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Die-Hard Fans Brave All to See Arsenio

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THE WASHINGTON POST

Mary Louisa Puckett looks gorgeous--no easy feat considering that she was up at 3 a.m. to be first in line to get tickets for “The Arsenio Hall Show.”

The neighborhood around Paramount’s Studio 29 isn’t exactly posh, but Puckett, who by 4 p.m. has left, shed her morning sweats for a purple dress, matching high heels and silver jewelry, and returned, determined to tough it out. After going home ticketless the day before, she wanted to be certain her relatives from Boston would get in to see the show.

“It’s like a big party,” says Puckett, a Southern California Gas employee. “It’s entertainment. It’s spontaneous.”

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Tickets are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis at 8 a.m., so Hall enthusiasts--of varying races, ages and professions line up before dawn each weekday for some of the 318 free tickets to the early evening taping of what they describe as the hottest, coolest, baddest talk show on television.

Arsenio Hall is fast and funny, hip and high style. Unlike Johnny, David, Pat and Joan, he concentrates on treating his studio audience to one good time. Not glued to a desk, he races up and down the aisles of the set, thanking folks for coming, complimenting them on their outfits, making them blush for understanding his innuendo, and most of all directing his opening monologue to them--not the TV cameras.

“Unlike most talk shows, on my show the audience in a sense becomes the co-host of a late night party,” Hall explains. “They are to me what Ed McMahon is to Johnny. I interact with them at the beginning of the show. And during the interviews, like Ed, the audience is silent.”

“My show is for the young, and the young at heart--late night’s forgotten demographic who selected someone not unlike themselves to hold office,” he continues. “I won’t be the chosen one forever, but for now, I am the audience’s elected official.”

These days--the program debuted more than a year ago--the people who come to the show are hard-core fans. And many have undertaken lengthy journeys: Second-timers Laurens Yahta, 18, Cindy Chen, 21, and first-timer Sari Kardawiria, 20, left Irvine at 4:30 a.m. Drew Anderson, Brent Kapicki and Chris Haigh, students at the University of Victoria in Canada, drove 31 hours straight to get here.

Dental hygienists Wendy Grondwal, 23, Monica Robinson, 25, and Robinson’s sister Melissa Brunk, 28, made the trip from Newport Beach, twice: first at 2:30 in the morning to get the coveted tickets, and again in the afternoon, after going back home to shower and change into glamorous, notice-me outfits and makeup.

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Because Hall understands that the audience--his people, his fans--can be a magic ingredient.

“What a great crowd,” he said to them one night last week after he stormed the bleacher-seated barricades for 10 hilarious minutes during his monologue.

“I’m only half the show. Thank you for being here.”

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