Achengirls Gone Wild at the Miami Book Fair

The Miami Book Fair started out like any other: with a huge dog. Kbertocci and I had our day planned out and it worked out even better than we thought it would.

We started out in a session with Kurt Anderson (Spy Magazine, New York Magazine, NPR, etc) and kbertocci was impressed when she mentioned something to him at the book signing and he said, "You've blogged about that, haven't you?"

While she went off in search of Jonathan Franzen's words of wisdom, I stuck around for Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's shenanigans. I was not disappointed.

We were a little sorry we didn't get in Dave's book-signing line so we could meet him (it would have been a little awkward since neither of us had any of his books) but as we were walking around the book fair we saw him approach, so we called him over ("Hey! DAVE!") and explained that we were Achenbloggers and told him about our Achengirls Gone Wild weekend. He had us at, "You mean the Boodle?" We asked him if he read the comments and he said, "Well... there's a lot of them." Ridley Pearson grabbed my camera and posed us for a picture--proof if you will of our wild weekend.

We went off to look for Cuban food and then returned to the Book Fair for a fabulous concert by the Rock Bottom Remainders (we couldn't get tickets for Barack Obama).

What a rockin’ show. Special guest appearances by Andy Borowitz, Daniel Handler and some other cool, baby-booming writer-musicians. One highlight of the concert: Dave Barry's I'm in Love with a Proofreading Woman ("She's got a great big dictionary and she never says, 'between you and I.'") Of course, Andy Borowitz's social-commentary song (The Monkees' I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone) was worth the price of admission (free).

With the Book Fair closed for the night (we could hear Obama's speech, but not see it), we left Miami and headed for Miami Beach and dinner with the Miami Achenfish, ready to get up the next day to return to the Fair for one more speaker: Carl Hiaasen.

After listening to Hiaasen convince us to buy his books, we stood in line for an hour to get them signed. He was more impressed with TBG's daughter's Greek name (his wife is Greek) than the fact that we are Achengirls. Oh well.

Time for the beach and pool....