definitely see martha stewart. 

UPDATE: "why not nate berkus?" i didn't mean to give the wrong impression, so here is why:

when you go see a taping in new york city it generally goes like this: you get tickets, you arrive an hour early, they shuffle you in quickly, you sit down and get a quick run-down from a funny-enough comedian who tells you how to clap & when, then the show starts, you have fun, you might get a free something or other if you're lucky, you're done and on your way home an hour later. it's a very streamlined process. generally you can expect to spend 2.5 hours at a live taping. (martha's people even tell you in an email what time you can expect it to be over, because martha's people are classy.)

at the nate berkus show, you get there, stand in line for an hour, sit in a weird room for another hour, finally get into the studio, only to find out that what takes under an hour for others to tape will take nate two. i found this out only after i asked half the stage hands and finally the director. four hours is not really an acceptable amount of time to expect of a studio audience if your studio audience is nursing. so, for a visitor to the city who has a limited amount of time to see everything, it's just not a great use of your time. unless you really, really, REALLY love nate. nate is darling, and he does a fantastic job. his team could use some martha-action, however. 

(martha interrupted taping while we were there because one of her stage hands was talking too loudly off-set. she said in a very polite voice "excuse me, someone is talking," and the entire room went ICE COLD and DEADLY SILENT, because that woman has POWER.)

lastly, to my anonymous commenter: you're right. nate is both prettier and more substantive than me. he's also a lot taller. them's the breaks.