Yesterday I got to appear on a panel at the LAT Festival of Books with Wil Wheaton (of the 1.6 million Twitter followers @wilw, & etc.) and Pablo Defendini, who started at the ebooks company Open Road today. We talked about new media and publishing. It was fun. Should probably have mentioned it earlier, but, due to their fame, it was sold out, and I was in Las Vegas, looking at ladies in bathtubs full of rose petals at Tao and catching a cold.

I have a story about Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, the chefs at Animal, in this week's New Yorker. They are the guys who rent their space from a kosher bakery in Los Angeles, and manage to incorporate pork product into just about every dish, including dessert. Most scrumptious high-low dish: their loco moco, which uses Niman beef, foie gras, a quail egg, and a hunk of Spam.