All about cars

After driving south across 420 miles of cold, hard, wintry asphalt -- leaving a quiet and bucolic-if-chilly rural semi-paradise to return to the Big Ugly City -- I hurtled down the chute of Highland Boulevard to find traffic packed up like an old junkie on a six week heroin bender. The horrendous tie-up seemed to stem from the sight of a military-style helicopter repeatedly talking off and landing on the roof of the Hollywood Radisson Hotel (attached like a Siamese Twin to the Kodak Theater -- home of the annual exercise in bloated, onanistic narcissism known as the Oscars -- while a smaller chopper hovered nearby, apparently filming the spectacle. After three weeks of forty-something degree weather marked by rain and drizzle held at bay by the awesome power of burning firewood, it feels very odd indeed to once again be sweltering in the urban desert of Southern California. Here, the parched air and hot sun have turned winter into a memory. But if the weather is one thing (sweating in January?), getting re-acclimated to the fierce intensity of LA traffic is another beast altogether. Once behind the wheel, these people are clinically insane. Twenty miles-an-hour over the posted speed limit while yakking on a cell phone is standard operating procedure on the freeways, streets, and alleys of Los Angeles. Supposedly there’s a law against using a hand-held phone while driving in California, but I see no evidence of this in LA, where everyone from newly-licensed tweeners to gray-haired grannies can’t seem to drive around the block without dialing up a friend or relative in another city/state/nation. My back-woods solution? Boost the penalty for the first offense to $500, then keep doubling the fine with each subsequent violation. If they don't pay, jerk their license and impound the car. That’ll learn ‘em – and meanwhile, the money from all those fines will help fill the yawning abyss of our once-Golden State’s budget deficit, while...

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