The Thomas Fire spreads to Santa Barbara County, the Go Karts of Los Angeles, the grand carousels of SoCal get a coloring book.
How CA's wildfire emissions are affecting state climate goals
As the Thomas Fire burns for the 14th day, more and more harmful emissions are being released into the atmosphere and are undoing the efforts of state and industry regulators to protect the environment.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Julie Cart has been writing about fire emissions for Cal Matters. Speaking with Take Two's Meghan McCarty Carino, she laid out both the long- and short-term effects of wildfire emissions.
"When trees burn, they emit carbon which is heavily regulated by the state, but fires don't follow the rules. There are short-term emissions, and then, as the trees decompose over time, some scientists would say 85 percent of the emissions occur after the fires. And that's hugely damaging to the state's efforts to reduce carbon."
Cart also spoke about the different types of pollutants emitted from scorched trees, and the debilitating effects of their emissions on the state's environmental goals.
Is Elon Musk really going to save LA from traffic?
Elon Musk believes his ambitious projects will pave the way for the future of transportation. Not only is he behind Tesla's electric cars, but he's developing a hyperloop system and an underground tunnel network for cars. In many of these cases, he uses Southern California as his sandbox.
But at a Long Beach conference last week, he said, "I think public transport is painful. It sucks."
And that statement got transit experts wondering whether Musk's idealized future is for the masses or the privileged few.
"[These are] maybe just services for the people who use his cars to get around faster around the city, and leaves the rest of the people who don't have his cars in the dust," says Alissa Walker, urbanism editor for Curbed LA.
Walker notes that most of Musk's ideas come from the vantage point of helping an individual driver, not the masses. That doesn't address congestion – just the potential annoyance for a single person.
"You really just can't continue digging or building your way out of this mess," Walker says. "You have to eventually get people onto public transit and out of their cars."
Transportation experts note the phenomenon of "induced demand," where making more lanes on a freeway, for example, does not ease congestion. It just means more people will drive to fill in those gaps, making traffic as bad as it was before.
However, visionaries like Musk do have a role in the future of transportation.
"Tech companies are doing some great things," Walker says, "but the problem – and the real thing that's going to catch us if we don't work on it first – is building out our infrastructure."
Are California's smooth roads worth the extra cost?
"Smooth roads" and "California" aren't words that naturally fit together. After all, a state Senate report from 2015 found that almost 70 percent of our highways were in "poor" or "mediocre" condition.
But for about four years, roads built in California have had to meet some pretty high standards for sleekness. The highest in the country, in fact.
The California Department of Transportation says smooth roads last longer and can help improve gas mileage. But contractors say they cost too much and can be unsafe.
Do they both have a point?
Take Two put that question to James Moore, director of the Transportation Engineering Program at USC's Viterbi School of Engineering.
James says:
I like road builders. Some of my best friends are road builders. But I've got to line up with the agency on this matter. I think the jury really is in. There's a very significant extension to pavement life and to facility life if you build them smoother.
We've got scarce resources in this state. We're way behind on maintenance of our infrastructure and Caltrans is looking forward, trying to eliminate or reduce that problem.
Blame the trolls for The Last Jedi's low score on Rotten Tomatoes
The force was predictably strong at the weekend box office for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." Its opening yielded the highest box office numbers in 2017 and the second highest opening of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0CbN8sfihY
While the film received glowing reviews from critics, with a Cinemascore rating of A, its Rotten Tomatoes audience score currently stands at 56 percent. Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan blames the trolls.
"This is kind of a fascinating phenomenon with the way people rate movies online. Cinemascore is normal exit polling. When you walk out of a theater they ask you what you thought of it and they find out some demographic information."
It's a very scientific approach, which isn't the case for Rotten Tomatoes, Keegan says.
"The folks who vote on places like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB are oftentimes people who are really passionate about a movie and in the case of 'The Last Jedi,' they've been registering really strong negative opinions."
This phenomenon is similar to what the 'Ghostbusters' reboot experienced last year. With 'The Last Jedi,' fans reacted negatively to writer-director Rian Johnson's injection of humor. During this week's On the Lot, Keegan shared insights from her interview with Rian Johnson and also provided more details about Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox.
Petersen Automotive Museum showcases 'the grown-up world of children's cars'
Cars are in the DNA of Southern California, where automobiles aren't just a means of transportation. They're often a personal statement.
That idea of expression conventionally has to wait until someone is old enough to get a driver's license. But the Petersen Automotive Museum has a new exhibit that showcases how kids can get in on the fun of car ownership.
It's called Sidewalk Speedsters: The Grown-up World of Children's Cars.
"They're little tiny vehicles that are powered by either gas or electric motors," said Leslie Kendall, chief curator for the museum. "The vehicles are only the size [for] kids. Adults cannot fit in them, although some try."
The cars cover as many styles, designs and manufacturers as their regular-sized counterparts. Some were built at homes by families using kits and parts, while others were put out by big car companies like Harley-Davidson.
"They're so beautifully engineered, they're so nice to look at and even the ones that are not so pretty, you can tell a lot of personal ingenuity went into those," Kendall said. "You just appreciate them so much for what they are and what they must have meant to the kids after they just built them."
Kids who attended the opening weekend of the exhibit got to appreciate the idea of children's cars with some hands-on experience. On the third level of the Petersen Museum's parking lot, there were three red go-karts along with a track to drive them on.
"Some of them are a little bit timid at first," Kendall said of the kids. "They go around the cones really, really slowly and then they start feeling and start feeling good about the amount of control they have over the little machine."
That feeling of control and feeling like a grown-up with this powered vehicle is what Kendall says is at the heart of this exhibit. Kids who grow up in this part of the world constantly see the value and appeal of driving a car. The Sidewalk Speedsters exhibit lets them have a taste of that value, even if it's only for a five-minute drive.
"In LA, more than any other place in the world, cars are what you put on. You wear them like an outer layer of clothing," Kendall said. "And there's no reason that kids can't do the same thing."
LA artist David Palmer colors in California's vintage carousels
David Palmer is an artist who's spent a lifetime capturing the Southern California lifestyle. He's painted skateboarders in Venice beach, airplanes over LAX ... and now, vintage carousels from Santa Monica to Griffith Park to San Diego.
The result is a coloring book for people of all ages that's called, simply, Carousel. Take Two sat down with Palmer to talk about the artistry behind these vivid wooden horses.
Palmer's inspiration for the Carousel coloring book dates back to his childhood. "I remember riding one when I was a little kid," Palmer said. "I didn't know anything about them. I was just a little kid trying to grab on to the brass ring."
A few years ago, Palmer started thinking about the sound, the color, and the feeling when riding the horses. That's when he began traveling around California for his latest series on carousels.
"Each one of them is unique," Palmer said. "The Griffith Park one is all horses, but the other ones have cats, dragons and other mythical creatures."
In addition to painting, Palmer has experimented with other mediums as an artist. He has transformed his artwork into wallpapers, designed dinnerware and worked on digital effects for many Hollywood movies.
"I've always explored other areas, and this feels like a nice way to branch out," Palmer said. "Instead of creating something finished, it is as though I'm starting a conversation with the audience."
You can download a page of David Palmer's coloring book HERE.
No Place Like LA: Cynthia found her voice and community in Los Angeles
No Place Like L.A. is our series that asks L.A. transplants and immigrants: "When was the moment you felt that Los Angeles was truly home?"
This is the story of Cynthia Brando from Atwater Village.
I moved here four years ago from Northern California.
I thought about moving here to Los Angeles to pursue music. I was kind of scared because I wasn't familiar with Los Angeles.
When I told friends up north that I was moving to Los Angeles, a lot of them were nice and supportive about it, but I could see the look on their faces. They were like contorted and pained.
A lot of the things that they would say were that, "They're snobby. Everyone there is egotistical."
I never heard any positives about Los Angeles. Like, at all.
But I wanted to keep an open mind about it because I wanted to do music and I knew this was the perfect place for that.
I came down in my Jeep, I sold a lot of my belongings, and I had a cat and I came down here.
My experience in these last four years has just been incredible.
A lot of people were super supportive that I was a musician. They welcomed me with open arms.
But after a couple years here, I was still calling Northern California home.
I had a friend in North California that I was talking to and she said, "How can I stand living down here? It's so crowded and ugly, and how I can stand the people down here, they're so fake?"
It really upset me because I wasn't having that experience.
I hung up the phone with her, and then I put this Facebook post out thanking everyone for their support.
I got this overwhelming response saying that I'm such an asset to the community and they love my music – just all this support.
It was that very day that the words from that experience inspired me to write a song about my love for L.A. called, "Oh, L.A."
It was that moment that I said, "Okay. This is my new home and I just need to own that and start referring to Los Angeles as my home now.