I almost run right into a woman wrapped in a kelly green bathrobe and flawless makeup. An electronic audience of monitors and cameras ignores my every move, thank goodness, because I proceed to knock over a potted plant on a platform with a prize package worth thousands of dollars. Mic-ed up men and women whirl around a narrow hallway like second-hand sweeps on chronometers, pivoting in 270-degree spins around cars parked mirror-to-mirror and dormant game-show contests waiting to be wheeled on stage. Inside Studio 33, the commotion bears down with its own air pressure. I forcibly pull my hand down from an instinctive clutch at invisible pearls. I step instead through the glass doors of the star’s entrance named for Carol Burnett and fight being star-struck. A ribbon of super-excited people hoots and hollers as it funnels through the studio’s main entrance. I’m actually just a guy having my own personal dream car week, and it’s about to get better. Maybe a fill-in on “Ellen”? A warm body for one of the “NCIS” shows? It flickers across his eyes I must be someone he doesn’t recognize, a cardinal sin in L.A. I whisk myself in through the raised arm of the security booth at CBS Television City, Studio 33, and the attendant grins at my top-down ruby-red Bentley Continental GT.
