Okay, I went. First of all, Medievalist, thanks for the Westwood recommendation - we parked and took a shuttle in. Thank goodness I planned in advance for that or we would have been circling for hours.
Secondly: Meh. This is my general reaction to the fair. Maybe these things just aren't my cup of tea, but I ended up just wandering around for hours. I was kind of freaked out by all of the bizarre self-published nonsense... everything from the second coming to new age gurus and 9-11 conspiracists. Also, the really funny thing was how many booths there were devoted to Atheism. They were almost identical to all of the booths with religious groups. We were joking that maybe they had their own atheist services when we realized their meetings actually WERE on Sunday morning.
Anyway it was just really hard to tell what was worthwhile and quality among all the weirdo stuff. I ended up not talking to anyone there because I was scared anything that looked interesting would turn out to be something freaky. (For instance there was a children's book booth that looked really cool only half of it turned out to be some adult semi-porno stuff and the kids books were... disturbing.)
There was supposed to be a whole strip of comic/manga related stuff... but instead it was about 3 booths of independent comic companies and then just random stuff. (The I love my mommie booth? The verizon booth?) We were never able to find the signing area at all for the couple of artists/authors that were supposed to be talking, and they were not "famous" enough to be included in the fair programme.
The food was INCREDIBLY expensive (all of it was through UCLA campus dining - methinks they were earning their food budget for the year), and it was $3.75 for any beverage, even water.
And it was beastly hot.
But I got to see Ray Bradbury again, that was cool.