THURSDAY · March 17, 2005

After starting the day making preparations for my return trip to NYC, I made my way to Warner Brothers for their studio tour. It was quite a lot of fun. This is ultimately what a studio tour should be. It gave me a real feeling for what it's like to be in the studio. We were walking through the studios, onto and through sets, and into some of the different departments.

The tour started with a drive through the town facades.

Moving on, we actually walked into where the audience sits overlooking the set to " Joey ". Despite the fact that I don't watch the show, it was still pretty cool to see. From there we went to Yale. No, not really. We went to the Yale sets from " Gilmore Girls ". Now this is also a show that I've never watched, but was truly interesting to see nonetheless. Unlike the " Joey " set, we were able to walk around this one. We were in Rory's dorm room, the cafeteria, the school newspaper office, a classroom, a corridor and even an exterior set. We got to see the marks on the floors, and also some of the props up close. It was a true mini-class in the art of television production. Well worth the price of admission.

I wish I had pictures of this to show, but we weren't allowed to bring our cameras with us on the sets. Next we visited the still mostly intact " Friends " Central Perk set. It's weeks away from being sent to the Smithsonian, which is why it's still intact.

" Friends " fun fact: The set that " Joey " is being taped on is on the same stage that " Friends " was taped on. This was the same stage that " Full House " was taped on. Go figure.

We got to walk through some of the prop department, the metal department, the graphcis department, the media department and the modeling department. All this was cool, because you actually got to watch people build things. We saw them building the new sets for the remake of " The Poseidon Adventure ".

Finally, I did get a chance to see two celebrities during the trip. As we passed one of the offices, I got to see Dan Castallaneta leaving the office. Later on, on the way back to the tour building, we not only saw John Schneider walking by, but he welcomed us to Warner Brothers. In an effort to show my thanks, I refrained from any witty remarks that easily sprung to mind.

After the tour ended, we got to walk through the museum. It was relatively small, but had a number of cool artifacts. Again, we weren't allowed to use our cameras. I saw Dean Cain's SUPERMAN costume, with a Teri Hatcher-Lois Lane costume. A bunch of costumes from FRIENDS, Lynda Carter's WONDER WOMAN costume, a lot of costumes and props from HARRY POTTER, the spaceship, Lana's necklace, Clark's graduation ring and letterman's jacket from SMALLVILLE, a Buffy Costume, Spike Costume and crossbow from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, a set of costumes from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, a James Garner costume from the TV show MAVERICK, and various other pieces from other Warner Brothers shows. You could sense the history all over everything. It was incredible.

Before I sign off for the day, though, here are some pictures that I didn't get to talk about from yesterday's trip to UNIVERSAL:

We got to see a set built for Steven Spielberg's remake of " The War of the Worlds ". It was a plane crash set, which was quite incredible.

Well, that should take care of that. Time to hit the hey again. Until tomorrow...

JMR