Going to the Tonight Show

Last night, LAist decided that today was the day to do something only tourists do: go to a TV taping. And not just any taping — our destination was the Tonight Show. We don't particularly like Jay Leno, but it's something we've never done. So why not?

OK, we had a reason: the Flaming Lips will be on.

So we trucked out to Burbank and found the right gate and brazenly parked in the spot reserved for credit union members and ran in. The ticket booth is in the NBC gift shop, and we were briefly distracted by all the Law & Order swag — really, how many versions of that show are there now? — but focused and got to the counter. And: sadness. The tickets were all gone, sold out in 9 minutes flat. We cursed the early-rising Lips fans who'd beaten us to get in the line before 8am. But the ticket taker stopped us.

It wasn't the Flaming Lips the tickets went for. Tonight's guest is "American Idol" winner Taylor Hicks.

Curse you, early-rising Taylor Hicks fans!

We wager that a roomful of Taylor Hicks fans will be moderately mindblown by the Flaming Lips. But we're hoping Wayne Coyne will coax Taylor into a duet of "The Big Ol' Bug Is The New Baby Now" or "She Don't Use Jelly" and convert them all.