I went to the Ellen show!

So at the request of my fan club, I have to buckle down and write about my experience last Saturday.  My fans are relentless!  Emailing me and calling me at all hours…….they’re very high maintenance. 

I drove 3.5 hours to a Chicago suburb, picked up my buddy Thea, and the next day we drove an hour into the city to see the Ellen Degeneres show because I was lucky enough to score tickets.  Overall, it was sort of disappointing.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love Ellen.  She cracks me up.  And maybe things were done differently since it was in a different city from where they usually film it, or maybe because it’s not normally outside.  I don’t know.  But I doubt that I would do it again. 

Unfortunately, it was rainy and windy and cold.  Now, I was prepared for rain.  They told us it was an outdoor venue and I knew the weather forecast called for rain.  Thea bought us rain ponchos, we took our lunch and magazines with us prepared to wait a long time after being seated.  We knew we had to be there at 11 and the show didn’t start taping until 2.  But even with a ticket we had to stand in a line (that snaked around an entire block!) outside for 3 hours.  THEN we got seated.  That part sucked.  It was just brutal on my back.  See that line of people in the photo below?  That’s half of the line of people with regular tickets.  I was standing on the other side of the block when I took the photo with my cell phone.  What you can’t see here is that there was another line just as long of people with VIP tickets that went in before us so they’re not in the photo!  What you also can’t see is that next to this line of people you see here, standing alongside them to their left is another line of people who are just on standby in case there’s an available ticket after everyone is seated who has tickets.  And that’s not even counting the people who were lining Michigan Avenue to watch the show.  It was crazy! 

Robin Williams was the guest, and he was pretty funny, even during commercials.  But it seemed like he only talked to Ellen for 15 minutes and then it was over!  I guess with all the commercial breaks on TV it makes it feel longer.  During commercials the DJ played music and everybody danced.  That part was fun.  It was also fun to see Ellen give away a car.  They played a game called Cram In a Car or something like that.  They actually came over during one of the commercials and pulled 17 people out of the audience to cram into the car and those people were sitting in the 3 rows in front of me and Thea and in the row with us.  When they cleared those people out, Thea & I were the only ones sitting there!  It was pretty funny watching this couple from the audience try to get everybody in the car including themselves and Ellen and Robin Williams.  But they managed it and then Ellen gave them the car.  I thought the lady might have a heart attack she was so excited! 

A couple of American Idol kids were there too, but I don’t watch the show so didn’t know who they were and frankly didn’t think they were all that great.  I myself can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but whatever.  Oprah sent pizza over from her favorite pizza place in Chicago, so that was nice.  They threw a lot of T-shirts into the audience as giveaways, but Thea and I could never catch one cause they always got thrown to the middle it seemed like and we were sitting more toward the side.  Oh well, after the show was over we stood in ANOTHER line and bought ourselves a T-shirt. 

So, I love you Ellen but I think next time I stand in line like that it’s gonna be for Oprah!