Ellen's Chicago Hour

By Rachelle Bowden in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 24, 2005 4:11AM

The Ellen DeGeneres Show airing on Thursday morning at 10am on NBC5, will be all about Chicago. The people in the audience are from here and the show will be all about our great city.

Last week Ellen's production assistant, Houston Rose, was in Chicago selecting audience members at random from the Auto Show, the ice rink at Millennium Park, walking down Michigan Avenue, Portillo's and El stations to be on the show. Teamed up with Orbitz, they flew 200 people to Los Angeles for the show.

Special guests include Chicago native and Will & Grace star, Sean Hayes and Oak Park native Bob Newhart. And Ellen will be giving Mayor Daley some sort of shout out. Also making appearances are the Chicago Bulls mascot Benny the Bull and the Chicago Boyz Acrobatic Team.

Oddly, audience members will be served food from Portillo's and Gino's East. . which goes with the show's theme, but does it make sense that the audience is flying from Chicago to LA to eat food that's been flown the same distance? That outta be good. Also, to add to the cheesy cuteness that is The Ellen DeGeneres Show, there's gonna be a big wind machine on the stage.. get it? Windy City?