ON THE TOWN:Postcards and an invitation

If you came here looking for a comment on yesterday’s election, you will be disappointed. Unfortunately, the deadline for this column does not allow me to reenact the scene from “It Happened One Night,” in which Clark Gable is sitting in front of a typewriter with a drink and a cigarette racing against a deadline to write the story of the year.

Besides, these days, I’d get tossed out of the newsroom on my ear for smoking.

So here are some other thoughts. Here’s a big “thanks for nothing” to all of the candidates and political consultants for destroying what was a good thing. In advertising history, you see, this year will be known as the year of “the death of the oversized postcard.” I used to like oversized postcards. Their purpose was to get noticed from the rest of the mail and give the busy reader all he or she needed to know in an instant without having to open an envelope. Oversized postcards aren’t necessarily cheaper than a letter, just more effective. Sometimes.

Besides, in advertising, nothing is expensive if it works. But when our home received dozens of oversized postcards in the last few days of the campaigns, I realized that like a lot of other trends, we had overused the oversized postcard.

But that’s enough about that. What I really want you to know is that on Nov. 18, you have an opportunity to not only visit a special place, but also do something nice for a very worthwhile cause. On Nov. 18, you can enter the world of the Village Crean estate in Newport Beach. The good cause is the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa. Regular readers know that the shelter is special — it’s a place where families go to get a second chance. And what a chance they are given: job training, interview training, clothes, food, a real street address, a local school for their kids, and most important, hope.

The evening is sponsored by the Friends of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter. I have been promised that the evening will be fun and also that some of the entertainment will be provided by Barbara Venezia, who used to co-host “At Home on the Range” with John Crean.

That night, you will sample dishes from the newly-published Friends of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter cookbook, meet chefs from Five Crowns and Marco Polo and sip wine or a martini while enjoying live blues and jazz.

I want you to go if you want to see the Village Crean or if you want to sample savory dishes, sip a martini or do any of the other exciting things that will be available that night.

I also want you to go because it means help for an outstanding cause. But if you go for either reason, the result will be the same: More kids will have hope.

For more information, call Sally Phillips at (949) 376-5851.

And just think — no oversized postcard was used in the making of this invitation.