CORALINE PREMIERE in PORTLAND

(you know, i love them for using letters in the marquee....)


We fly into the airport in Portland and rent a car from absolutely the sweetest most helpful team of car renters. A serious welcoming committee...! Our car, tiny and American, is shaped like a silver bubble and has a surprising amount of head room for our 6’6” Drew.




(side note: Drew came back from the Elton John run before it even started, his company was outbid for the contract, and that is very telling in these troubled times, that they flew their crew out, they were starting to put the rig together and STILL were outbid---booooo. Bright side? He could come to Portland with me)

Had to pick up miss Maddy at the airport in a few hours--she flew alone
as her father was flying in from a Canadian press junket. We sightsee a bit, driving noisily over the moody metal bridges, “Steel Bridge” and “Morrison Bridge”---so named for industrial strength and/or dead poets. We stare dreamily down into the waters below.
The sun was shining, a rare enough thing here at this time of year--so much that the Oregon people were out in the streets everywhere, gathering their vitamin D.

After getting things sorted out a bit, I acquire Mads from the airport and I show her her new LOMOGRAPHY camera, the drop-dead hot pink Diana camera, thanks Lomography.com! Good old-fashioned film---we will see what she comes up with on the photojournalist front. My college major was photography, and i had an old-school time of it putting the 120 medium format film into the camera for her for the first time...









When we got to the hotel there was a roaring fire in a welcoming wintery stone hearth.
can you see/smell it?





Now, I wait in the hotel room while Mr. Neil does a quick round of interviews. On the way to the last one he finally met Dakota Fanning in person, the very lovely young actress who voices CORALINE. The papers and magazines here are filled with stories on the Portland production team and that blue-haired darling looks up at us everywhere
we look.




Maddy & I walked under the sign for the theater at which the premiere is being held.




The lady running the interviews just handed me the invitations to the premiere,
complete with gorgeous weighty metal COraline keys. Sure hope they don’t take them away from us....a true collectible.








while Maddy and I were walking around we saw many interesting things including this post-it stuck on the street corner post down from the hotel:



i think I may be reading it wrong, but i am all for street art and freedom of speech.
Go Portland!


last night we met friends at one of the top-ranked Tiki bars in the country (dare I say, world!) world class decor and the french fries were top bowling-alley quality (and that is a compliment)....






OK, off to get everyone ready for tonight, more to report tomorrow....

tomorrow we may drive to the coast, our first vacation together in a good long while.