When Mayumi Carboni, executive director of the Fort Wayne Newspapers Three Rivers Festival, announced in May that the festival was short $65,000 in sponsorships, a lot of people thought the beloved event was destined for major shrinkage this year.

Now Carboni is happy to report that all that lost ground has been made up and then some.

"It was like a chain reaction," she says. "This business talked to that business, and all of a sudden we were getting a lot of calls from people saying, ‘Hey, I’d like really like to help out. What can I do?’

"It was almost like magic," Carboni says, laughing with unmistakable relief. "The theme this year is so appropriate: ‘Just Imagine.’ Just imagine when people really helped us out."

And to think you were sitting there fretting that they were going to cancel your favorite TRF event (which for most of you would be the Allen County Bar Association’s family fun day).

Nope. Everything is as it should be. Plus, there will even be a few new (or, at least, newish) features.

Let’s focus on six.

Fort Wayne Newspapers Cornhole Classic – I think it’s safe to say that the word "cornhole" has multiple definitions, several of which aren’t savory. When I lived in Massachusetts a dozen or so years ago, I didn’t even know any savory definitions. Imagine my surprise when I came to the Midwest and found out there’s a game by this name that is not only savory, it’s downright upright.

Back East, the most prevalent picnic games are horseshoes, croquet, Frisbee and boccie ball. Try to interest East Coast folks in a rousing bout of cornhole, and you may get more than you bargained for. It won’t matter if they’re offended by your offer or flattered by it. Either way, you are likely to regret ever bringing it up.

I have played my fair share of flyover country cornhole (aka corn toss, bean bag toss), and I have learned two things about it. As a participant sport, it is best enjoyed after the participants have already enjoyed several alcoholic beverages. As a spectator sport, it is best enjoyed after everyone within a 25-yard radius has already enjoyed several alcoholic beverages.

I may have to give up these truisms, however, as cornhole is about to receive the sort of makeover that can only mean one destination: ESPN2.

The teams that plan to take part in the Cornhole Classic on Saturday and Sunday in Headwaters Park West are super-serious about it. Apparently, there are people who have gotten really good at cornhole. For all I know, they were sober the whole time. I just realized I really don’t know much about cornhole. Whatever the definition.

Free Flow – People who complain (however justifiably) about the low quality of the entertainment under the TRF event pavilion need go no farther than Freimann Square. Before Headwaters Park, Freimann Square was the epicenter of Three Rivers Festival activity, and it’s still feeling a little sensitive about the whole thing, to be perfectly honest.

But on July 18, Freimann Square will host an event like no other: Free Flow. Free Flow is the only TRF event to have received the Hal 9000, T-800 and THX 1138 seals of approval.

Free Flow is 12 hours of live electronic music, whether it be ambient, drum and bass, techno, house, industrial or any of the other subgenres that I have never been able to make heads or tails of.

To read an in-depth yet totally fictitious and therefore useless profile of Nofi, one of the participating artists, go to www.journalgazette.net/getaload.

Promotional Tractor-Trailer Rigs – You can always find them in Headwaters Park West, trucks that unfold to reveal promotional wonders. It’s like "The Transformers" except with marketing freebies instead of giant robots. Carboni says to expect representatives from Walgreens, Texas tourism, NASCAR, M&M’s, Airheads candy and Jet Fusion.

Carboni said she’s not sure what Jet Fusion is, so we can only guess that it involves free samples of either hydrogen-boron or deuterium-tritium fuels.

"Rent: School Edition" – Considerably toned down from its Broadway heyday, this version of Jonathan Larson’s musical is intended to be produced and presented by pre-collegiate casts and crews.

Yet even this "Rent" has generated controversy. "Rent: The School Edition" still deals with tough topics, HIV infection and drug addiction among them. Kudos, I say, to director Kirby Volz and the student thespians who are involved in this production for making this electrifying work available to area theater-goers. It opens today at North Side High School, 475 E. State Blvd.

Vintage Trans-Am Race and "Rock the Fort" Rock Crawling Competition – Both of these events involve remote-control cars. The first happens at noon Saturday on the section of Calhoun Street that infringes on Headwaters Park West. The second event starts at noon July 18 at Headwaters Park’s Terrace Garden, and it involves remote-control vehicles that have been designed to climb rocks. Carboni says the latter is a first-of-its-kind event. In two years, she says, it should have an international scope. And in two years, I predict, ESPN2 will have a satellite office in Fort Wayne.

Make like Al Capone or, at least, make less of a fool of yourself than Geraldo Rivera – Everybody who buys a TRF button this year will get a chance to crack a vault containing (in absentia) $10,000, Carboni says. The vault will be at the information booth in food alley. It has a six-digit combination lock, and everybody who qualifies for a chance will get just one.

spen@jg.net