My three brothers and I participated in a first this last weekend: The four of us all did something together, as a group, without a parent or other relation with us. Just us guys. We went and saw a taping of the TV show "Friends". And we had a really amazingly good time.

It turns out that my brother Mickey somehow got to know Courteney Cox. They got to emailing one another and a few years ago she invited him to come see a taping of the show, as her guest (as opposed to "a member of the studio audience"). He got to sit right down at stage level, mere feet from the set of the Central Perk, and pretty much in on the filiming action. He's been going back every year for like 5 years now, and he usually takes three family members with him (they offer seating for four people total on the floor there by the stages). This year, he took his brothers.

We got all met up at a hotel in Burbank Thursday night and then around 2pm Friday, we drove the three-odd miles to the Warner Brothers lot. Once we got there we all had to show ID, in order to get these personalized passes. The passes were imprinted your name, the valid dates, who you were a guest of, etc. Like a backstage pass, I guess. So when we pulled up in Mickey's handicapped-equipped minivan they gave us some seriously weird looks and asked us all to bust out IDs. Well Mickey, being a quadraplegic in a wheelchair, doesn't have a driver's license. He has an ID card, but at Shawn's suggestion we gave the security guy Mickey's sheriff's badge. Mickey is an honest-to-goodness Special Deputy Sheriff of Maricopa County. No shit. The security guys searched the BMW in front of us, and were doing a real good job with the Lexus next to us, but waived us through. They didn't even look in the windows, much less open the doors. Good call on the badge-flashing, I thought.

We weedled our way through the soundstages to Stage 26 were Friends is filmed. Not knowing where to park, the security guy at the door radioed in and told us to park in Marta Kauffman's spot. Which was right next to the door, because she's a co-creator and producer of the show. Very surreal. We were getting seriously stared at by now. We had to ditch our cell phones before we could go in (we decided to leave them in the car since we were right there) and while we were digging them out, one security guy asked if we had any cameras. I said that there was one in the backpack attached to Mickey's chair. He said we should probably just leave it in the car "just in case". Cameras, he said, are strictly forbidden, and can get confiscated if they find them. So I dug Shawn's camera out, in a fairly flashy way, and put it in the glove box along with our phones. See, what nobody (not even Mickey) knew was that I had sthased two cameras in his backpack.

We all had to pass through a metal detector, but the metal of Mickey's chair would always set it off no matter what he had in his pack. So he could mule in a camera no sweat -- as long as they didn't search him. I was banking on the very popular and completely unreasonable subconscious reaction that many "healthy" people have about people who are in wheelchairs and who also exhibit some sort of deformity: that whatever they have is somehow contagious (or that the afflicted person is very fragile). It was a risk, sure, but I was banking that the security guys wouldn't want to get very close to Mickey or his chair. I was right, and we snuck in my new camera -- which was partially purchased just for this occasion.

Our new camera, as it happens, also takes video. And it'll take as much video as you have space for. So I purchased a 64MB SD card for stills and a 256MB card for video. I was taking another risk: that after filming I'd be seen as just another VIP type with a camera (I had seen digital pictures of Mickey's previous trips, so I knew that you were "allowed" to have cameras after the filming was over). I figured I could use the small card to get pics of Mickey with his friends (no pun intended) in the cast, and then sneak in the big card and just walk around with it while it shot video without anyone knowing. Because even though they don't mind still cameras (if you know the right people), they would get seriously pissed off about me taking video. But I decided that the chance to get Mickey interacting on the set was worth the risk. I mean, it's not like I plan on selling bootleg behind-the-scenes Friends videos or anything. It's all about Mickey, 100%.

There was another "special" group attending the shooting (a teenage girl with the Make-A-Wish Foundation), so we only had two seats down on the floor. Which meant that one person could hang with Mick and the other two had to slum it up in the seats. But we got assurances that we could switch off between takes. It was annoying, but it worked out. If anything, it made the rest of the audience kind of curious about us. But as long as one of us got down there to pimp out Mickey and make sure he was taken care of, it was fine by me. I'd have sat on the floor if need be.

It so happened that I was there with Mickey when Courteney Cox came over to say goodbye. This was towards the end of the night, after all he secnes were done. She apparently had to leave for a prior engagement, but wanted to tell Mickey that he should come back before filming is done (they have only seven episodes left to film). Mickey balked at first because Courteney's secretary said that he could come to this one taping and that's it. Courteney said that he could basically come to the rest of them if he wanted, but then Mick said he had preaching commitments and such. I wound up elbowing him and we worked it out that if Courteney will arrange for us to come, we'd work things out on our end for sure. We wound up talking for about 15 minutes, and she actually refused to say goodbye to him, and insisted that he has to come again to get a goodbye.

Courteney is a complete sweetheart, and it was nice seeing her and Mickey chat. In fact, it was interesting seeing her talk to him, because it threw into stark contrast the difference between him and the Make-A-Wish girl (and even the people in the audience, who are basically totally ignored). She was treated specially, sure, but Courteney was talking to Mickey as a friend. The difference was night and day. It was sort of mind-blowing once it occurred to me. It was too bad that she couldn't stay, though.

Right before the shooting was done (which took about nine hours; a long shoot, I understand), we all managed to get down on the floor with Mickey for the last take. Actually, we arranged that because just before the last take, Jennifer Aniston came over to say hi to Mickey (I'm serious: he's not just "a fan" -- these famous people really like him and go out of their way to hang out with him, like he's the star or something). When Trey (who was down with Mickey) introduced us all (recall that the cast completely ignores the audience, and she lookedreally surprised to see us), she said that we should all come down. So she told the security guy to let us down, and there we were. We hung out for about ten minutes, chatted, and took some pictures (she called one of the prop people over with a Polaroid camera). She even volunteered for a one-on-one picture with Shawn.

Seeing Mickey with Jennifer Aniston was prIceless. The boy was just agog. She's also an extremely nice person, and it was terribly sweet that she came over to say hi. She's also one of the most "touchy" people I've ever met in my life. When she gave Mickey a hug, she went digging in his chair to get her arms around him. That's not something most people do. And when she shook my hand, it turned into a fairly robust hug. Mind you I'm not complaining in the slightest, my personal space hang-ups notwithstanding.

After it was all over and they started herding the audience out, I arranged with the one security guy for all of us to hang out for a while and take some pictures. I had noticed an Asian gentleman photographing his family on the Central Perk set, so I figured we could bust out as well.

We mostly got pictures of us in the Joey's apartment set. The set dressing there was hilarious. Bottles of Jagermeister sitting next to baby formula on the coutner, and so forth. I managed to get a picture of the coffee table, which had condoms next to baby toys. I also got a pic of Mickey with Matt LeBlanc. Mickey has a somewhat stunned look on his face, but he was getting really tired. He was also starting to get sick, so that didn't help. But Matt told Mickey that he should come watch a taping of his spin-off show "Joey", so that was nice. Come to think of it, one of the writers (who is just in love with Mickey) is also a writer and producer of Joey, and he said he'd work it out so he could come as well. So the odds are good. We decided that it would be cool to see a taping where Courteney was guest starring.

I wound up getting some good movies to go with the pictures, but I can't let anyone see them. I put them up so that Mom could download them and keep them on Mickey's computer, but after that they are getting removed. That's at Mickey's request. Getting video was touch-and-go for a while, though. A few times I caught the head security guy giving me the stare, so I pretended to fiddle with buttons and whatnot. I would also occasionally switch to still picture mode and use the flash so that it looked like I was taking stills. I figured if caught I could always play the role of "new camera, owned by doofus" without having to stretch too much.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of details, but a lot went on that night. And this is already long enough.