Oh, Ellen.

I went and saw this lovely lady this week! I requested tickets months ago, and finally about 5 weeks ago I received a call saying that I now had "stand-by" tickets. SO EXCITING. My friend, Katie, also signed up and got a call saying that she had tickets too, so we went 2 days in a row!

The first day--Tuesday--was super fun. Me and 3 of my best girlfriends went together. We got there at 8:30 in the morning to get our number. The way that it works is this--the show gives away a certain amount of VIP tickets. This includes friends of Ellen, the staff, camera crew, etc. After those tickets have been given away, they give away guaranteed seats. These people have come to the show before but were seated in the "Riff-Raff" room because they didn't have room for them in the actual audience. After all of those tickets are used up, there are usually about 20-30 stand-by people that actually get in. (I knew you were wondering how it all worked :) ) Anyway, so if you have stand-by tickets, the earlier you get there, the better. Hence, 8:30am. We got our number, and took off for the next 5 hours. We went to breakfast, got lost in Ikea, window shopped at the mall, drove around looking for a fro-yo place for a half hour (apparently they don't like frozen yogurt in Burbank), then returned!

We were so nervous that we wouldn't get into the show. We were some of the last people that we let in--they had to split us up--but we got in! And I got to sit on the very front row! So fun:) I didn't know that I would be that excited when Ellen walked out..but I seriously could feel my heart beating. Is that ridiculous?? I was about 10 feet away from her, and we'll just say that I didn't have to force out the screams that were happening when the doors opened and she walked on stage. She was hilarious, the guests were fun (Minnie Driver, Bret Michaels (ha), Perez Hilton-sick, and the flag man). The flag man in particular was freaking amazing. You can see him here.

Every year to help raise money for breast cancer research, Ellen does this thing where she "dunks" one of the celebrity guests that she has on the show that day. She throws softballs until she hits the red button which then releases the guest into the giant water tank. Well, the water tank was pretty much right behind me on the set. The two girls to my left were moved immediately by the staff so that they wouldn't be hit by the softballs. I was standing there dancing--naturally, when I saw Ellen pointing at me and talking to her staff. I thought for a second that I was getting picked to play a game or something, but sadly, not the case. BUT I did point to myself and say, me? to Ellen, and she said "I'm really sorry I just don't want to hit you! They will bring you right back though. Sorry!" Little does she know that I was so excited she said something to me that I would have gladly taken a black eye from her. But the staff moved me out of the studio for the moment. My friends saw me leaving and thought I had gotten chosen to get dunked myself..that would have been awesome! I was totally star struck and was so excited. The whole show was so much fun, but she didn't give away anything! I've never seen a show where the audience didn't at least get something except for this one. So bummed. I had high hopes for the next days giveaways.

For Wednesday's show, it was just me and my friend, Katie. Our husbands were supposed to come with us, but dental school trumped us once again. Oh well. We had another plan for this show though. We were informed by the snack-cart man on Tuesday, that if you don't get in for the show you came for that day, you get to come back with guaranteed tickets another time, and you get your name put in a drawing for the 12 days of Christmas! Since we didn't care about anyone on the show on Wednesday, we planned on getting there at the last minute, getting the last possible numbers, and hopefully winning Christmas tickets. Well, our plan worked wonderfully, until we got inside and realized that there were going to be like 60 people in the riff-raft room! The day before there were about 10 people in there. Oh we were SO sad. They did the drawing for Christmas tickets, and we were so excited, and didn't get called. The most annoying part was that the people who got tickets weren't even that excited. We tried to buy their tickets from them, but they "weren't for sale". SO annoying. But we have tickets to go back in February, and hopefully we'll get some fun prizes.

On Wednesday's show, Ellen gave away a 100$ gift card, Bruno Mars' CD, and the DVD collection for The Mentalist. All cool things, but we didn't get them because we were in the riff-raft room! Bummer. So we went for 2 days, the first we were there waiting for 8 hours, the second 4 hours, and walked away with nothing. Next time, next time.

All in all it was so much fun though. Ellen was fabulous, I had a blast with my girlfriends, and got tickets for another show. AND I was on tv! For like 3 seconds 4 times! I'm famous! :)