Hey, what about dance lessons?
Ellen Degeneres wants to achieve a few personal goals during the fourth season of her Emmy-winning daytime talk show, which begins today (10 a.m., KHQ-6 in Spokane).
On the list? Learning Spanish, acquiring basic computer skills and ditching her daily shampoo duties.
Tackling her “life list” is just one new element Degeneres, 48, is adding to her hourlong daily talk show.
She’s also introducing a new set, a new DJ to inspire her trademark dance moves and a new focus on regular folks rather than celebrities:
Q: Any big changes for the new season?
A: We’re changing up the format a little bit, nothing drastic, but just trying to make it more kind of freestyle, freeform. … More human interest and real people and things like that. The life-list thing is new so we’re going to try to accomplish a lot of things on my life list and help the audience accomplish their things on their life lists.
Q: What is a life list?
A: It’s basically just things you want to accomplish in your life. I talked to Beyonce the other day and she wants to learn how to speak Arabic and she wants to jump out of an airplane. I don’t want to do that. I just don’t want to wash my hair every day.
Q: What is the scariest thing on your list?
A: The scariest thing, honestly, is I don’t want to wash my hair every day. Everybody thinks it’s ridiculous that I would put that on my life list. … But (they say) your hair is better if you don’t wash it every day.
Q: What are you hoping to help audience members with?
A: Whatever they want to do. This all came from a viewer last season who had a life list because she had cystic fibrosis. She started a life list to accomplish things by the time she was 40, and we helped her accomplish a bunch of those. We thought it was a really great idea.
Q: Is there a dream guest you’d like to interview?
A: My dream guests are really not so much celebrities. They’re people who are actually interesting, and they’re doing something interesting with their lives or had an interesting experience in some way. I really enjoy talking to regular, everyday people.
Q: What did you do on your summer vacation?
A: I did a couple of American Express commercials and I had a couple photo shoots, so it wasn’t as much time (off) as I’d like. We have a ranch and we just went to our ranch and rode horses and gardened and did, you know, nothing.
The birthday bunch
Radio personality Paul Harvey is 88. Actress Mitzi Gaynor is 75. Actress Khandi Alexander (“ER”) is 49. Actor-comedian Damon Wayans is 46. Actor Wes Bentley (“American Beauty”) is 28. Singer/actress Beyonce Knowles is 25.