Ellen, A Daily Habit

I'm a creature of habit, so there's many things I just can't go through my day without doing. Flossing, working out, etc. Yes, even working out. I've been working out daily since 1990, so not doing it now is literally like not brushing my teeth or showering. I used to be the soap queen, not being able to get through my lunch without watching All My Children, and a few years ago I switched that up to watching and reviewing Starting Over.

Starting Over died a strange, painful, secretive death this year, and I found myself without that daily drama, since I'd switched from a daytime drama to real life drama. I realized then I didn't need a new daily show to get me through the day, as another one had slowly been creeping up in the ranks of my daily TV viewing.

Ellen. God, I love watching Ellen. She has such a wonderful way of connecting to people, and of course, that comes after she's made me laugh my ass off. I've been watching her talk show since it started, and for the past year and a half I've been TIVOing it. While I used to watch it late at night after prime time TV, now I watch it in the mornings while I'm working out. There's just nothing better than working out and laughing while you do it. I even work her dancing into my warmups.

I even still get doses of drama so that I don't have to resort to watching soap operas again. Ellen often invites onto her show real life people who have made a difference in someone else's life, such as the the guy that saved the man that was having seizures on the train tracks, or Steve Irwin's widow and daughter Bindhi, as the young girl explained wanting to make her daddy proud of her, as she continues the fine work that he started. Ellen wasn't the only one with a lump in her throat.

There's just something that really works about the format of this talk show, evidenced by Ellen's recent People's Choice Award. Mostly, I think it's because Ellen makes it so easy to connect with her, but in her warmth and sense of humor. Her comedy has a way of reaching the every man/woman, by discussing the every day things we all go through, such as trying to remember a phone number.

I think that's what ultimately did Ellen in previously. She was an extremely successful standup comedian, and started her sitcom which was terrifically successful as it embodied that every man/woman sense of humor. Personally, she did the best thing for her, and that was to come out, something I'm sure was difficult and well-thought out. However, it separated her from that every man/woman we saw in her earlier, as it was hard to identify with. When she came back years later with the talk show, it was a great way to say this is who I am, we're done talking about it, let's just move on and have fun.

Ellen always has some great contests running on her show, and does a lot of connecting to her audience through emails and letters, many times calling the fans on the phone. I always mean to enter her contests on her website, but always forget to go there to do it. So I'm putting the link here on the list of sites I'm surfing on the sidebar to the right, to help me remember. Currently she's giving away red carpet tickets for the Oscars which she's hosting.

I grew up watching these type of afternoon talk shows, like Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore, so I expect this to last a long time. It's one where I don't turn it on just to watch the guests; I turn it on to spend an hour with Ellen every day. It's my daily fix.