When I showed up at my office building this morning, workers were beginning to construct what appeared to be some sort of shantytown along the length of the building's south side, but when I finally got a brief break to go grab some lunch just now and went downstairs it had become clear that this was not a shantytown at all but a tunnel completely enclosed by War Of The Worlds banners leading up to the entrance to the Ziegfeld theater. So anyone wanting to stand in the vicinity of TomKat, or maybe just get indoctrinated into the Church of Scientology, should head over to 54th between 6th and 7th, because it looks like the east coast premiere's going down tonight. They have most of the big premieres here by my building, but this is the only time I've ever seen them completely enclose the red carpet, though during inclement weather they often erect a roof over it; I guess they don't want any copycat water squirters dampening the festivities this time. I'm not positive, since I only glanced down that way before taking off in the opposite direction for my sandwich-fetching, but I believe I saw what looked like a Scientology information hut in operation, too, which would make sense given the fact that space aliens and movie premieres are right at the heart of their philosophy: Scientologists believe that 75 million years ago an evil galactic ruler, named Xenu, solved overpopulation by bringing trillions of people to Earth in DC-8 space planes, stacking them around volcanoes and nuking them. Then the souls of these dead space aliens were captured and boxed up and taken to cinemas where they were shown films of what life should be like, false ideas containing God, the devil and Christ and told to get ill. After that they supposedly clustered together and now inhabit our bodies. Scientologists believe that if they rid themselves of these body thetans then they will be healthier and will gain special powers like mind-over-matter. [UPDATE: I thought for the purposes of journalistic integrity I should run back downstairs to take a closer look, and I can now confirm that yes, there are indeed Scientologists down there, plus there is a police barricade covering both sides of the street and tons of touristy folks are already packed in behind them, even though these things never start until around 8pm. So if this engagement foofaraw is a publicity stunt, it's totally working, this is already the craziest I've ever seen it down there.]