We got tickets to see Bill Maher's stand-up comedy show in Boulder on Saturday, May 2. Thinking we would make a slight vacation out of it, we asked Jeff's parents to have Jordan stay with them that night and we headed to Boulder earlier in the day.
We arrived in Boulder around lunchtime and set out to find a place to eat. We parked on the Pearl Street Mall and walked around for a while before settling on The Cheesecake Factory. We both had their lunch-sized salads (which were far bigger than any dinner-sized salad I've ever seen - I can't imagine what their dinner-sized portion is like!) and a slice of cheesecake. Yummy. Throughout lunch we pondered why Boulder drivers are unable to stop at the stop sign sitting outside our window. We saw more than a hundred cars go by and yet only three or four actually came to a full and complete stop. Some cars did a bit late - usually because someone was crossing the street and they were forced to stop. But most just slowed (slightly) and sailed right through. We considered notifying the police that they might want to set up a little watch there, but then we saw several police cars run the sign. That's when we decided that the people of Boulder run the stop signs because that's what they see the cops do. Oh well. No one got hurt in the making of this lunchtime activity.
After lunch we walked around the mall for a while, looking for a nice little shop that sold jewelry. I wanted a necklace that I could wear to nice places (most of my current necklaces are from younger years and are somewhat strange and not what I generally wear to a nice restaurant or other grown-up location). I didn't want a fancy diamond necklace that could double as a house payment. Just a nice, not-so-childish bauble. We found Bolder World, which carries a variety of jewelry (almost handcrafted in their looks) and some Boulder-ish clothing (not my style by any stretch of the imagination). I selected a nice heart necklace, and also found some fun earrings that almost matched the necklace. For my purposes, they were close enough.
Walking along the mall, we saw a lot of interesting people. Mostly small groups of musicians playing for the crowds. One outdoor entertainer we saw (and didn't think to take a picture of... but I found some on Flickr) was completely painted & dressed like a bronze cowboy and was so still we stood and tried to figure out why there was a bag of money at the feet of this statue. Upon a (slightly) closer inspection, we found his eyes following our movement and knew he was real and watched him for a bit longer. After the initial shock of seeing his eyes move, he was great fun. He did break form once, when someone asked him to pose for a picture with her. Other than that, it was difficult to tell that he wasn't a permanent fixture.
We'd made reservations at the lovely St. Julien Hotel & Spa as it was the only hotel we could find that had room service (one of the perks of staying at a hotel) and wasn't a bed & breakfast. The hotel was completely smoke-free (yay!) and in good condition. Aside from some road construction on some of the roads nearby, we had no trouble finding it.
Upon entering our room, we found this:
So far, we were pleased with the room. Then we checked out the bathroom:
I didn't take any pictures of the little room with the toilet. It was just a toilet in a white room. Joy.
After the quick tour, we settled down to see what the TV had to offer and just verify it worked as designed before we wanted to really watch it. We've had plenty of hotels where the TV didn't work properly and didn't know it until we had paid for a movie. The basic channel features were there, as well as some nifty music (with a variety of music-themed visualizations). You could choose from new age music (meh) or classical music (yay!). They had a wonderful selection and we set it to play while we checked out the balcony.
The balcony looked down on the hotel entrance (we opted for a non-mountain facing room. We've seen the mountains and don't need to pay extra for them). We listened to our music while watching cars and people come and go. Then we looked at the clock.
The show started at 8:00pm and it was 7:25. Yikes! We knew that it was located somewhere on the CU campus, but weren't sure where the auditorium was. We flipped open the phone book to see if there might be a handy map of the university campus, but to no avail. So we checked to see if the auditorium had its own listed address. Nope. It was 7:30 now and we were beginning to panic. Nothing major, just a slightly more rushed feeling. We decided to ask at the front desk and headed downstairs with our tickets.
We asked at the front desk for directions to the campus (and the auditorium). The clerk didn't know and passed our request along to the concierge. He started to give instructions, but then said that the only place to park on the campus is really far from the auditorium and that it would be faster if we got a ride in the free hotel shuttle. We agreed, only to have him tell us that the shuttle works on a first-come-first-serve basis and that there were several groups ahead of us. By this time it was 7:40. We were quickly becoming flustered.
It was about this time that we were standing in the valet's little section (between the doors leading into the hotel lobby and the doors leading outside the hotel). We didn't want to blend in with the surroundings and have anyone forget about us! So, we were trying to be as in-the-way as possible. However, we were doing too good of a job of sticking out - we were standing in front of one of the doors leading outside (they were double doors, so a single person had no trouble getting past us but a larger group would be forced to go single-file). I noticed a limo parked outside and, thinking it was a permanent form of transportation for the hotel, I considered asking if we could just pay up the wazoo and go in that (a 10-minute limo ride wouldn't cost too much, would it?) but decided not to ask.
The concierge then asked if we would be interested in a taxi to take us there. I asked him how long it would take for a taxi to get to the hotel, but the guy misheard me and thought I agreed, so he dashed off to call a taxi. We waited and waited. The hotel shuttle came back and parked (seemingly for good). Still no taxi.
As we stood there wondering why we hadn't just walked and made it there with time to spare (the campus was advertised as only a 5-minute walk away from the hotel, which I correctly translated to be a Boulder 5-minute walk, not a normal person's 5-minute walk), I noticed that a large group of people were heading from the elevators toward us (on their way to leave the hotel through the very area that we were taking up). There were four or five people in this group and I surmised that they may prefer to use both doors to exit, so I reached for Jeff to pull him closer and more out-of-the-way so the group could move by us. That's when I glanced at the faces of the group and just about passed out.
Passing not even out of arm's reach was Bill Maher. My Bill. My t-shirt- & jeans-wearing, hair-combed-straight-back, half-smiling, short Bill. Wait - short?!? I always thought he was much taller, but sure enough,
IMDB shows that he's only 5'8". Still, I couldn't take my eyes off of him, let alone grab Jeff to move him out of the way (Jeff's back was to the door so he didn't even notice the dilemma). When I found my voice I mumbled to Jeff that Bill was walking by, and Jeff turned just in time to see the back of Bill's head. Better than nothing, I suppose. Poor Bill probably walked past us wondering why the rude people wouldn't move out of the way. Oh well.
Bill and company then walked directly to the limo and climbed in. On the tip of my tongue (but not the tip of my courage), I had the question formed: "Could we hitch a ride with you, since we're all heading to the same place?" I was unable to bring myself to grovel, though, and merely stood there and watched the only transportation I knew heading to the CU campus pull away from the hotel.
At 7:50 we asked the concierge where the taxi was coming from and he panicked and called them back only to discover that they are dispatched out of Denver. Agh!
Finally a valet jumped to our aid and asked if we would like him to drive us there in our car. This seemed like a decent thing to do, since we had intended to drive in our car in the first place. He said that the shuttle would be able to give us a ride back after the show (when timing wasn't so critical). We agreed to this and headed to the garage to get our car. As we were waiting for the elevator, the valet came running up to us and asked if we would be willing to accept 2 more people on the journey. We said that was fine and bustled off to get the car.
We pulled up to the valet circle and the valet and other couple got in. I swear, this guy must have a second job as a taxi driver. He was so wild and reckless (and thankfully wreckless!) that I was certain we would get into a huge accident. I'm sure it didn't help things that I was in the front seat with him and could see everything he was doing wrong, like speeding, driving without a seatbelt, taking corners too quickly, and turning in front of fast-approaching oncoming traffic. But we made it to the auditorium and he had to explain to the attendant that he was only dropping us off, not parking (and hence we shouldn't have to pay for parking).
We got to the drop-off point at Macky Auditorium and didn't hesitate to throw ourselves out of the car, not even remembering to pay the poor valet who just sacrificed his life (and ours) to get us there. But we had his name and knew that he was getting off his shift at midnight, so we would see him again later (and get a valet ticket from him). We charged up the stairs, and the lady from the other couple who rode with us handed me a $10 bill to cover the cost of their ride, knowing we would have to pay the valet. I thought that was very nice.
We entered the auditorium, showed our tickets, and were ushered to our seats. The time was now 8:10pm. Bill wasn't on stage yet - yay! We made it! Here's a picture of the inside, and I circled roughly where we sat. Jeff had no problems seeing the stage, but I had someone in front of me who continually shifted from left to right, forcing me to imitate him in the opposite direction. We likely made any observers seasick.
The intelligent person that I am, I had ordered our tickets so that we were sitting in the aisle seats. This was marvelous, since we didn't have to step on everyone's toes to get to our seats.
It was 8:15 when Bill stepped onto the stage. Everyone cheered, and some people gave him a standing ovation. I wasn't sure why, since he hadn't done anything for us yet except take money for the tickets we all paid so we could see him. If anything, I felt he should be applauding us at the beginning of the show! He actually did do this a bit, by beginning his comedy with a "thanks for coming out to see me, especially risking the swine flu which is in such abundance and the ecomony going to the pits!" sort of comment.
His entire routine was good. There were some jokes I had heard before from him, but they were good the second time. :) I enjoyed his newer jokes. There were at least two interruptions from people in the audience. One guy shouted out that Bill should do some Boulder jokes. This completely threw Bill off his routine and he said that he didn't know any Boulder jokes, adding that the interruption "really added a lot to the night" making the audience laugh. Another guy tried to make a Sarah Palin joke to fit in with something Bill said. Bill made a comment about being paid for his work and actually spending time writing his jokes, implying that this guy was a moron who didn't spend any time on the joke and shouldn't attempt to make it his day job. Yay for Bill.
The rest of the show was great, with lots of laughter and applause. We fell in line with the rest of the audience and filed out of the building. Just outside we found the hotel's shuttle parked, waiting for guests to board. We climbed on, and a few more guests boarded and the shuttle pulled away, heading back to the hotel.
Upon our arrival, we took our belongings back to our room, then sought out the valet who had driven us to the show. We found him, gave him a tip, and got our valet ticket. We then returned to our room and watched some TV before turning in for the night. The bed was extremely comfortable and I didn't wake up at all before morning (an unusual thing for me in a hotel). Here's our room, looking out over the grounds:
In the morning, we ordered breakfast, which was quite good, and set about checking out. We made our room passes, clearing it of our belongings, then checked out in the lobby, collected our car from the valet, and drove home.
The mini-vacation was fun, relaxing, and thoroughly enjoyable. We look forward to taking more of them in the future. :)
