A while ago I was talking to some friends and it came out how I am obsessed with Regis Philbin… Not in a stalker way! Just in an admiration sort of way. I watched Live! back when it was Kathy-Lee and I watched as Kelly Ripa was selected as her replacement. I’m a fan, but I watched it mostly for Regis. His story telling is unparalleled, it’s a gift to be able to do that well. So in honour of #flashbackfriday I decided to recall my 27th birthday trip to New York City to see Regis live on his show!
To get tickets you send a postcard in advance requesting your day, and then you wait… And wait! We ended up booking our trip hoping we got tickets because it took so long. Obviously, I was ecstatic when they arrived in the mail a few days prior to our departure. It was really going to happen, I was going to see Regis in his final month of the show! He was set to retire in late November and my birthday is October 25, so I was cutting it close. My mother came with me, she had never been to NYC before so it was a real treat. I had gone a few years earlier for another birthday, but that’s the thing with New York; you can go twenty times and not see it all. To be honest, I don’t remember it all step by step, it was a blur. We stayed 3 days and 2 nights at The Salisbury Hotel, which is quite close to Central Park. We visited Rockefeller Center, the “imagine” stone marker, Time’s Square, Bergdorf Goodman and we took a tour bus of lower Manhattan. It was a bit rushed and obviously there is a ton you could do, but we had a blast. It was the first birthday after my dad passed, and I desperately wanted it to be memorable for any other reason. The day of the show was hurry up and wait, we bought nearly every item from the gift shop before being ushered into the studio. It was smaller then I thought it would be and we almost didn’t even get to sit beside each other. Our guest for the day was Tea Leoni and it was pretty standard as far as a show goes. I almost spoke to him but froze and then lost my chance. I was really disappointed by that and when he shook the hand of the person who was in my original seat! It was everything I had hoped for though and a couple weeks later I went to his book signing where I shook his hand and spoke actual sentences with him! Moral of the story?
You win some and you lose some, then sometimes (if your lucky) you get a second chance!

October 24-26, 2011