Plans for The Rapture

Reading The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election by Zachary Karabell yesterday, I began planning my Saturday. I suddenly had a yen to watch Swing Vote for the probably 5,007th time. Then would come the usual stop at the newsstand for The Wall Street Journal Weekend and then the library, as usual.

I went to the Fandango website last night to see what the status was of the showings of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides at Edwards Valencia 12. Meridith and I want to see it, but we figured on waiting until its second weekend in theaters for the crowds to thin out a bit.

I woke up a little before 8 this morning, and found Mom on the El Capitan Theatre website, the theater owned by Disney in Hollywood, which had just had a marathon of all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And I remembered that Dad had had a desire to go to the Diabetes Expo being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Saturday. When I first heard about it, I didn't mind going. Gets me out of the valley and all I need with me is a book and I'm good.

Mom had the right idea, though. Of course, she would go with Dad, but why should Meridith and I wait to see Pirates? And at the 1 p.m. showing tomorrow, the day of The Rapture, in which I hope to suddenly become the proud owner of a Mercedes wherever I can find one after the believers have ascended, there were two available seats at the right side of the ground level of the theater at the ends of rows J and K, one behind the other. That works for me and Meridith.

And since general admission seats are in the balcony, these seats include popcorn and a drink, but hopefully a themed popcorn bucket rather than the standard El Capitan one.

And last night, Meridith finished the now-only season of "America's Next Great Restaurant" and found that not only are one of the three locations of Soul Daddy, the winner of the show, in Los Angeles, but it's inside the Hollywood & Highland Center, right across the street from El Capitan. So we'll go next door before or after the movie to see the generally overpriced souvenirs and then to Hollywood & Highland. She told me they have cheese grits as a side, and it would be a nice break from the Quaker Instant kind I always have.

I don't think the end of the world would affect Hollywood much, though. It's pretty much a godless place, but I say that because the Big Bang Theory t-shirts offered at the souvenir shops in the area are too expensive. I want another Sheldon shirt, but not for $25. I was a rube when I visited the area in April 2003, but I wasn't that much of a rube.