On the Friday of Leno, I wasn’t sure if I was going or if I was going to the premiere the next day. After much debate, and finally figuring out that my friends and I actually did have tickets to the premiere, I decided on that. I figured, how often would I get to go to a movie premiere and Hanson was going to be playing more songs and so forth. So, the next morning I get to LA about 7:45. The performance doesn’t begin until 11, but I was told to get there early, and I got to LA a lot faster than normal. (Amazing the difference between weekend morning and weekday morning traffic!) Everyone else had gone to Leno the day before, so I was meeting everyone there. In addition to my other Hanson friends I saw Noele, Angel, and Faith from the HHMB there.

Anyway, once I got there, it was a bunch of waiting. It turned out that they were allowing people who didn’t have tickets, only up to a fence about 300 feet away from the stage. From what I heard later, the sound was really good, but it was sad that fans weren’t allowed any closer as some people had spent the night (and it has been COLD for southern Cal!).

There were a few of us who were lucky enough to be on a list for tickets to the premiere, however. I kept trying to find out where the tickets were and what list I was on. One of the highlights was the head security guard asking me if I needed a press pass. People usually think I’m a lot younger than I am at these things. I’m 22 and yet people always think I’m 16...), so it was fun to actually be considered an adult. Eventually, the will call booth opened and we once again got the run around trying to find ourselves on a list. I guess someone must have forgotten to turn the list in or something, because we weren’t on any list. For some reason, they finally let us in (was it that we knew what we were talking about? I’m not sure...). Once we were in, another security guard tried to get us to turn back again, but we got the lady who had let us in the first place and went past. Now we were in!

There was a second fence about 25 feet from the stage and a third one, about 5 feet from the stage. While we were waiting two more of our friends got into the closer section. We also met these two older women, who were Hanson fans. They had snuck in, since no one thought they were there to see Hanson, they were let through and had been hiding in a restaurant. There are advantages to being an older Hanson fan!

Through good fortune, three of us got into the really close section! We were so excited! There were only 2 or 3 groups of us fans up that close. Most of the people were executives and their children, so we were allowed to get up really close. It was nice because there wasn’t a lot of screaming and pushing. At one point my roommate leaned over to me and asked, "Is it just me or are Scott and Jason (the bass player and guitar player) pointing and laughing at us?" I’m not sure what it was about, but it certainly looked at if they were!

The whole Hanson family was there at the event. We saw Diana with all the little kids first, she was carrying Zoë, who had her hair done up so cute! My roommate noticed that Mom Hanson and Avery were wearing "Spice-Girl" shoes (you know, platform sneakers).

Finally, the boys got there! They came in a van and Walker was with them video taping them. It took a little while for them to finally be ready to perform...and then they came out! They played so well! Especially Zac! He was so on that day, I mean just amazing! You probably already know, but they played Gimmie Some Lovin’, Run, Run, Rudolph, Good Lovin’, and Merry Christmas, Baby. As for clothes, Isaac was wearing brown suede pants, a black T-shirt and a brown velvet shirt over that. Taylor was wearing jeans, a black shirt, and a black jacket. Zac, I think, was wearing black pants and a black T-shirt. I couldn’t see him too well behind the drums. They had only planned on singing three songs after the third they asked if we wanted to hear any more. Suzanne and I yelled as loud as we could "EVER LONELY!!!!" Scott looked at us, a bit confused, but we were ignored...actually I think they had already been planning on singing Merry Christmas, Baby. It was all too short! But they sounded so good! There was no real acknowledgement between Hanson and us. I know they saw us, but I think they were just really into their music that day.

Afterwards we saw the Mark Hudson was standing there, so our group got our picture taken with him. He was really nice. My friend, Lark told him how much she liked A Minute Without You, and he added this little fact to the already well known story. You already know that Hanson wanted the chorus to be a bridge, right? And how Mark Hudson convinced them otherwise? Well, he told Lark that little Zac (he would have been only 10 at the time) started to cry! How cute is that? We also saw the back-up piano player and asked him if we could take our picture with him. It is so funny! He has this look of tolerant bemusement:) We told him that they had played really well.

When we finally went into the movie theater, it turned out that we went in right after Diana and the kids. We got to speak to her (well, as much as you can call it speaking when there is a group of 15 or so girls). We told her that her boys had played really well. And I said something about how cute Zoë’s hair was. It is so neat to see her, because before I ever saw her I was afraid of a typical Hollywood Mom. But she’s not at all. She is really down to earth and very regular "mom" like. She could be anyone’s mom. Once we sat down and the movie started, we heard a rumor that Hanson was in fact watching the movie, but we never saw them. Oh well.

As for the movie, well, lets just say, that it is a little kid movie. The music in it is really good and all of the actors do a good job. The strangest thing in it is that I think Henry Rollins is in it! Which was really strange.

After the movie, probably the 2nd most exciting thing (besides Hanson of course) happened as we were coming down the stairs. We saw Jack Nicholson! He walked right past us. My roommate and I stopped dead in our tracks and watched him as he walked into the bathroom. I’m pretty sure neither of us moved until he was well into the bathroom. He is the most famous person I’ve ever seen (not as if you can get much more famous!). It was really weird.

If you do see the movie, look for the kid who plays the bully. We met him afterwards too. He was such a nice kid! His name is Taylor (strange because he looks a little bit like Taylor H., but with short hair.). One of my younger friends wanted her picture taken with him, so the two of us went up and asked him if I could take a picture of the two of them. He was so sweet. He had the biggest grin, and his eyes were twinkling with amazement at the attention he was getting. My roommate and I thought he was so cute that eventually we got our picture taken with him, too.

Oh, the last thing we did was when we got out we saw that one of the actors, who is also in The Full Monty, was standing outside. Both Suzanne and I loved that movie, and he was probably my favorite part of it so we asked if we could take our picture with him:) He was also very nice about the whole thing!