Cocktail talking points for your weekend

Los Angeles never looks its best in September. Just when the fashion mags are talking about textured tights and oversized scarves, L.A. residents are dealing with the hottest temperatures of the year. This is the one time of year when our East Coast friends truly have the upper hand on us. There, the weather is just cool enough to be refreshing. I recommend getting out of town this weekend, if you can, and talking about this:

1. Uber baby: You’ve probably heard about him, read about him and seen him on TV. I could happily spend all day reading and watching everything I can find on Akbar, the 19-pound baby born in Jakarta, Indonesia, this week. But it’s interesting to note: He is not the heaviest newborn on record. A 23-pounder was born in 1879. Mothers everywhere are letting rip with a collective, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Conversation starter: Hey, baby, have you heard about that big baby?

2. Soft TP is rough on the environment: As someone who grew up in a scratchy-tissue house, I consider a velvety-soft toilet paper a daily spot of luxury. But this week I learned just how awful my toilet paper preference is for the environment. “It’s like the Hummer product for the paper industry,” Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the L.A. Times. “We don’t need old-growth forests . . . to wipe our behinds.” What a dilemma!

Conversation starter: How far will you go for softness?

3. Flying is about to get even more annoying: As a harbinger of more annoyingness to come, British Airways announced this week that customers will now be charged a $30 fee to choose a seat on the plane. To be clear: That fee is for any seat you choose on the plane and not just for those extra-comfy seats with more leg room. My friend Jason relishes this new plan as a way for him to exercise his love of thrift (by not selecting seats), but as a mother who would like to ensure the family can sit together, I think this fee stinks.

Conversation starter: Could flying get any more irritating?

4. Maybe a vaccine for AIDS: It has been a headline 26 years in the making-- HIV Vaccine Discovered. But like everything with this disease, it is not as simple as that. On Thursday, a Thai and American team of scientists in Bangkok announed that it had found a combination of vaccines that provided modest protection against infection with HIV. The key word is modest. The study shows an apparent 31% reduction in infections among those given the vaccine regimen. A step in the right direction, but hardly a sure thing.

Conversation starter: Someday will we have an AIDS-free world?

5. Hot new edible plant: Nicholas Stadon, director of new plants for Monrovia Growers, says blueberries are the hottest new plant for the 2009-10 season. And I’m on board. I bought a blueberry plant for my patio farm last spring, and while I think I harvested a total of 20 blueberries throughout the summer, I can tell you that each one was delicious. Another bonus: no thorns!

Conversation starter: How about putting down the BlackBerry for a while and planting some blueberries?