December 5, 2003
Orlando Bloom on the Tonight Show with JAY LENO! It couldn't be true!! But it was...the news came out last week, and I was FLOO-RED! Because guess where Leno is taped? In Burbank...CALIFORNIA! And CALIFORNIA just happened to be the state I'm visiting for a week long vacation from the 1st to the 9th...and guess who was going to be on the show on December 5th?

So I ask the rest of the Fab Four if this is do-able while I'm in Cali, and they say absolutely. Only problem is, we'd have to go get tickets to the show the day OF the show, which meant lining up early because other OB fans would find out about the show and try to go too.

Us at 4 in the freakin’ morning! Nelly, Shawna, me in my Orlando beanie, and Von!

So what time were we out the door on December 5th? About 3 a.m.! Got to NBC Studios by 4 a.m. to wait in line until 8 a.m. for the box office to open so we could obtain tickets. Once we HAD our tickets, we had to go to another building and wait in line THERE until about 3:30 p.m. and HOPE we were in a good enough spot in line that we would DEFINITELY get in and see the show!

We ended up being in the first group of 30 people allowed into the studio, and I'm talking just barely (my friend Anna and her parents were 28, 29, and 30!). We got to hang out in the lobby for a while before being led into the COLDER THAN ANTARCTICA studio, where Anna and her parents were seated in the first row of an elevated section, Shawna & I in the 2nd row, and Nelly & Von right behind us in the 3rd row. The JL studio LOOKS huge on TV, but it's SO FLIPPIN' TINY! Not only could we see everything from where we were, BUT...it was like Orlando was going to be right there in our laps So I was one happy camper

This is the dragonfly charm Marilyn made for Orlando, modeled by me.

Now, back track a bit....I had my friend Marilyn who makes charms, make OB a charm that I could give to him. An online friend of mine from New Zealand, Kia, gave me the idea so the Monday I got to California, I called Marilyn and asked her to make one. She came up with the concept, made it HERSELF (including baking the charm), and then overnighted it to me and I had it in time for the Wednesday LA RotK premiere. Obviously didn't happen to get the necklace to Orlando there , though, so I had to make it happen at Leno on Friday. Since a sign had worked so well for me before, we decided to try it again. Thursday night, on a piece of hot pink cardboard (same size as my previous sign), Shawna wrote out, "We have a Christmas gift for Orlando!" I colored in the letters (I can handle that just fine , but anything else artistic, forget it!), and we had the sign ready to go for Friday’s Leno taping.

Behold Shawna’s handiwork...the sign she made to grab Orlando’s attention!

I didn't think I'd be allowed in with that big a$$ sign, though, so what did I do? I folded that bad boy again and again 'til it fit inside my small a$$ Pirate purse! And lucky for me, when security checked my bag, she didn’t even flinch at the bright pink paper inside my bag, she just let me go! Whew! I knew I wasn't going to bust it out DURING the show since I didn't want us to get kicked out, so "my crew" and I just sat and enjoyed the show, cheering at the APPROPRIATE times and not yelling out anything ridiculous There were plenty of OTHER fans there who filled the void of "annoying/embarassing fangirls" for us.

Orlando looking amazing on the set of The Tonight Show!

OB came out and looked BEYOND gooooooooooooorgeous! And the moments during the commercials were precious as well. Some details from what happened during commercial breaks or when you couldn’t see him: while they showed the movie clip. there was a pretty intense moment in the music/scene and he turned his face from the screen slowly and makes this face like "Ooooh, aren't you scared?" and the audience laughed while Jay made the motion for him to shoosh. During one break, Jay got the GQ magazine and a different card of some sort autographed. At one point, Orlando was taking a drink out of his coffee cup only to immediately put the cup down. He then said something to Nicole (Kidman...did I forget to mention she was also a guest this night? ), picked her cup up, took a sip, and apparently liked what she had way more than his . They laughed about this briefly. And the whole time he sat there, he did everything from fiddle with his knee to rub his thigh, and folded his leg so his one foot was resting on the other foot. Oh! And one of the most precious and *sigh* inducing moments came when Alicia Keys was performing.

Jay had Nicole and Orlando come to stand on the edge of the mainstage with him to watch Alicia. I pretty much just stared at Orlando the entire time while Alicia’s song, “Ain’t Got You” faded in and out of my consciousness. It was QUITE an experience, let me tell ya. Here I am, in the presence of an individual who has quite an effect on me while this beautifully romantic melody and voice are playing in the background. I made fun of someone else for saying something similar, but now I’ve grown to like the analogy quite a bit: it was like a scene from a movie! And I can’t hear ANY Alicia Keys song now without thinking of Orlando and getting a dreamy look & goofy grin on my face . ANYWAYS...during Alicia’s performance, Orlando moved only once...and it was to take his hands, rub them up the sides of his legs, and slide them into his pockets. . Then when Alicia was finished, Jay went down to shake hands with her, and beckoned Orlando and Nicole to follow. Well, Orlando was closer to the stairs than Nicole, but he still took a step back and made a sweeping motion with his left arm as if to say, “After you” and allowed Nicole to go first. Always the gentleman!!! *sigh* Everything else significant that happened was shown on the air .

Fast forward to the end of the show....OB is walking from the left hand side of the stage to the right. Everyone has gotten up from their chairs on the FLOOR and made their way to the stage, kind of mobbish, trying to get him to sign or look or touch, ya know? As he's walking, I ask Shawna, "Do you think I should bust it out?" She said yes, so I pulled out the sign, unfolded it, and held it up.

Big, scary a$$ security guard saw it and yelled at Wormy Guy (a$$ of an usher who said he could NOT give a gift to Orlando on anyone's behalf) to get it away from me. I freaked and folded it up some and held it down behind the seat in front of me, so Wormy Guy looked and looked for a pink sign but couldn't find one. Shawna says, "Hold it up again!" when Wormy Guy turns away, so I do but Orlando was looking at the backdrop of Jay's set/in that direction 'cause he was talking to someone.

From depths I didn't know she had , Shawna then yells out, "Orlandoooooooooooo!!" and he HEARS her! He turns around, and I hold up my sign from where I'm sitting as high as I can. I will NEVER EVER forget the look on his face as he scrunched his face up and squinted his eyes to read my hot pink sign against the bright studio lights.

Once he finished, he looked at us and made an apologetic face and some gestures, letting us know he wished he could come and get the gift from us, but he couldn't. And my crew is CONVINCED that he REMEMBERED ME because it was at this point he then said to us, "Thank you for coming!" which, of course, is the EXACT SAME THING he said to me at the premiere (but since this encounter, I've heard that he says that to, like, all fans so I don't think I'm special)! I just hope he didn't recognize me or anything like others have wondered aloud... no doubt he thinks I'm a stalker if he did

Then, as if on a sudden whim to defy the rules, he starts WALKING TOWARDS US!! But there was such a mob on the floor and no doubts that he would've been consumed by it that a short, blonde haired lady put her hand on his arm, shook her head vigorously, and told him, "NO." He then was talking to her earnestly, and pointing up at us.

My friend Anna's mom said, "Give it to me," so I handed her the bag with my friend's charm/necklace in it and a "Thank You" card I had filled out earlier in line that day. She gets up out of her seat, and starts walking down the stairs onto the floor to go give them to Orlando! God Bless her! But WORMY GUY stops her at the foot of the steps and tells her she can't go

BUT...Orlando has NOT left the stage yet as he's in the ear of the big scary security guard, who suddenly barked at Wormy Guy, "It's ok, let her through!" So Anna's mom goes right up to the stage and puts the gifts RIGHT IN OB'S HAND! And according to Anna's mom, he shook her hand for a few seconds as he said, "Thanks," very genuinely Then he looked up at me and my crew, put his hand over his heart, put his hands together holding the gifts and kind of bowed forward...as if he were grateful...sending us a beaming smile, and then he was gone!

I was already collapsed in my chair at this point, face buried in my hands, laughing & crying hysterically. Pretty much as soon as he got the gifts IN his hands, I was gone (got the rest of the story from my girls, if you're wondering ). I mean, he did NOT have to stop, he did NOT have to read my sign, and he did NOT have to stay on stage and, like, argue his way to getting the gifts...but he did! And it was yet one more in a looooooooooooong line of examples of how generous, wonderful, and beautiful this human being is. *major girly sigh*

Me and Anna!

L to R: Von, Anna, me, Shawna, and Nelly!

After we all finished freaking and calmed down, we left the studio (someone left their free Tonight Show tee which I grabbed, so I got a souvenir out of the deal too!), and did the “tourist thing,” a.k.a. took pictures in front of THE TONIGHT SHOW sign outside. I must take this time to say it was great getting to meet Anna! She is such a helpful and generous person, and getting to hang with her and talk with her was a lot of fun. I only hope I didn’t bore her (I know she got along with Shawna & Nelly real well ), and that she knows how much I enjoyed getting to know her a bit that day in line. And her mom was really friendly and great to talk with as well (she roomed with a guy she said looked JUST like Orlando in college!), not to mention the HUGE favor she did us all by getting that gift to Orlando , which I shall be indebted to her forever for!


So we took our pictures and said our goodbyes, and I asked the Crew if we should try going over to where we had been told (by another awesome girl we met in line that day, Lindsay) that the stars left from. We all figured since we stayed in the studio longer than most, as well as took so much time taking pics that we wouldn’t see anything. But we walked over to the garage entrance/exit, and only two other girls were standing there. And wouldn’t you know it, just as we walk up, the garage door lifted and a black SUV with tinted windows came driving out. Remember big A$$ security guard? Well, he was there as well, guiding the SUV out and keeping the other two fans at bay (they were Nicole Kidman fans...they had a sign and a magazine/pictures with Nicole on them). We just kind of stood back a ways behind those fans, and asked him if Orlando had already left. He said yes, but we looked at each other thinking he could be lying to us to throw us off, so we just stood and waited. And you know what happened? The passenger side window came down, and Nicole Kidman was in the SUV!! She smiled and waved at her fans, let them come over and signed stuff for them. My friend Nelly yelled out to her, “You’re beautiful, Nicole!” and she waved and smiled over at us too! Once she finished autographing for her fans, the SUV waited a bit for traffic then pulled away. Can you believe it? I got another up-close star sighting to finish off my trip!!

Just looking bloody gorgeous!

*sigh* So...yeah...my 2nd trip to California was a great one that yielded unreal and unbelievable results! I'm SO beyond smitten with Orlando Bloom, it's NOT funny . I doubt I'll be seeing him again for a looooooooooooooong while, and that’s ok because I got SO much more than I bargained for on my last trip! I honestly couldn't have asked for a better ending to the 2nd installment of my California OB Adventures !!