Ellen in the Park

So when my friend got tickets to go see Ellen in the Park, she invited me to go along. We had a great time, and if you ever get a chance to go see Ellen, you should go. There was just a different atmosphere than The Tonight Show. It really felt like a party. I've also found it really interesting to watch people at these things, and I've learned that people will go crazy if 1) they think they'll be on TV or 2) they might get a T-shirt.

My friend and I arrived late because we had other commitments that day, which meant that when we got there, they put us in the picnic area, or what we called the riff-raff section. Basically we were in the lawn area behind Tony's DJ setup and the sound technician and a large tree. We could barely see the stage, but they had a big screen, and at least we could see that, sort of. In the build-up to the taping, they wanted to get everyone all excited, so there was this page back in our section throwing out T-shirts. The idea was you had to dance to get a T-shirt, but there weren't many people back there and this guy had three large boxes full of shirts. My friend caught one immediately and I tried to dance for a T-shirt, but if you had any doubts, I proved that I'm definitely a white girl. So I gave up on the dancing, but I realized that everytime he walked back to get more T-shirts a few people got some just by asking nicely, which is what I did and it worked!

And then suddenly I noticed that lots of people were getting up and leaving, which didn't make sense because the show hadn't started and certainly they couldn't be fed up already. So we went to find out why and turns out they were opening up the preferred seating to those of us who had previously been relegated to the riff-raff area. We were just lucky enough to get seats in the eighth row or somewhere around there. We had a great view and at the beginning of the show, Ellen threw out a football, which my friend caught. If only I were a bigger fan of Kanye West, it might have been that much cooler. Stomp was pretty cool though, but unfortunately they didn't get to perform as much as Kanye. I'm starting to feel so old whenever I go to these things. But what I thought was really funny is how hard the people in our new seating area worked for a T-shirt. They danced their butts off, but they didn't throw out half as many T-shirts as they had in the back. And all of this makes me think that Ellen is pretty swell because when we were stuck in the overflow area, we had a better chance of getting a T-shirt. Even if I'm not much of a Kanye fan, it was a lot of fun seeing Ellen in person and he wasn't so bad himself. They kept us all pretty entertained with giant beach balls and roaming cameras. Wherever that camera went, people would dance like there was no tomorrow. I have to admit (if you haven't already noticed reading my blog), that like all those crazy dancers, I also hope to get caught on camera, but I wasn't in a very good spot, and I probably didn't act giddy enough, so it looks like once again I've missed my chance to be on TV, but I'm starting to get used to that fact.

I'm not sure what will be included in the show that they actually air, but the funniest moment was when Ellen asked Kanye what he did for Mother's Day. Up until that point, I don't think any of us knew when this show would be airing, but we all knew that Mother's Day was still a few days away and not yesterday. There was this confused intake of breath from the audience and Kanye also looked confused, but he pulled it out and gave a decent answer.