Pair of Chevy Volts at 2011 Alt Car Expo in Santa Monica

Santa Monica is a Ground Zero for hybrid, electric, and other alternative fuel vehicles in the U.S. It’s nearly impossible to open your eyes while there and not notice at least a Prius or two. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the flagship event for this Sunday‘s National Plug-In Day will be a gathering and parade of electric and plug-in vehicles in Santa Monica.

National Plug-In Day is a combined effort by Plug-In America, Sierra Club, and the Electric Auto Association, and comprises some 24 events nationwide, from New York City to Honolulu. The events will include parades, “tailpipe-free tailgate parties”, test drives and other activities.

At the flagship event in Santa Monica on Sunday, owners of “highway-capable plug-in vehicles” (meaning electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) are invited to bring their vehicles to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium parking lot between 8 and 9:30 a.m. Following a 9:30 press conference, the vehicle parade will begin at 10 and will roll down Main Street. The public is invited to meet with the vehicle owners at the Civic Auditorium before the parade, to talk to them about their experiences owning and driving these vehicles.

Presumably, we won’t see any fire engines in Sunday’s parade, but I’d bet that we will have some of those in the not-too-distant future.

Pic by me. Embiggenates with a click.

Not long after I first moved out to LA, a friend who came to visit observed that smartphones are ubiquitous in LA. “As soon as the plane touched down, 90% of the people pulled out blackberries…”

That was, of course, before the first iPhone dropped, and LA’s phone culture has become even more entrenched since, and it’s also become far less rare for folks to have smartphones in small Midwest cities such as the one I hail from. The proliferation of the iPhone and Android, smartphones for the non-business user, eventually brought with it the popularity of new types of games (for non-gamers).

Some of those games – as is evident in the picture above – have been quite popular.

Experience a live visual music sensation on Friday, April 22nd courtesy of The USC School of Cinematic Arts and Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Initiative for FREE! Rhythms+Visions-Expanded+Live! is an exciting outdoor event with performances spanning animation, experimental documentary, social commentary and abstract visual music. UK audiovisual collective D-Fuse and Los Angeles artist Scott Pagano will perform live. Additionally, giant 3-D stereoscopic animations will be projected onto the building facade, interacting with the audience and the architecture. 3-D glasses will be provided.

Rhythms+Visions-Expanded+Live! is this Friday, April 22nd from 7:30-11pm at the USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex. Admission is Free. A lively panel discussion will follow the performances. Facebook event page here.

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!

After a 2 year hiatus BarCamp, the premier ad-hoc technology conference returns to LA Sunday April 30th through Sunday May 1st. The event will be held this year at Mt Washington Elementary at 3981 San Rafael Avenue. Tickets are $35 right now for the whole weekend and there are student and group discounts available.

If you’ve never been to one I have to say that BarCamps are more like a weekend at tech camp than a conference. Anyone can give a presentation (but make sure you’re there early to get the prime spot) and the topics can vary wildly but they’re almost always fun and insightful. I’ll definitely be there!

Get tickets early because it’s definitely going to get sold out fast. Not to mention you can skip the Procrastinator edition tickets which are an extra $20 if you just get them now.

http://barcampla.org/ on the web
@BarCampLA on Twitter
Facebook

I call this The Nordstrom Effect.  It reminds me of those Nordstrom salespeople who, though typically not young nor Goth, are just as overly helpful as the sex shop girls.  In both cases, what starts out as accommodating quickly becomes annoying.

At Nordstrom, I think the salespeople do this because (1) commission is likely a big part of their compensation; and (2) they want to uphold Nordstrom’s well-deserved reputation for excellent customer service.  However, at the sex shops, I think it’s nerves.  Specifically, the salespeople and their managers figure that many customers in their stores are uncomfortable and in need of hand-holding.

And sometimes they are right.  I’m sure there are many people — perhaps women more than men, if this series is an indication — who feel shy about striding into sex shops and picking out personal items.  (Guys often have their own problems in other stores, such as when picking out lingerie for their women).

The cure for The Nordstrom Effect, and the shyness which may cause it, can be found online.  There are tons of Internet retailers out there, such as Adam and Eve , 123 Adult Store, and Sex Toy Sex.org (links NSFW, obviously), where you can shop in the privacy of your own home.  Moreover, some of the Los Angeles area shops profiled in this series provide online shopping as well.  Many of the well-known sites will send your items in discrete packaging designed not to raise the red flags (or any other parts) of nosy neighbors and pervy postmen.  Coincidentally, I met one such retailer the other night, the woman who runs the Los Angeles-based Sex-Butter.com (not to be confused with Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax for your surfboard, unless you are using “surfboard” as a euphemism), who sells her products primarily online.

Of course, it is a fun experience to grab your sweetheart or friends and check out a sex shop or three in the flesh, whether as a bona fide shopper or simply a tourist.  Our writers in this series have done just that, profiling some of the sex shops they like in the Los Angeles area.  However, if avoiding The Nordstrom Effect is a priority, then shopping online might be just what the Naughty Nurse ordered, on Valentine’s Day or any other day.

[Part of blogging.la's "We've Got Valentine's Day Licked" series]

LAPD Bomb Squad by Clinton Steeds (2009)

I came home this evening to find a lot of police activity in my neighborhood and had to do a little detour. I realized that the happenings were pretty close to my street. In fact, one end of my street, about half a block from my house, was yellow taped off. I really wanted to find out what was going on, but wasn’t too keen on wandering over to the scene. I learned some basic information from a neighbor (suspicious package, homes evacuated), but I wanted to follow the progress.

Someone suggested I go to an online police scanner, which hadn’t occurred to me. I found what looks to be a pretty good resource. Radio Reference.com’s Los Angeles County page has live communication feeds from a variety of police, fire, and EMS departments. I tuned in to the Los Angeles Police and Fire-San Fernando Valley Divisions broadcast and  learned fairly quickly that the situation was resolved and that the “resources” were being released. In a relatively short period of time, I heard all kinds of things from animal bites to suspects being apprehended. I know I’m not the only one who get frustrated when up-to-the-minute info is not readily available, even on Twitter. You might want to bookmark this one.

I am now being followed by the Mayor of Los Angeles.

Do I consider this my crowning achievement as a Metblogs contributor? Yes. Do I think it will end well for either party? Probably not.

Consider my most recent tweet regarding @Villaraigosa, after the jump.

Thanks for the follow. Mr. Mayor. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Which means, at this point, you should be following most of the city.

OK Go performing at USC Conquest 11/21/09 Photo by Jodi

If you’ve been anywhere near the internet this week, you’ve probably seen the new, innovative video from local band OK Go. The group is well-known for its viral one-take creations, most notably “The Treadmill Video,” in which the guys did a fairly complicated routine on four treadmills for their song “Here It Goes Again.”

To promote their third studio album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, which is a fantastic, Prince-inspired record, OK Go has pushed the DIY music video to a new level. Teaming up with L.A.-based creative powerhouse, Synn Labs, the band’s ambitious concept involving a massive Rube Goldberg machine was brought to life.

The engineers were tasked with creating the device with the requirements “that it had to be interesting, not “overbuilt” or too technology-heavy, and easy to follow.  The machine also had to be built on a shoestring budget, synchronize with beats and lyrics in the music and end on time over a 3.5 minute song, play a part of the song, and be filmed in one shot.  To make things more challenging still, the space chosen was divided into two floors and the machine would use both.” The geniuses of Synn Labs spent a few months in a warehouse in Echo Park creating a physical manifestation of the band’s vision.

In case you haven’t joined the over 3.5 million people who have watched the latest “This Too Shall Pass:”

If you like the video and/or are a fan of the band and you’re in Los Angeles wondering how to spend your Friday night, you should head over to LACMA at 8pm for the band’s official West Coast video release party. Not only will you get to see the video on a screen bigger than your computer monitor, but you will be treated to a rare acoustic set by OK Go, a Q&A with band, and a DJ set by the band’s own Tim Nordwind. But wait, there’s more! Select pieces of the Rube Goldberg machine featured in the video will be on display. Yes, OK Go makes kick-ass videos, but they are also consummate musicians who are great live.

Since the event is in a few hours, there are only a limited number of tickets available at the box office. I’d say it’s worth taking a chance. Ticket sales to the event benefit the museum’s Muse group.

The problem is, I keep learning the results from these Internet sources hours before seeing them for myself.  I learned of Hannah Kearney’s mogul skiing gold medal, Apolo Ohno’s record-tying silver medal in speed skating, and the generous figure skating judges doling out high scores to skaters who fell during their short program, all before seeing it on tv.  I tried appealing to my Twitter peeps who aren’t located on the West Coast not to post Olympics results, but they seem to need to do so, as if their reactions won’t count unless shared electronically and immediately.

I’m sure some of you are more computer-advanced than I, and can tell us how to get a great webcast of the Games on our computer in real time, even on our big-screen hdtv.  If so, I would love to hear the solutions.  I investigated this briefly, and did not find a satisfactory solution — for example, the online ads I saw were even more annoying than those on NBC.

I’m afraid the only solution I have found to watch the Winter Games unspoiled by spoilers is the most radical solution of staying off the Internet altogether.