Ducking Political Tomatoes, At a Book Festival

It was hotter than hell at the UCLA Festival of Books over the weekend, but it didn't stop almost a hundred and fifty thousand people from showing up. For books. To read. Who knew?

It wasn't all intellectual warm fuzzies however. Heated debates, audience heckling and stern words were exchanged when neo-con David Frum and McCain loyalist Dan Schnur took the stage with lefties Eric Alterman and Arianna Huffington. I just tried to steer clear of the metaphorical tomato throwing that went on every time each side tried to make a point.

Huffington, the blog-master of the lefties exclaimed in her perfect Zsa Zsa Gabor lilt, that some topics just weren't up for debate, "Global warming is a fact and it's happening. That's it." Yes, dahhhlink!

Over at the can't-we-all-just-get-along panel, Blurring Boundaries, Pico Iyer, Tony Cohan and Jenny Price, spoke reverently about the thrill of becoming immersed in other cultures to learn more about themselves. While moderator Thomas Curwen lamented the tragedy of going to a remote part of Greenland to find the kids were all listening to "50 Cents" (I think he meant Cent), Iyer said he never would have seen the Metallica documentary, Some Kind of Monster, now one of his favorite films without travel. What could be better cultural immersion than that!?

Current administration bashing ensued from famed rebel rouser Gore Vidal and beloved sci-fi iconoclast Ray Bradbury, but over at the Shooting the Tube panel all Steve Hawk, Steven Kotler, Kem Nunn and David Rensin wanted to talk about was why surfing is so hard to talk about. "It's something you do," Hawk waxes. "Telling you about the perfect wave I just surfed is really boring. It's about doing it, man."

Too true. Because after 2 days in the Los Angeles heat, all I wanted to do was hit a beach with perfect waves, and a great book.

--Amy Feitelberg