Comments
GELFAND’S WORLD - The LA Times Festival of Books took place on the USC campus over the weekend. As previously, there were tents as far as the eye could see, including local book sellers and presenting everything else, from authors selling home-brew romantic novels to author self-help services to knick-knacks. For those who have never been: It's a cultural fair that is worth attending, and you might think about finally going next spring.
As before, I attended a few panels. The total number of panels exceeds anything that even a dedicated band of reporters could cover -- everything from food to politics to mental illness to more food.
I began by attending a presentation on press coverage of climate issues chaired by Elijah Wolfson which included a distinguished group of journalists: Corinne Purtill, Susanne Rust, and Ian James.
Here is what I expected to hear: How does California react to Donald Trump's terrifyingly ignorant vision of the recent propensity for violent hurricanes, tornados, and brush fires? How does the home insurance market respond to all of the above? There wasn't a lot of direct discussion along these lines; I suspect that the moderator and the panelists assumed that the audience were already clued in and therefore referred only tangentially to those issues.
We got some sense of the reportorial process: Rust talked about the increasing difficulty of getting comments from people whose continued employment depends on staying camouflaged from the political operatives in the Trump administration.
Purtill pointed out that the reporter's job is to find out what is true. Is the person giving information to the reporter really in a position to know? What incentive motivates that person? What doesn't he know?
There were some interesting things in the rest of the fair:
In an era where television networks are putting out shlockey attempts at redoing the Sherlock Holmes story -- in one case doing a modern day Sherlock as a New York based addict assisted by an Asian female version of Dr Watson, and in a more recent version doing an African American Watson opposite no sort of Holmes at all -- it was amazing to meet the best modern adaptor of the Holmes story in the form of Nicholas Meyer, author of The Seven Percent Solution.
The travel panel had several hundred people in attendance. I'll summarize this one briefly. Brian Kelly, the founder of The Points Guy blog, was questioned about advice that he and his staff give. Go for the credit card points over airline miles was the suggestion.
Cara Giaimo, a woman who writes for Atlas Obscura, has a book out about a few hundred of the more interesting life forms. Gary Janetti talked about getting a better hotel room when you are already there, and whatnot. A long line of people asked fairly predictable questions ("How can I become an L.A. Times travel writer?") which were politely answered by the panelists.
Addendum
The weekend was quite the cultural fun time for southern California. Besides the Book Fair, I partook of a showing at the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo. As readers of this site may remember, the Old Town Music Hall has been around as a building for about a hundred years and as a restored old-time movie theater for about half that long. It features a movie-theater style Wurlitzer organ (it is enormous, to say the least, and can do everything from a piccolo to a bass drum along with the traditional organ sounds) which can accompany films from the silent era in the traditional style.
On Saturday, the theater presented a bunch of cartoons, going back to 1920s era Max Fleisher creations along with more modern work from as late as the 1950s. Film historian Jerry Beck provided context and artistic insights. Remember Yosemite Sam? We saw a cartoon in which two Yosemite Sams (sort of twin brother types) are starving in a northern cabin when who should come along but Daffy the Duck as a traveling salesman. The sams are less interested in what he has to sell, and more interested in how he will taste. The theme of hungry predators continued in an early Wile E. Coyote cartoon which lacks a roadrunner but does, indeed, feature a rabbit (you know him) who ought to taste pretty good himself. Bugs gets the upper hand, as you might imagine.
A thoroughly delightful way to spend an evening.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
