We love the fine folks at Borders. They always get our names right and they always make two signs for us to steal when our event is over! We never have to have the you can have the sign in winter and I'll have it in spring chat on the way home from an event with Borders.
On Saturday night, Tod called to tell us that it was unbearably hot at the Festival of Books and if people weren't going to be looking at him, he'd just wear shorts and a t-shirt. Really fucking hot, he said. He told me that even though people will be looking at us, we should just wear t-shirts but for the love of God, man, don't wear BLACK! It's hot, wear WHITE! That is easy for a man to say. I am an artist, I can't wear white! I must wear black, it is the law. Also, I have a big chest and I am at the roly poly age, so yeah. Must wear black. Karen could wear white because she is thin, but she doesn't look good in white, either. Searching for the perfect not white shirt to wear made us wonder...
How many degrees hotter does wearing a black shirt make you? Really, we need a number.
All the people in sweaty white shirts looked really hot, too. The white shirt people looked as hot as the dark colored tee wearing people, so there.
Moments from the FOB:
*We were in the green room and hallway with Aimee Mann. OMG.
* During our signing, Karen saved my life. A giant bug was about to kill me
*When I noticed how odd it was that I'd been at the festival for 3 hours and nobody had given me a free tote bag yet, Lee whipped one out of his bag for me! I love free tote bags!
* Dumb asses lined up at the Borders booth where we were doing a book signing then asked us for directions to the LA Times tent. It should be no surprise that the dumb asses were all men.
* There was really good cake in the green room (also known as the super secret air conditioned room full of food and water for the authors)
*Male writers are still too hairy. I know we often come away from these literary events with this observation but it is still true. Men, you need to shave. You need to get haircuts. You need to stop living only in your dark room lit by the light of your computer screen. Get out of the house and into a salon! You'd have way more sex if you looked better. And, judging by most of the conversations we heard, sex is all these male writers want or want to talk about. Well, duh, it is all all men want. Well, actually, it's all they want TOD to talk about when he moderates panels. Odd, that.
*Just as we were about to hang with Julie Andrews that thing that I was waiting for that should've been here 15 days ago decided to arrive. Of course it did, I am me! Luckily, I was not wearing white because it was not easy to get to the super secret author bathroom way the hell far away from where we were and through the masses of people in the hot, hot, hot sun. By the time we got through all the people and out of the bathroom, Julie vanished in a poof of air! WTF? Good thing we have already seen her a few times before.
I put a few of our photos from the day in my flickr.