The FLOG!

Dear patrons of the arts,

The pleasurable feel and heft of a good, leather-bound first edition of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" is hard to describe, particularly when it's EXACTLY the right thickness to level the 50-inch plasma TV we got last weekend at the warehouse store.

Now the professional wrestling looks absolutely, positively real because the ring isn't tilting downhill.

And Dr. Phil isn't literally talking down to us when we're passed out on the floor. Thanks to a book, we have achieved an inner peace that is non-inconsequential.

We had prepared for this challenge by majoring in English. Through years of the painstaking study of literature, we already knew what you mere mortals would have to learn by experimentation:

Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace"=Too much screen-tilt the other way. Dr. Phil would be talking to the chandelier.
Richard Bach and Russell Munson's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"=No help at all. (On several levels)
Herman Melville's "Moby Dick"=Just right.

The currents and eddies of the literary experience have melded to become a wave that has dashed Murphy's Flaw on the jagged, rocky shoals (English major!! Woo! Woo!) of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books for a third year.

No, they haven't caught onto us yet. Mum's the word.

We'll be there Saturday, at 11 a.m. at the Etc. Stage, which is a concrete structure somewhere on the UCLA Campus, amid a bunch of tents. (Hey, we weren't geography majors....)

Luckily, you can get your bearings here. /festivalofbooks/directions.html>

More information on the festival can be had here /festivalofbooks/> .

It's free, except you have to pay for parking, but even that provides part-time work for some luckless freshman who must return Monday to the dank bowels of Norton's Anthology of English Literature (Woo!).

The Flaw hopes to see you for some Accidental Bluegrass on Saturday morn, and bring money for books.

They're a joy that will provide a lifetime's support. Also, if needed, for your TV.


The Flaw