Blue Man!

Blue Man Group is one of Mike's favorites. He's seen the show five times now (four for me): at the permanent venues in Chicago and Las Vegas, and locally with the "How To Be A Megastar" travelling version.

For the first local show last year, we stood in line to get tickets at the box office the morning they went on sale, and ended up with seats high up and to the side. Not great, but the show is still good, even from the nose-bleed sections. This year, though, I was on the local e-mail list for music acts, and was able to buy tickets before they went on sale to the general public. To our amazement, this time our seats were in the middle of the second row! And as you can see from the photo above, they were great seats.

At the show, you can send a text message to enter a contest to be eligible for a backstage tour after the show. They also play silly text message games while waiting for the main event to start. So Mike and I both entered and played games on our phones, then sat back to enjoy the show. Well, in the middle of the show, Mike got a text that he didn't win. So I checked my phone, and I had won!! So now, in addition to great seats and a great show, we got to go "backstage" (really just a meeting room behind the seats, since the arena uses a temporary stage, which they start dis-assembling immediately afterward).

The Blue Men, the band, and the opening act all came to our "backstage" session for pictures and autographs. It was a lot of fun, even if my camera's battery had died about 10 minutes into the show. (Mike took more pictures with his cell phone camera.) We were close enough to each get Blue Man guitar picks (tossed to the audience), got our autograph cards, backstage passes, and with our front-and-center seats, it was an awesome evening.

[Blue Men don't talk. And they sign autographs with the blue greasepaint that is on their heads.]