faboo mama

You can see the new car here.

Okay. Not really. I just found it hilarious that some would do this to an old Escort wagon. Did you check out the tail lights? Smokin’.

Festivals.  Lots and lots of them.  Usually defeating the purpose of saving the earth.

Yesterday, I had planned on taking the kids to the zoo and to Travel Town.  It was packed getting over there.  I couldn’t understand why there were so many cars headed toward the zoo.  So many cars.  The exit for the zoo off the  5 north was backed up for almost half a mile.  Imagine all those cars.  Naturally, we didn’t sit in that line and instead chose to go around the back way.  We got to the zoo in a matter of minutes, but even though we were close to the (packed) parking lot, it was still a line. I can only imagine what the horribleness that is known as Los Feliz Blvd. was like.

As we edged closer to the zoo, we saw the balloon from a local radio station and figured Something Was Happening.  Since it was the local station that plays old 50s and 60s shoot-me-now rock songs, we quickly sped away.  It didn’t dawn on me at all that it was Earth Day celebration.  Why?  All those hundreds of idling cars on various streets and freeways.

It’s only going to get worse.

A quick check on Earth Day events for Los Angeles, turned up 17 more large scale events between today and May 11.  Only two of them are completely off the grid.  Most of them are touting their recyclable food containers and trash cans.  Otherwise, they’ll still be using an inordinate about of electricity, and all that good stuff.

Which should make the Wilshire Center Earth Day Festival interesting.  It’s a car-free day as declared by the area’s councilman.  I’m cynicial enough to recognize that this is nothing but a big promo for the area and the part of the street that will be closed down is probably the most economically depressed on the entire street from downtown to the sea. But I’ll ignore all of that, hop the Gold line and somehow make it over there with my kidlings.  Besides, Michael Franti.  Hello!

Our car culture can get a bit ridiculous, don’t you agree?

Volvo had some pretty interesting concept cars. This car was pretty neat:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_8-0Xau52c&rel=1]

The funniest thing about this car was the reactions of the 4 - 12 year old crowd. The double takes and the agape mouths were pure comedy.

We went yesterday mainly because the little boy likes cars. I knew he’d get a kick out of All Those Cars, so we got going. First off, let me just say for convention planners and the sort, don’t ever pick the LA Convention Center for anything. They hate people. Parking has always sucked and has only gotten worse over the years. Do you realize that when we left around 1pm, there was a line of cars around two blocks, yet the parking structure we had parked in in the morning had been closed up and was at half capacity. In fact, I highly suggest that no one should ever have a convention in Los Angeles unless you’re a complete moron. Then by all means, go for it. The city’s not conducive to conventioneering and we don’t need more idiots who can’t navigate our streets, navigating our streets.

Auto Show. Right. So, we went and Alton loved it. When we got there, he didn’t quite get it. We stumbled into the Overpriced Vehicle closet (The Bentley’s, Astin Martins and whatever else was shoved in there) that was like the Nordstrom of the whole thing. Then we went into the South Hall where a good chunk of the cars were located. For my opinions (you know I had some), on of the cars, you can pick through the photos on flickr. I’m not interested in talking about cars on this blog. I will talk about the economy or politics of the show in general.

This year’s auto show theme was “green cars”. I don’t know if it was the official or unofficial theme, but every single car maker had a their own poseurish “green booth”. What made it laughable was the spiel the barkers hosts had on the midwayfloor when talking about their car. Keep in mind, that only one car won the 2008 Green Car of the Year award, but that didn’t stop the others from talking like their recycled seats were the best thing to every happen to cars. I even heard some of the “hosts” talking about how the entire company is committed to the environment and that even the floor tiles you were standing on were recycled. They’d say this in front of a 20-ton behemoth that gets 3 miles to the gallon.

But I’m not going to complain too much. Even if “green” is the new “organic” and people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fake the funk, it will (hopefully) get more people actually thinking about where and how they spend their dollars.