By which I mean, I’m going to the bleachers outside the Oscars!!! Sorry to mislead you there. If you’re thinking that doesn’t sound like such a big deal, think again, my friend.
Winning an Oscar puts you in an exclusive club – so does winning the lottery for a red carpet bleacher seat. There are only about 700 seats…and up to 200,000 applicants, putting your chances at about 1 in 286 (thank you, high school algebra). I would never know any of this, except that my boyfriend is somehow an expert on this shadow world.
Here are the eHow instructions.
In fact, he has applied for seats every year for the past decade, and 2011 is our lucky year! People are super hard core. This year, folks are coming from: Baltimore, Sydney, Buenos Aires and Finland! Not to mention West Hollywood and Camarillo!
For you poor unfortunate souls who are not among the chosen few, I will allow you to live vicariously through me and – don’t worry! – I will live tweet the festivities.
It all started with an email:
“Congratulations! You were chosen from our waiting list to fill a vacancy that has opened up in our Red Carpet bleachers for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards. In order to claim your seats, please read carefully the following instructions…”
These instructions involved filling out a background check form with my addressees for the past seven years (no small task for someone like me who has had about seven addresses in that time, including two in Mexico), and getting a passport photo at CVS (In mine, I look like a thug or maybe a mother who just drowned her three children – I hate you fluorescent lights!). Fortunately, we both passed the criminal background check and got our fan packets -yay!
Email #2:
“Hello Bleacher Fans!
We’re only a few weeks away from the Oscars! Attached you will find the following PDF documents:
· Information Packet with Arrival Time
· Parking Map
· Viewing Party Invitation
Please review all materials carefully. If you registered with a guest, he or she should have receive this email, with the same assigned arrival time.
Note: Your RSVP to the Viewing Party is required by February 11, 2011.
If you haven’t already, please join our official Facebook Group at XXXXX, exclusively for this year’s Bleacher Fans! Chat with us, connect with other bleacher fans, and stay up-to-date on all things bleachers.
And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!”
This email brought a few more surprises – namely that winning the lottery not only gets us a bleacher seat within spitting distance of the most beautiful people on the planet, but we also get to go to a viewing party at El Capitan…with free dinner! Awesome! As if that were not enough, there is also a secret Facebook group.
German and I have been participating fairly actively. The general tone of discussion ranges between extremely excited and breathless. Top topics have included other LA tourist activities, questions about logistics (Is this a nursing mom friendly place?) and predictions on who will win. Apparently an innocuous question about what to wear prompted one gentleman to suggest all the ladies should wear some really high heels, which set off a pretty intense exchange that was actually taken down. What happens when you bring together a random group of people from all over the world? Well, perhaps the show “Lost” could be illustrative. Think on it. Here are some voyeuristic screen shots.
Basically, we are pretty psyched to be so close, but yet so far, to the Oscar action this year. More fun updates coming soon…
PS – Is it a bad sign that the first title that popped into my mind for this post was “I’m going to the Oscars, bitches!” Apparently, my vocabulary has been completely co-opted by So Cal slang. “Grip,” “OMG,” and “LOL” have also been popping up with alarming frequency.
Sooooo....Cal. 