Topic: Personal
Bruce took me to the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend, and we had a blast.  I've never been to a book festival before, and this was a great experience.  It was held on the campus of UCLA, and was free to all public, except if you wanted to attend a panel discussion or an interview you have to get tickets (for crowd control purposes), which can be had on-line for a pittance of $0.75; the upshot is that within a day of the tickets becoming available they were almost all gone for all the really interesting panels, so we had to make some strategery decisions on planning our festival experience.

We met Michael Pollan and had him sign Bruce's copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma (my copy is in storage somewhere buried in a density of boxes, along with my copy of his other book, The Botany of Desire).  We couldn't get tickets to his discussion panel called "Food Fight: When did eating become controversial?", so we had to go into the Standby line before the panel started; while we were in line, a woman behind us asked us to hold her place while she checked in with her party at the on-site ticket line.  We held her space, shuffled around restively in the rapidly warming morning, and when she came back right before the panel started, lo and behold she had 4 tickets in hand - 2 of them for us! It made our day!

We paid that favor forward later in the day by handing a pair of Ray Bradbury tickets to some people waiting in the Standby line for that event, and they told us it made their day.

Tangent: We didn't go to the Bradbury event because Bruce was taking me and the kids to a LA Galaxy vs Chivas USA soccer game.  That was a little awkward in the beginning as Yohlee was at the same game with her boyfriend Dirk, and it was the first time the two women had seen each other.  We did not meet, however. Bruce knows I cannot abide public scenes, and he was concerned that one might ensue; I however circumvented any such eventuality by suddenly finding interesting posters on the stadium walls to read rather than crossing paths with her in the ticket line.  Fortunately, our seats - with the kids - were very, very far away from her and Dirk, and the rest of the evening passed in peace and I really enjoyed the game, even capturing a goal on my digital camera video. We went out to supper afterwards and embarrassed the kids with groaner puns - to wit: Samantha says she had a glass of milk the previous night and she woke up all congested. Her father responds with "I bet you thought that milk was a good idea, but it's snot". 

It's a bit of a shame that Yohlee can't cooperate with Bruce more, as my ex and I are in full cooperative mode and we are on quite good terms, even professionally - Robert is a municipal water engineer and our work sometimes intersect, so it makes sense for us to stay friendly.  And I assure you that I hope to eventually have at least have a polite relationship with Yohlee, because it would cause Bruce less stress, and I will do what I can.

Now, returning to your regular email programming.

Have you heard of the books " Guns, Germs and Steel" (now a PBS program) and "Collapse" by Jared Diamond? Bruce loaned me his copies of both books into which I've made, sadly, not very much inroad but have enjoyed so far.  His sister, journalist Susan Diamond, also has a mystery novel out " What Comes Around", and they did a panel together talking about their upbringing and how they came to write what they write.   We went to the panel and had them sign their books too.  I asked her to dedicate her book to "Bruce and Bunny", and took pains to point out, amusingly, that I am the Bunny half of that duo, should there be any confusion*. Susan Diamond told a funny tale of watching Jared Diamond, in high school on the debate team, delivering a rebuttal during a public debate, and "...suddenly, without warming, Jared split an infinitive!" It goes to show the literary nerd quotient of the audience when everyone in the room not only got the joke but gasped obligingly and laughed out loud; or as we say in Internet parlance, LOL'd.

*I was born in 1975, the year of the Rabbit by the Chinese reckoning. When I was growing up my family called me Bunny, and even now my mother and my relatives call me that.  I told Bruce this and he has since been taken to using that moniker with me too.

We also met Walter Mosley, whose books Bruce have enjoyed. We brought several books to the signing after his very impassioned, very funny interview. Ostensibly it was about his new book "This Year You Write Your Novel", a lot of which was apparently about the commitment to write; he also treated us to his political views, an off-color joke, and the sight of a ginormous gold ring the size of a small chicken.  He told Bruce the ring was an original Ghanaian artifact, and since it was too tacky to have been made-up, I suppose it must be authentic.

Our last program of the festival that we had tickets for was a panel of history writers, notably military history writers; we had not known any of the authors but the panel topic was interesting enough that I got tickets, knowing that Bruce is interested in military history; on the same day, he went and got tickets to a science writer's panel knowing that I like science writing. Unfortunately for us, both panels were Sunday at 1:30, and we ended up making somebody else's day by giving away the science panel tickets to people in the stand-by line.  The historian David Wallechinsky has a book called The World's 20 Worst Dictators; I bought a copy for him to sign and now I can't wait to read what he says about the premier of China, Hu Jing Tao - oppressive Communist bastard that he is. By that I mean, Hu, not Wallechinsky.

One of the writers on the History panel has a book out on pirates, and I told Bruce that I want to go to the mic during Q&A and ask him if he's planning a book on ninjas (click on link for pirates vs ninjas Internet meme).  Bruce suggested I ask him if pirates were really motivated by money, or some other forms of...[wait for it]... booty.  Luckily for everyone, time ran out before I could make my way up there.

There were a lot of authors there, including cartoonists; Bruce got Sam a Rubes calendar, and Austin a signed Foxtrot volume.  The artist of Foxtrot actually drew a little cartoon of one of his characters saying "Hi Austin!" on the flyleaf, it was certainly different and fun.  I wanted a copy for myself but they had run out and we snagged the last copy of the book for Austin. Score!

We had great fun, although admittedly a bit - okay, a lot - nerdy.  The funniest moment during the two days, though, was driving up to LA and passing a car with the license plate that said " HALDOL", surrounded by a license plate frame that says "It's working!". I LOL'd. Bruce suggested we drive up against this guy's rear bumper so I can get a photo to send out, but we agreed, prudently, that it would be inadvisable to tailgate someone who's on an anti-psychotic drug in order to point a camera at them while we're all going 80 mph.