Say Hi to your Mother for me

On Thanksgiving morning I flew from Newark to Chicago and then on to Orange County. On the flight to Chicago I sat next to a friendly woman, probably about 50, who I could tell wanted to chat. Since I'd gotten up at 3:30 that morning about all I could think about was wanting to get some sleep and didn't really feel like talking. Usually in situations like this I'm very friendly to the person but try not to do anything that could keep a conversation going.

I'm not a particularly nervous flyer but I do have a hard time falling asleep on planes for some reason, so I took out my biography of Steve Martin that I've been reading. Long story short, talking the book out led to the woman making a comment about it, which then led to her telling me that she and her husband run a farm in New Jersey, just outside of New York City, and that their animals are often used for films and TV shows in the New York area. She said that whenever you see a llama on 'Saturday Night Live' (as you often do in the background, whenever Lorne Michaels is on camera, along with showgirls) that it is her llama. She said she also provided the animals for the Mark Wahlberg talks to animals skit (the donkey was hers) and that a lot of the Brian Fellow skits with Tracy Morgan used animals from her farm as well.

I can't say that I found it totally interesting but I thought it was kind of neat to meet her and talk to her, all the more so because she was such a nice person. I had no reason to believe she was lying because I'm not sure why you'd lie about something like that, and she had kind of a zookeeper, animal wrangler, outdoorsy look to her.

I did ask her the one question that popped into my mind as I was talking to her: How do you get a donkey into Rockefeller Center? She said the donkey fits into the back of her van and that they just drive in, park underneath the building, and the donkey goes up to the studio in the freight elevator.

Sounds good to me. Her destination was Chicago, and when she left I told her I'd keep an eye out for any animals on the show.