Finally, we made our way to the GH office and met our intern, Dale, who would become our best friend for the day. He first took us outside and did his whole intern speech about the beginnings of soap operas...yadayadayada...and then he took us back inside. As we got on the elevator that would take us to the dressing rooms, The Saint was our voice, knowing we were too scared and excited to ask anything (he really earned his nickname again that day). Dale asked if we had any favorites and we told him we were big Liz and Lucky fans. He said "Oh Jonathan and Becky....I don't think they are here today." Our hearts sank for a moment knowing that we would not meet them that day, but it didn't take long for that to change. We were just so excited to actually be there! As we walked down the halls we were constantly passing framed posters and huge pictures on the walls of promotions we had never seen. There were great pics with Ned and Lois, Robin and Stone...and then there was this fabulous picture of our Fab Four that had obviously been taken from the "Mod Squad Christmas photo day" but was different from any we'd seen before. Dale told us "They just put that one up this week. It's brand new." What Vic and I wouldn't have given for a copy of that! Dale gave us copies of that day's call sheet, (that's a list of what scenes are being done that day - the order, who's in them, what set they are on, etc.) We had just missed Tony Geary/Brad Maule/Jackie Zeman/Patricia Healy (Tammy)/Genie Francis/the LuLu twins/Nancy Lee Graham and maybe one other. They had all been in the am shoot. The afternoon shoot was a Q. day. While we were reading the call sheet, Stuart Damon passed by. Wow is that man tall! We overheard him say he had walking pneumonia, though, so we chose to leave him alone. Then we heard the familiar sound of "Emily's" laugh from the makeup room, and the next thing you know John Ingle (Edward) is walking up to us. It was almost too much to take in at a single moment! John Ingle was my favorite. With a big grin he introduced himself and chatted with us for several minutes. The Saint was our resident photographer who realized we were too excited to remember to take pictures. He asked if he could take our picture with John, who was extremely gracious about it. We hung out for several minutes waiting for Amber Tamblyn (Emily) to come out of the makeup room. Finally we decided to walk around the dressing rooms. It was quiet, not a very busy day, but it was fun to see where the cast hung out - when they were there. As we were stopped in front of Nancy Lee Graham’s dressing room, Amber walked up. She needed Dale to take care of something for her, but when she realized we were on a tour she stopped to talk with us. She was very gracious as well and cute as can be. You had no trouble remembering she was a regular 15-year-old girl, although she very mature and outspoken. She pointed to the door of Nancy's dressing room, which was covered in baby pictures cut out from different magazines, and said, "Isn't this nuts?! That's what people do with their time around here - find and plaster picture's of babies on Nancy's door. I don't even know why!" The Saint, again, was watching out for us and asked if we could get a picture with her. After that we headed upstairs to watch them begin taping. Dale said he was told to let us stay as long as we wanted. Of course we told him we would run home to get our sleeping bags and would have coffee and donuts waiting for him in the morning. He laughed!

THE TAPINGS
We went back to the sound stage, where the sets we had been whisked by earlier in the
day were located. Sarah Brown (Carly) and Billy Warlock (A.J.) were rehearsing a scene in the Q's living room. Amber and John were to tape a scene in the Q's foyer at the same time. Even though they were on two different sets, the scenes intertwined so they taped them at the same time. I thought that was really interesting, and different from any set I've ever been on. These were scenes from the Friday March 19th episode, according to the call sheet, starting out with Edward spying on Carly and AJ's fight and Em sneaking up on him from behind. This scene took a long time to get done because either Billy messed up or John missed his cue or Amber messed up and it all had to be done over...both scenes...from the top...But it was fascinating to watch. Sarah and Billy were cracking me up. While the cameras were on John and Amber on the other set, they would pretend to be boxing. Once, Sarah spent the time during the other scene just running in circles around the couch. But, when the camera was back on them, she snapped right into character. During a break John came over to us and said with a smile, "It's not as glamorous as it looks, is it?" I said, "It looks like a lot of work, but you all look like you are having so much fun!" He agreed that they were and explained how they had been rehearsing on their own at different times and basically explained what the actors went through with a scene before taping day. I remember reading once that John used to teach acting, and I could see a lot of that coming through as he talked to me. He was just unbelievably nice! He acted like having us there was a treat to HIM! Sarah Brown really impressed Vickie and me too. She is a real pro—very sharp. She would try different things in each take so it never looked stiff. Sometimes she would be drinking water during the scene, or chewing ice. One take she would do really animated and in the next she'd be more subdued. She was just very good. Later on in the day she had a scene by herself that was suppose to pick up from a previous scene that ended with Carly calling a cab. She wanted to know exactly how many pages would have passed in the script between this scene and the last. When they told her it was quite a few she argued that she couldn't just start the scene getting off the phone like only a second had passed since she'd called the cab. She said if they were just coming back from a commercial, fine, but if time had passed in other stories it would look stupid, like she'd been standing with the phone to her ear for 20 minutes. They finally compromised that she would be putting lipstick on in the mirror as if she'd been primping all that time. We were really impressed with her attention to continuity.

We were on the set for a very long time. The atmosphere was casual and we were allowed to ask any question about how things are done. Vickie says she will always remember she had a poppy seed muffin and a glass of lemonade on the set ...and she says it's the best poppy seed muffin she ever had because it was on the GH set. :) I just remember that I was too excited to eat anything at all that day so I was afraid my stomach would growl loudly and ruin a take! Dale and The Saint kept asking us if we wanted to see anything else. Dale said, "You guys can stay on set all afternoon if you want, but if you get board we can see other stuff." Vickie and I would NEVER have gotten board, but we decided we didn't want to miss anything either. We went over to the PC set for awhile. I don't watch that show very often and I was disappointed to learn that Lynn Herring (Lucy), Kin Shriner (Scotty), and Jon Lindstrom (Kevin) had all been in the am shoot there as well. We saw the actors who play Serena, Karen, Joe, and Frank. The little girl who plays Serena was walking around putting her finger to her lips during tapings as if to tell everyone you can't talk while the cameras are rolling. It was very cute!

We went back to the GH set after a short while. They were doing some quick scenes in the Q. living room but were clearing out the foyer set. Soon, they were setting up tables, bringing in flowers, and then they brought in the biggest cake I ever saw in my life! Dale didn't know what was going on either and we didn't think much about it at first. We went down to the other end where they were setting up to tape a scene in Tammy's apartment. Vickie and I got all excited because we had to sit in the set across from this one, which meant we were sitting at Kelly's! First, I just had to sit and twirl in the counter seats. We picked up a menu and I was surprised to see how detailed it was. Let me tell you, I don't know how they stay in business because everything listed was so cheap! We finally got ourselves settled to watch them get ready to tape and Vickie turned to me to say, "Boo, we're at table 6!" I realized she was right. We were at the table by the door that Liz has called table 6. We both started giggling. Thankfully The Saint was occupying Dale with "guy talk" at table 5. We waited for a few minutes and then began to notice a huge mass of people had come from all over to surround the tables on the Q. set. We were all intrigued, including Dale, so we wandered back down to see what was going on. A woman called everyone's attention and started to speak, and we suddenly realized it was Wendy Riche! Then it hit us - this was the first day back after they won the SOD Awards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The cake and punch were a celebration for winning SOD...THAT WE ALL VOTED ON!!!!!! We couldn't believe it! We stepped back and listened to Wendy talk to the crew and we felt so over whelmed because we were the only non-staff members who were listening to her. She told them how they were a team and everyone had been a part of the victory. If she could have pulled each one on stage and thanked them personally, she would have...etc. We didn't want to intrude so we tried to stay back and just watched. The next thing you know, though, John Ingle is pulling us up front and center to get some cake! So, there we were, standing in the middle of the Q foyer next to John Ingle/Leslie Charleston/Stuart Damon and a huge crew getting served celebratory cake by Wendy Riche herself THAT WE HELPED PUT THERE!!! GO FIGURE! It was a very overwhelming and exciting experience. We may not have gotten to meet JJ and Becky, but we were the only fans who got to be a part of the SOD Awards victory party! Vickie kept saying all day, "I can't believe we got SOD Award cake!"
 

They weren't going to be doing any more filming for awhile, so I asked Dale if they did the editing on site and if we might watch them for awhile. Dale seemed surprised that we'd be interested in that, but it turned out to be a wonderful treat. The editors, you could tell, loved to share their knowledge. One guy was especially eager. He kept saying, "if you guys aren't board yet I'll show you how we..." We ended up watching him edited almost all the episode that aired this past Friday. He was very funny about the show too. He had little nicknames for the characters, like Eddie for Edward. And he was cracking up that Jason was loading a gun while talking on the phone to his grandmother. (It was cool to watch how they edited that phone call, btw.) He also showed us a little of how Steve Burton and Maurice Bernard can't get through a take without cracking up, regardless of what kind of scene it is. When he asked who our favorites were we said something about being suckers for the "kids" and we just loved Lucky and Liz. I sort of expected him to tease us a bit about that, but he said very seriously, "What's not to love? They are two incredible actors!" We also found out, as we all suspected, that the preview man is not the editing man. They hire a company to do the "previously, on General Hospital" and the "Next time on General Hospital" clips. So, that's why sometimes we see things on the clips that aren't in the show. The funniest thing was the editor's reaction to a Nick and Kat kissing scene... "Ew!" We agreed that we didn't like the Nick and Kat pairing either. He told us that he was told not to cut any of the kissing, though, because TPTB in New York don't think there is enough kissing. Can you believe that?! So, the next time you are sitting there fast-forwarding a long "face-sucking" scene, don't blame the editors.

There are monitors set up in every room showing what is being taped on set at that moment. While we were with the editor they were doing a kissing scene between Alan and Monica on the set of Tammy's apartment. I didn't really think I wanted to be on set for that. :). However, we were waiting to watch the screen tests with Maurice and the seven finalists for the roll of Sonny's new love interest, Hannah. After a good hour and a half in the editing bay, though, we decided to wait back on set for Maurice to show up. At this time it was very quiet down there, so Vickie and I got a real chance to "play" on the different sets. We especially walked all over the Spencer's living room, looking out at the porch and closely examining the pictures on the mantle. We wandered around Kelly's some more and Vickie was seriously tempted to take a menu or even a fork...but she didn't. We contented ourselves with going to the "outside" area of Kelly's and, when no one was looking, collecting some snow. Yes, our obsession has led us to secretly shove fake snow from the Kelly's restaurant set into our pockets!

It turned out that the screen tests were made a closed set. Not even Dale could watch. He was almost as disappointed as we were. Earlier in the day we had asked about getting an old script to take home with us and Dale said no problem. After we'd gotten to know him a little better, I asked if that script might, possibly be an L&L day. :). About 6:00 we went back down to the green room, next to the dressing rooms, to wait while Dale got us some scripts. As we were waiting, Maurice came out of his dressing room and started to talk to some woman. He was in just jeans and a T shirt and I couldn't get over how he looked so much younger—and even cuter—than he does on screen!!! He walked by, but a few minutes later he came back and walked in the green room. I could tell he was a little frazzled, probably nervous for the screen tests. He walked in with the same woman, I think he was looking for a place to read lines, and said, "Oh, there are people in here." I said, "Oh, we can go somewhere else." He said, "No, no, that's fine. It's no problem," and went back to his dressing room. So, I didn't actually get to MEET Maurice, but we spoke! We also saw several of the girls who were reading for the part of Hannah and, I'm sorry to say, they all looked like Brenda clones to me. Then Dale came back with the scripts and, it was an L&L day, but it wasn't an old one! He gave us two copies of scripts for the episode that will air in March 25! It hadn't even been taped yet! Vickie and I tore into that script so fast we didn't even feel the let down of our tour ending. On the drive back I had to give The Saint directions so I made Vickie read out loud. I hope you guys won't hate us, but Vickie and I agreed not to tell you what happens that day. The way news spreads, the whole episode would be all over the Internet by morning and we wouldn't want to get our pal, Dale, busted. We will, however, tell you after it airs if anything was different. Maybe this will give us an idea of how much Tony Geary really changes his lines.

There is no doubt in our minds if JJ and Becky had been there, we would have met them...but now we have a goal at SSW4! Overall, the day was the best...the best there is!!!
 

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