Celebrities, Slime and Spiked Butt Belts

The day of the Kids' Choice Awards, we arrived to the UCLA campus and were quickly herded into a tent/makeshift green room. Other than a litte table with meats and cheeses, the room was barren. This is where we'd be spending the next several hours.

But first, rehearsal. They were running the entire show that morning, from beginning to end. When they reached our point in the show, a runner guided us to the stage, and we did our thing. The kid extras seemed a little more excited today.

Then back to the tent, with about five hours till showtime. We were told we were allowed to leave, but only by foot, as the traffic getting back would be terrible. So I hoofed it around Westwood a bit. I hadn't really been in the area for a year or two, so I saw that my favorite CD store had closed and that several frozen yogurt places had opened (how much froyo do college students need?). And when I got bored (within twenty minutes), I headed back to the hometent. Things were much more exciting there:


When the show finally started around 5pm, the band decided to check out the white room. This room was created up in the stands behind the stage, with white furniture, white carpet, and sheer white sheets softly barricading all the celebrities in with their perfectly manicured hors d'oeuvres. We stuck out like a hand full of sore thumbs amongst Will Smith, Nelly, and a bunch of other slick rappers I didn't know of. Jaco and Jamie immediately grabbed a couple of the Neutrogena gift bags, full of manly moisturizing creams. They were far too excited about those. We enjoyed about a half hour of the show until Stacy, pro that he is, decided we should be in the tent at least 30 minutes before it was necessary. So we went back to our homevoid. Sat around for awhile. Made some calls.

Then the blur. Around 6pm, we were walked quickly through the back door and down a narrow hallway to the stage. We hit the stage, Miley barely made it into place in time for the song, and was a little out of breath. Everybody did their thing. We played like our hands were deadly precision instruments, the dancers flipped and flew like there were helium bombs in their shoes, and Miley's star presence inspired the kid extras to legitimately freak out.

And the set did look really good on TV.