Red Carpet Rundown

I received an invitation in the mail this week.

It came with a 30 cents postage-due scrawl from my postal carrier, but that's okay. I'll pay.

It's full color, about 7 inches square, and has two kids in a tree on the front, and a lovely scene including a cloudy sky and green fields with distant "farm" houses and trees across both sides of the interior.

There is no printing on the left side, but on the right side?

"Warner Bros. Pictures invites you and a guest to the world premiere of FLIPPED"

(There was a little card inside stating I could bring 3 guests, so yes, the boys are definitely coming with us.)

The back is black and states in rather small print (but firm, extensive language) that video taping inside the theater is strictly prohibited. (Which means we can't even have the camera with us to tape any of the goings-on outside.) (Rats.)

It's being held at the classic Cinerama Dome on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood--a theater Mark and I have always wanted to see the inside of. It looks like half a golf ball, and if you go to Wikipedia you can see what they did to decorate it for Spider Man 2 and Shrek 2. (I doubt they'll convert it into an egg under a chicken for us, but that would be funny!)

Now, we can't take our friends and family with us, so we've been planning own Red Carpet Event for months. We're renting a local theater, a red carpet, etc., and everyone's supposed to dress up like they're going to a Hollywood premiere. My philosophy is that it's good to remember the people who have supported you along the way and treat them to something nice when something good happens in your life. We've got some fun things planned, and I'm really looking forward to it.

And because I can never seem to "keep it simple", I decided that it would be a nice thing for local kids to get the chance to attend a "Red Carpet Premiere" too, so I've arranged with the local schools and libraries to do raffles for tickets to a "matinee" on the same day. So we're hosting two screenings, one with 200 kids from the area, and one with friends and their families and our families.

This should have been a lot easier to set up than it was, but most of the coordinating is behind me at this point, and that's a huge relief.

So there's the World Premiere that I'm looking forward to for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm a guest, not the host! And then there's our mock-up premiere that I'm looking forward to so I can treat the people who have been supportive over the years to a fun evening out.

And then there's the matinee.

200 kids with soda and popcorn?

I'm just holding my breath on that one.