a musing julius…

steph and i went into laguna beach for a weekend soiree at the montage resort and spa, for my buddy’s wedding. aside from the montage being ridiculous awesome, with a wedding ceremony on the lawn just 20 feet from a cliff face which lead down to the pacific, every single detail of the wedding was immaculately planned. hell, even the “lay people”, those who paid the $700+ a night to actually have a room at the resort were asked to leave to area where the cermony was being held. it’s not every day you ask the people that are paying stupid amounts of cash to step away from the outdoor fire pit.

anyway, aside from feeling like a guest at a celebrity wedding, i enjoyed laughed at laguna beach for its extreme and over the top “i have more money/faster car/bigger boobs/better abs” than you. no shortage of lambos, ferraris, bentleys, astons, shelby gt-h (rental!) and porches (for those not blessed with 8 figure incomes) the aire around laguna beach was just absolutely insane. while steph and i were waiting for our lunch to arrive on the patio of a supremely cute french cafe, the conversations going on around us were absent minded “jibber jabber” with little value to society. one table of two men, their girlfriends, and what looked like their mother’s sat talking about their “pecs, bi’s and tri’s” and “just blasting [their] arms” when they’re at the gym. sometimes they just run 7 miles in 45 minutes when they don’t have enough time staring at themselves in the mirror. all 4 woman at that table were all wearing the same coach sunglasses.

another table asked for an additional chair to avoid putting their purses on the ground. the woman behind us made her waitress cry because her daughter asked for a warm croissant, and it was cold so she couldn’t eat it and was hungry because she couldn’t eat the cold croissant. god forbid your croissant is cold. as an apology, the waitresses comped their breakfast, to which the women replied, “don’t cry, we like you now.” the same women likely paid in the 5 figures to get their faces and asses reshaped. twice.

anyway, i’ll go back to visit brad in socal, but in general, it was icky people, pretty shops, views and restaurants and sick cars. i’ll take a lambo lp640 and a ferrari please.

my parents were in town to visit the north american international auto show this weekend (and celebrate my birthday) and we had a great weekend…but one of our main talking points we had all weekend was the american economy, gas prices, and america’s addiction to foreign oil.

i’ve already shared my thoughts on e85 and americas love of anything cheaper than gas (even though ethanol is more expensive.) but here we are, 2008 and despite $3.05 for a gallon of gasoline, we still do not care. here’s a great example of our future:

zero people looking at our future. learning about what could potentially power their vehicle in 20 years. while i didn’t take pictures of it, similar scenes were found around every single alternative energy or advanced fuel hybrid vehicle at the show. while this mazda5 probably isn’t a great example, a new tahoe hybrid (i happen to think the tahoe is one of the sharpest looking vehicles on the road) had zero people around it. lines formed around gas guzzling trucks, sports cars and luxury vehicles. handfuls gathered around a chevy volt. crowds waited to sit in the pontiac g8. (i’m angry its cheaper and has more horsepower than my car…thanks exchange rates…)

anyway…it just shocked me, that no one really cares about these cars. in fact, chrysler’s own research indicates that people will not demand alternative vehicle drive trains until gas reaches $13. man, i hope it doesn’t get that high.

i roamed the detroit autoshow yesterday, as i do each and every year…examining not my current employer’s line-up of vehicles, but more of the competition’s line-up.

the luxury marque brands, like maserati, lamborghini, bentley, rolls-royce, etc. usually hire tall leggy models in very skimpy dresses that stand next to their vehicles, doing nothing but smiling for the camera, and tilting their heads in a robotic blonde-like manner. these stands attract only the finest of male specimens, with fancy abercrombie shirts, collar popped, backwards baseball cap, and a set of jeans that came with a $25 “worn-look” option. some wore flip-flops, even though it was 7 degrees in detroit yesterday.

lamborghini’s stand was surrounded by these 20-something males, cameras extended at arms length above their heads, straining to take a picture of this car, with the model. frankly, i’m not interested in these cars. chances are, i’ll never be able to afford one, but i’ve sat in some, and driven others. they’re great machines…i wouldn’t mind a alfa romeo 8c competizione. but other than that, i don’t really care for a picture of these cars. i don’t understand why some men desire these photos. frankly, if you actually went to a dealer, they’ll (gasp!) let you sit in them.

if i want a picture, it’s of the CAR, not of the GIRL. i actually saw some guys asking for pictures with just the models at these stands, posing with these women they’ll never date, behind a car they’ll never own.

i guess the autoshow presents a fantasy for some of these guys. i suppose i’m not that interested in these cars, cause i read about or see them everyday. but if i really really wanted a picture of these cars, because they’re unique or rare, i’d ask the model to step away. she’s ruining the photo.

my buddy naim wrote a great article on why he hates e85 today and i felt like backing him up, but in a different way.

e85 is america’s response to bitching about gas prices. yeah, it’s $3. big deal. it’s actually cheaper than that stupid bottle of water you bought today, because you’re too good for tap water. what? don’t believe me. that bottle of aquafina you bought today probably cost $1.49 cents for 20 oz. 20 oz. of gas at $3.05 a gallon costs…wait for it…47 cents. you’re overpaying for your water (WHICH IS FREE) by a dollar. not amazing, a gallon of your bottled water (which is just filtered tap water if you’re buying aquafina or dasani) is $9.53!!!!!!

corn is the lifeblood of the american economy. sadly, u.s. corn subsidies destroy the world. (there is a correllation to u.s. corn subsidies and the destruction of the amazonian rain forest.*) between 1995 and 2004, the government spent $41.9 billion on corn subsidies. taxpayers paid that out of their pockets, to give to the american farmer. yay.

now, i recommend everyone see king corn, which is basically a movie about corn in america. note, most of the corn you see on the side of the road is produced as feed for livestock, and not for human consumption.

now, some of our corn is going to produce ethanol. great, except that using corn for ethanol now makes the supply of corn used for corn-based products such as high fructose corn syrup (which is in everything) go down, making prices go up. allegedly, if the price of high fructose corn syrup were to go up just 1/10th of a cent, it would cost coca-cola $125 million dollars.

corn based ethanol takes a lot of energy to make. in fact, more fossil fuels are burned to create ethanol from corn, than the resulting energy contained in the ethanol. what this means…is that ethanol is NOT renewable. corn itself is renewable, but the process by which it is converted to ethanol is not renewable. we’ll spend more energy than we get, and eventually, we’ll run out of the energy to create ethanol.

sugarcane is a much better source for ethanol, or beets, or switchgrass. but our subsidies, environment and tariffs on imported sugar make growing or importing these things either really expensive, or just not a value proposition for a farmer, who could just grow corn, and always get the government to pay for a large portion of their crop. the government does pay for farmers to grow switchgrass.

anyway, corn based ethanol is a killer. in the end, as naim says, ethanol is a crappy stop-gap to solve the energy crisis. only more efficient energy equations will create a truly renewable energy source. but really, we just need more nuclear power plants.

*u.s. farmers stopped planting soy in lieu of planting corn to collect government subsidies. supply of soy dropped tremendously, causing the price of soy to jump. brazilian’s have taken the opportunity to exploit the mass expanse of land they have tied up in rain forests, to plant soy.