June 8th is World Oceans Day, a day to “celebrate and honor the body of water which links us all, for what it provides humans and what it represents.” As a nod to World Oceans Day, the LA 3-D Club, in conjunction with San Diego-based PassmoreLab, is presenting the Los Angeles premiere of Ocean Voyagers 3D tomorrow night at the Downtown Independent. The 72-minute documentary features rare footage gathered by filmmakers with unprecedented access.

Narrated by Oscar, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning actress Meryl Streep, and filmed over a 5-year span in the waters of French Polynesia, Hawaii, Alaska and beyond, the film follows a mother humpback whale and her newborn calf in a “coming of age” journey for the neonate giant.

Blogging.la is giving a pair of tickets to the screening to one commenter. Leave us a note and one lucky winner will be selected around Noon tomorrow.  See below for more details about the event:

Ocean Voyagers 3D Screening + Q&A
Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 8pm

Downtown Independent Theater is located at 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles, 90012

$5 for current LA3DClub members; $10 for non-members (admission is waived with USC Student ID)
FREE if your comment is selected at random!

Intelligent Vehicle in a "running the red" test.

Yesterday I sat in on a panel discussion with some pretty esteemed folks discussing the future of the automobile and its sustainability as a transportation mode in the Los Angeles “Megacity” of the future.  The panel consisted of local government bodies, think tanks and the like.  All agreed that the freeways now are full and it will only get worse when a project 50% population growth takes place over the next couple of decades.  There is no money for new freeways or other transportation infrastructure so we have to make the best of what we have.  That means finding ways to reduce congestion and traffic which will help with air quality and general quality of life.

One of the solutions is “intelligent vehicles” that communicate with each other to avoid accidents that cause congestion and traffic jams in the first place.  Other solutions to reduce traffic include “congestion taxes” in certain population centers in the area as well as “road taxes”.  These taxes will be used to fund the infrastructure needed to make intelligent vehicles work.

An intelligent vehicle is one that communicates with others on the roadway.  It shares basic info such as direction of travel and speed and allows the systems to warn each other of potential hazards.  Alarms go off when such a hazard is detected to alert driver to potential problems to make decisions on how to avoid a collision.  Further down the road there will be sensors on the roadways that collect data from numerous cars on the road to alert them of problems and alternate routes to avoid congestion or jams. Read the rest of this entry →

I like an uncluttered room. Spare space=creative energy. So why is it that no matter how much stuff I throw away, there is an endless supply of miscellaneous junk lying around?
Take my house for example. It’s only occupants are me, my love-man Dan and our trusted canine. Okay, throw in a host of relatives who visit (camp out) regularly and a bevy of out of town, quite loved friends who stay for long weekends, so there is a lot of traffic. Somehow we end up with a lot of stuff.
Lately, the garage has been filling up with old cell phones, TV’s, endless cords, out of date CD players, not to mention a huge bag of batteries. My first inclination is to toss this stuff… but I know I shouldn’t, hazardous waste and all. So I was very excited to see the banner outside my local Gelson’s on Franklin in Hollywood advertising their monthly e-waste recycling on the 2nd
Saturday of each month. Next one is May 14th.
I inquired inside as to what they took and it was everything electronic, especially computers. They even take batteries inside the store at the managers station. Yippee. On further research, I found that your local Best Buy also recycles everything electronic. And the county of LA does it too. So the cleaning rampage begins once again. Much to my boyfriends chagrin.

In my unofficial and unavoidable capacity as Lead Surrogate Uncle and Security Chief to the hummingbirds who nest in our front and back yards each year, I endured tragedy and enjoyed triumph with last year’s batches of chicks. Only one of the four survived to fly its frontyard nest, and getting that one to that stage proved quite the dramatic and ultimately fulfilling experience.

Well the next chapter in the saga has commenced, begun this morning when I got buzzed closely by a gonna-be-a-momma humma (I believe a rufous hummingbird) who lighted on the location it had chosen for its partially constructed nest (as seen above) and busied herself in the branches a few feet above where I happened to be standing in the backyard.

Radiation Alert! Want to get a heads up on the radiation fall-out hitting LA right this minute? Check this out!  It’s a live streaming radiation monitor set up in West LA so you can see what’s going on at any time of the day or night.

There’s even a chat set up, so you can get answers to all your burning questions.

These guys also get bonus points cuz the device glows in the dark!

Sign announcing new park feature.

I have to admit this stopped me in my tracks for a bit.  For the first time in ages I went onto the Lario San Gabriel River Trail via Encanto Park.  I’ve blogged in the past about this great little park, now they have a new feature.  A man made “river trail” replete with crane sculptures and nice little seating areas.

What a great place to take kids without the risks associated with the river itself to teach them about the rivers in the area.  Of course ripping out a bunch of grass and putting in native species will help with the water load created by that park in this Mediterranean climate of ours.

Pics by me with my cell phone or “toy camera”…more of the park and San Gabriel river after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry →

This morning started out calmly enough. A brisk walk with the dog in the hills of Hollywood. Then we came upon a storm drain. The dog went crazy sniffing and suddenly I heard screams. High pitched loud ones coming from the storm drain. I yelled down that I would get help. The moaning stopped. I tried to make contact. Silence. Was it a baby? A woman couldn’t fit down there. A small dog? A cat?

I ran home and dialed 911 and explained the situation to the fire department. To their immense credit, they were there in 15 minutes. They pried the manhole off the storm drain, and we heard the screams again. Much more woefully. They insisted it was an animal. They couldn’t risk going down and perhaps injuring themselves if it was a wild animal. “this happens all the time”.

I went home and called animal control. They listened and said they would try and get a field officer out there, no guarantee. An hour later, I got a call asking me to go out to the area, a couple of blocks away and show the officer where the animal was crying.

I left my house… but there was no animal control officer anywhere! I waited and waited. The cries continued. Hours had gone by.
Later, I ran into a neighbor and they told me that an animal control truck had circled the area but hadn’t stopped.
The screaming has stopped, no sound is coming out of the drain seven hours later. Perhaps the animal got loose and is okay. More likely, it gave up and died. Really hard to not be able to help.

I was driving West on Jefferson Blvd. in Culver City recently, when a steep hill and sign touting the “Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook“ caught my eye.  I quickly turned in, followed the winding road uphill, passed several hikers huffing and puffing in the roadway, then turned around before reaching the top when I saw the sign: “Parking $6″.

Read the rest of this entry →

Surely scattered amongst that heap of trash, waiting to be compressed and re-organized into neat cubes, are sex toys.  Broken vibrators, unused and used butt plugs, tired dildos.  And I know you’re thinking, Gee whiz, if we don’t do anything about all these old sex toys, they’re just going to pile up in our landfills!  And leak bodily and toxic chemicals into our soil and water!

This does not have to be our future, people.

Instead of wrapping your old, non-functional toy in ten black plastic bags and tossing it in the trash, you can instead recycle it at 69 Adult Toys [link totally NSFW] in Tarzana.  And by “recycle,” I do not mean to imply that the store will clean it and sell it as a “refurbished” toy.  No, no, no.  A toy is nothing more than the sum of its parts, you see?  All the plastic and electronics can be broken down and recycled, just like any other, uh, toy.  The plastic from yesterday’s vibrator will become the plastic on tomorrow’s Tupperware; the electronic components will be safely recycled as e-waste.

All you have to do is clean your toy, place it in a plastic bag so you can show them what you have (they’d rather not touch it, thankyouverymuch), and bring it in.  In exchange for being green, they will give you a 10% discount on your in-store purchase that day (limited to one discount per day) – sort of like bringing in your used ink cartridges to Staples and getting a discount on new ink. 69 Adult Toys carries a line of eco-friendly toys, so if you really want to get off guilt-free, put that discount to good use and buy something green.

Wall-E and our future generations thank you.

Not just one, but two rainbows, one of them perhaps the brightest and closest I’ve ever seen, ending at the Marina del Rey boat harbor.  Photo taken at about 3:30 pm today.  If it’s still grey or rainy where you are, it appears that sunshine is finally on the way.

Whoa! Super crazy visual just now in the sky. I was just walking the dog 15 minutes ago (about 12:10 am) and I glanced up at the sky to see a HUGE green ball of fire drop straight down from the sky over LA. I’m up in the hills, so I got a great view. I suppose it was a meteorite, very bright, with a long tail, lasted about three seconds. It dropped straight down, rather than across the sky. And it was definitely green!

The weird thing is that about six months ago, I was driving down from San Francisco and was on the 5 in the middle of the state, seriously in the middle of nowhere, and saw something really similar. It was so big and bright that I was sure it had to be a big news event, but try as I might to find out what it was the next day, I didn’t read a single thing about it. Then a couple of weeks later a friend who lives out in the country outside of Santa Barbara told me he had seen the very same image that night at the same time. Both of these were almost too big to be a simple falling star or even any meteor I’ve ever seen!
Did anyone else see this amazing green flash light up the sky last night?

Driving the Future and it looks pretty cool.

Mitsubishi MiEV has its moment of fame with the press

The day started off with the announcement of the Green Car of the Year award. It went to the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt. Mayor Antonio V gave a speech, in short LA is poised to be the electric car capital of the world. Not a bad goal as it will help us clean up our air more than simple emissions control has already done. Of course, its just shifting the emissions and CO2 out to the desert where the fossil fuel plants are that generate our juice that recharges them, but that’s another issue for another time.

Day 2 of the Auto Show is a tough one. The premiere car press conferences and unveiling continue non-stop and a dozen green cars, mostly Electrical cars (EV) are available to the press to test drive.  Its tough to do both and involves a lot of running between the various events one chooses and their scheduled drives.

I suppose this is the part where I should apologize to LA for the added traffic along the route caused by the press. If you were on the loop that was Venice to Hoover, to Alvarado, to Pico, then Figueroa back into a parking garage, I’m sorry if you got stuck in the mess. Half the press there wasn’t used to driving on our side of the road, or on the left and side of a car, and most importantly realize that pedestrians have the ultimate right of way in LA. I don’t know who was more scared the manufacturer chaperones or the motoring public in general as some of the press were just that bad. Sorry.

I opted to drive a mix of cars as the immediate future include just that a mix of traditional gas, hybrid, EV’s and in the near future more fuel cells. After driving them all I can see where the hybrid will have its place, particularly in the mid-size to large car categories. EV’s are in their infancy and have limitations that currently will keep them in the urban commuter category with their limited range and depending on the model, long recharging times.

Fuel Cell’s vehicles too are in their infancy with only a few cars coming to market in very limited production and even more limited infrastructure to support them. Currently the only fuel cell available to us is a leased Honda FCX Clarity. There are a total of 4 hydrogen fueling stations in So CA, with the one in Santa Monica the only one providing clean hydrogen via water and solar energy to remove the hydrogen. (Others are cracking natural gas which leaves nasty CO2 to be dealt with). Seriously, the fuel cell coupled with a hybrid drive is what in my not so humble opinion be the major player in our future. You give up nothing in terms of range, fueling time to a gas engined car and literally your exhaust is water vapor. With the help of CARB grants the infrastructure is going to improve to a dozen fuel stations in the LA Area by 2015 according to the Daimler rep I spoke with.

I started with what is the current state of the art offerings and worked my way into the future. As I had kid duty in the AM I missed getting into the line to sign up for the driving portion and many cars were booked solid by the time I got to the sign in station, cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf that I was very curious to test were gone.

Absent from the list was the Wheego LiFE that is going on sale soon here but has been in Europe for a few years. From the rumblings in the line I was able to gather that Wheego hand picked which press would be given access to the car in advance of the LA Auto Show. Could be sour grapes but I overheard an interesting exchange with some of the world press regarding this car. It went along these lines “I drove the car in London and there it was limited to 25 and it scared me. I understand its been reprogrammed to have a top speed of 65 and wonder how scary it will be now”. I wonder too. Seriously, though most of our freeway driving is during the commute hours you won’t see much more than a crawl so the top speed shouldn’t be an issue.

On to the driving impressions which are just my opinion and observations. They aren’t reflective of blogging.la as a whole, just my own  not so humble opinions and snarks.

Traditional Gas powered clean cars included the only nominee on the Green Car of the Year for this year. The Ford Fiesta. It is a nice little subcompact. It has electronic toys like Sync that others in its class don’t have yet. Compared to the European spec model I drove a year ago I can say nothing was lost in the translation to the US Market. Actually there was a gain, they 1.6L engine standard in our cars lent a noticeable difference in quickness compared to the 1.4L powered European prototype. With EPA ratings of up to 40 mpg on the highway it makes a good representation of the class for now and into the future.

41 mpg city, Lincoln MKZ Hybrid

Hybrids, specifically the Green Car of the Year nominee the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid was what I drove. Nice, very nice car with the luxury goodies one expects in the class. Good performance, not as stellar as the large v6 models in the class, but an acceptable trade off for the gains in fuel economy (epa city rated 41).  With no increase in base price to get into the hybrid version of the MKZ your return on investment from fuel savings is immediate.

EV’s and there was a boat load of them, some manufacture built others aftermarket conversions. I focused on the manufacturer built as, well those are the ones that will have the dealer network in place to support them. They also were the ones that had ample cars that I was able to get on the drive list. The one common theme that they all had a way of addressing was a) home charging and b)range anxiety.

Cooper Mini-E electric vehicle.

Cooper Mini-E. This is the slot car of the bunch. In many ways it actually drove like one too. The usual Cooper Mini ride was softened a bit with the weight of the battery pack but still handled like you expect a Mini to handle. It did have a short learning curve to get used to driving it as it has a very sharp cut off to regenerative braking, like down shiftin’ more than a gear if you abruptly remove your foot from the brake. Once you get the hang of driving with the electronic drive, it is very much like driving a regular car, IE you give up nothing to the experience. Currently the car is available only for lease as a test with a few large corporations and power company’s.  We’ll see a refined EV using the technology developed for this car in future BMW EV’s.

Eaton/Mitsubishi MiEV quick charge in action.

Mitsubishi MiEV is another EV that I drove. This one was more like your typical compact car, except it had really useable room in the back for two real passengers. Nice leg room and driving it you gave up nothing to a gas car. (It was right hand drive so that was an experience getting used to as even the turn signal stalk was in reversed position and every time I went to signal I hit the wipers instead…apologies to anyone behind me that got short notice of intent to turn). Mitsubishi has a novel approach to the range anxiety.

Mitsubishi teamed up with Eaton and Best Buy to set up “quick charge stations” that are either at the Best Buy stores or mobile to assist should you run low on charge. The system is capable of bring the battery pack to 85% of charge in 15 minutes. They will even have 20 mobile “quick Charge” trucks set up near key freeway interchanges or be able to move to large concert/sporing events to take care of their customers to help relieve their “range anxiety”. They will even have an iPhone app that will show on a map where you are and where the nearest Quick Charge station is located. This sort of infrastructure change is moving fastest for the EV’s and will make it possible to get a larger fleet of them on our streets than any other alternative fuel technology we have coming at us at the moment.

Volvo C30 DRIVe prototype test mule.

Volvo C30 DRIVe. This car I have to be fair with is just a prototype, chassis #2 to be precise so it wasn’t as refined as the others I drove. Refined as in battery capacity, not fit and finish. The drive itself was very much like that of the regular C30. It is indicative of the direction Volvo intends to take in the future, rather than purpose built EV’s it will be conversions of existing models. Its programming was more like a typical hybrid with a good “sail mode” or coasting without abrupt regenerative braking like the Mini-E. An impressive car in terms of what Volvo will give us in terms of a safe luxury EV in the future. One common comment made by the press was in regards to the position of the charge in the front grill. What happens if you break it when you bump someone and can’t get repaired right away. Interesting design feature or flaw, you decide.

The last and final car was the Mercedes. F-Cell. It’s a hydrogen fuel cell that when filled with hydrogen from a solar conversion plant produces zero emissions at point of use as well as zero emissions at energy conversion source. It is based on the “B” class Mercedes that is not sold in this country. Size wise think of it has a half scale minivan with some nice luxury toys tossed in by Mercedes. It gives nothing up to a traditional gas car in terms of the driving experience and has a refueling time as fast as filling your tank now. I was impressed with the amount of immediate torque and the silence of the car. Giving up nothing to driving experience and no need to learn a new way of driving and thinking will make the fuel cell the easiest conversion for the US market.

There you go…what the final day of the Press Days at the LA Auto Show entailed for me. Fun driving cars (I am a car guy after all) and getting a first hand glimpse into what the future holds in store for us. This is just a sampling of the nearly 30 alternative fuel and EV’s at the LA Auto Show. Definitely change coming, for the better and it will be easy to adapt as well.

This post also includes the last set of tickets I have to give away for the LA Auto Show. I have just 4 tickets to give left to 4 lucky winners, that is one ticket each. Make sure you have a legit email address so I can contact you for the info to pass on to the LA Auto Show folks so they can have your tickets waiting for you at will call.

All pics by me and will get bigger with a click. More in my flickr 2010 LA Auto Show Set.

Okay. I admit it. I’m lazy and I really hate recycling. I occasionally yearn for that carefree time when I could just toss my trash with abandon into the garbage can and not think about it. But those days are gone forever and now I compost, sort my paper and plastic and even worry about throwing light-bulbs away. So I was happy to see the West Hollywood event for “Free Document Shredding and Electronic Waste Collection” this Saturday, November 13th.
It’s from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the parking lot of West Hollywood City Hall, 8300 Santa Monica Boulevard. You can unload televisions, laptops, DVD players, fax machines, telephones, radios, monitors, cell phones, stereos, keyboards, microwaves, printers, computers, VCR players, scanners, whew! and more. And by going, you can let go of all that guilt for polluting the environment when you dump stuff like that in the trash.

Document shredding is “secure” which means that the shredding is done at the collection site. You can even watch your stuff get shredded if you like that sort of thing!

Vote yes on Prop 21! Help save California State Parks! Wait…what day is it? [checks election returns] Oh crap.

Well, here’s another way to help our amazing parks and have a blast while doing it. The CA State Parks Foundation is having a weekend of movies showing off State Park locations used in the films.

Are you a Star Wars fan? Would you like to meet Mark Hamill and Billy Dee Williams? Here’s your chance! The highlight of the screenings will be a showing of Star Wars: Epsisode VI Return of the Jedi at 1:30 pm on Saturday (11/6). Mark Hamill will do a Q&A after the show. Billy Dee will sign autographs beforehand (for purchase). Jedi used Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park and Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park for Ewok related locations.

At 4:30 on Saturday, they will screen M*A*S*H* and a Q&A with Elliot Gould will follow. There will also be screenings of two the tv episodes of M*A*S*H* with additional Q&A. Both the film and tv show used Malibu Creek State Park for many of their locations.

Sunday brings Sparticus (Hearst San Simeon State Historic Monument) and Planet of the Apes (Malibu Creek State Park) with a Q&A afterward with actor Lou Wagner who played Lucius.

Ticket prices are $10 (adult) $8 (child) for individual movies. You can also buy 3 movie packages for $25 (adult) and $18 (child). What a deal to see these movies on a big screen!

Our state parks are an amazing resource and I hope you’ll support them by simply enjoying them. BONUS: if you ever wanted to find movie and tv locations and take your picture in those exact spots here is a list of state parks and the movies they played a part in.

The full weekend schedule is here along with theater locations for each day. (This info is directly from the event website.)

Saturday, November 6th

The Paramount Theater
The Studios at Paramount
5555 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 9003

12:30PM – Autograph signing with Billy Dee Williams andDavid Barclay
Autographs available for purchase from Billy Dee Williams for $40 and from David Barclay for $25.
1:30 PM - Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi(Running time: 134 min.), followed by Q&A with Mark Hamill
4:30 PM - MASH (Running time: 116 min.)
6:30 PM – Q&A with Elliott Gould
7:00 PM – Intermission
8:00 PM - M*A*S*H (2 TV Episodes)
9:00 PM – Q&A with actors William Christopher (Father Mulcahy) and Jeff Maxwell (Igor, the Cook), Charles S. Dubin (director), Gene  Reynolds (co-creator), Burt Metcalfe (producer), Dr. Walter Dishell (medical advisor), and Ken Levine (writer).

At Saturday’s screenings, popcorn and bottled water is included in the ticket price. A taco truck and bar will be on site with food and drinks for purchase.

Sunday, November 7th

Darryl F. Zanuck Theater
20th Century Fox Studios
10201 West Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90046
1:00 PM - Spartacus (Running time: 198 min.) Introduction by film archivist Robert O.Neil.
5:00 PM (UPDATED)- Planet of the Apes (Running time: 112 min.) Q&A with actor Lou Wagner (Lucius) and the film’s makeup artist Daniel Striepeke.

You know those tiny pockets inside your regular front jeans pocket? The one that is supposed to be for a pocket watch or something? Schader Park is like that pocket – TINY!

This lovely little slip of a park is along Cloverfield Blvd, just south of Santa Monica (Click on the map image to go to the map.)

And it’s not large. But what it lacks in size it makes up for in charm, shady benches and lovely trees.

And that is all there is to say about this wee green space!