Missing the point entirely

I have a couple of embarrassing guilty pleasures, one of which is The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

You may now kindly shut up. Thanks.

I’m a fan of Ellen because of her brand of comedy – her style of speech is marked with fast-shootin’, quick-thinkin’ jokes that appeal to the basal intellectual side yet don’t get bogged down in stupid technical detail (one reason why I’m not a huge fan of technical jokes – lack of broad appeal). Her monologues are usually well-done, and while she has some dumb segments along the lines of Dave Letterman, those are pretty rare. Unlike Jay Leno, she’s excellent with interviewing guests – she’s never boring, she’s smart in her responses, and when she’s interviewing, there’s almost never dead air (a major flaw of Leno’s). I’m usually pretty happy with the product she puts out on the market.

But here’s why I REALLY watch the show. If you’re reading this, you can participate in this little game too and see how massively entertaining the show can truly be.

The Ellen show market is targeted towards women who watch daytime television, so…uh…slightly older than me, I guess. Of course, that means that the major party of interest for people who get tickets and attend live tapings are those very same older women.

Here’s where you come in: go on YouTube and find any Ellen clip that shows the audience members at some point. The audience is a chlorine-filled swimming pool of estrogen waiting for Patrick Dempsey or Matt Damon or whomever else is the Sexiest Whatevers of the Arbitrary Time Period. Stuck – nay, DROWNING – in that pool of estrogen are a very few number of men who all look extremely uncomfortable. This look of discomfort has one reason and one reason only: they’re present at the taping because their wives promised awesome makeup sex in exchange for voluntarily taking them to get their ya-yas off by seeing male celebrities in person sexier than their own husbands.

This game is most fun when Ellen does her little dances as transitions between segments and the entire audience, full of raucous, excited women, also get up to dance. The men always just kind of stand there and shift around a little bit, forcing a laser-etched, unnatural smile, thrust upon him by the desire to not look like an idiot on national TV. (There are, of course, some men in the audience who possess slightly more flamboyance and therefore dance along with all the other women, but those are more common.)

I ALWAYS point out the men out loud, even when I’m by myself. It’s like I’m playing Where’s Waldo for adults and with fewer papercuts. I like to reward myself with +10 points per man found, equally exchangeable for 0.16 oz. of ice cream. I still haven’t made a full bowl yet. (+5 points for flamboyant men found. +50 points for anybody who looks like they’re under 25 years old.)

Here’s a demo: 1:04 into the video, man in a Dwight Schrute-esque mustard yellow Polo shirt looking angry because he is surrounded by screaming 30- or 40-year-old cougars who all think that Patrick Dempsey is the shit and he’s just a lump of balding, aging chopped liver who has to dish out the hard-earned cash out of his own wallet to pay for the expenses for this bullshit. YES +10 POINTS

Let’s play!