Courtesy Van Alen Institute.

Without harping too much on that inconvenient thing happening on a big road somewhere in West L.A. this weekend, let us begin this modest post by agreeing that transit in L.A., in California, and in the vast majority of the US, could stand a few more efficient alternatives. As dear in our hearts as we hold the Great American Roadtrip, the idea of the Great American Drunk Train Trip sounds pretty good too. Enter the Van Alen Institute, a New York-based architectural library and think tank that apparently exists in large part to sponsor design competitions that don't necessarily wind up in realized contracts, but to help us imagine what could be.

And what could be? According to the winners and runners-up of the Van Alen's latest competition, Life at the Speed of Rail, high-speed rail as a reality in the U.S. could mean trains with disco cars and gyms, farm machinery shaped like giant animal robots and collapsed mega-regions with playfully smashed-together names like Deledo, Philiyork, Louistonati and Indibend.

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The 1998 movie Armageddon starred Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck as deep-sea oil drillers deployed by NASA and the military to embed a nuclear device 800 feet inside an asteroid heading straight for Earth. The device would split the asteroid into two parts, with both halves just narrowly missing our planet, saving us from a true armageddon.

It's one thing for the world to be destroyed -- but for the 405 to be out of service for an entire weekend takes things to a whole new level.

In that spirit, we present highlights from the screenplay for Armageddon 2: Carmageddon, the unproduced sequel, coming this weekend to a freeway near you.

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Bonjour Tristesse

It's almost July, which means its time to give up on any semblance of productivity at work and start plotting your escape. If you're half a couple, this list should guide you in your quest to make your relationship last through summer vacation. If you're single, or if, like us, your bank account balance won't get you past the 101, why not use it to plan a film festival sponsored by Netflix and located on your living room couch?

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Courtesy of Assouline

Guy, on the bottom row, second from left, with the rest of his crew in space.

Guy Laliberté has had many lives -- he's gone from fire-breathing street performer to poker shark to the multimillionaire head of Cirque du Soleil. In his latest incarnation, he's become a "space clown" and philanthropist. He headed into space in 2009 on the Soyuz spacecraft as a tourist on a mission to raise people's consciousness about global water use for his charity, One Drop.

So far, so good. What happened in space, however, was a little more unexpected. Laliberté was on TV shows, talking to people back on Earth, and videoconferenced into a giant event held in 14 cities for his charity -- all according to plan. However, he didn't expect the pictures that he was snapping quietly on the side to amount to anything apart from tourist snapshots. Instead, he found himself with thousands of beautiful, abstract prints on his return.

Now, he is publishing his pictures with Assouline press in Gaia, a luxury art book whose profits will go to support his water charity, One Drop. While you can't really fault Laliberté's philanthropic ambitions, his particularly high-scale, high-handed way of raising funds is certainly odd, and in many ways, speaks more to his own privileges than to the water scarcity he's trying to address. At any rate, we're still left with a pretty cool book.

Yesterday, LA Weekly sat down to talk to him about his adventures in space, and his plans for the future.

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What do you think, too soon?

This "I Survived" Japan's tsunami t-shirt was designed by Bill Wyatt (formerly Billy Tsangares), owner of Los Angeles t-shirt shop Y-Que Trading Post. Remember the Free Winona tee? Yup. He did that one, too.

Are the shirts poor taste? Or are they art?

Wyatt isn't clueless. "I do the shirts because it gives me something to do as a reaction to the news events like this one," he says. "But I think it is insensitive to the people who have truly been hurt and killed as a result of the tsunami and earthquake. I just can't help making low brow stuff as a strange way to document what happened."

If people ordered it he would make and ship it. But for now, the $12 "I Survived" tee is mostly for show. 

It isn't exactly flying off the shelves. "I can't tell if people really feel like they rode out a tsunami over here," Wyatt says.

How many has he sold so far? None.

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Photos by Gendy Alimurung

Why is Kobe Bryant banging on this drum?

He's the "global brand ambassador" for Turkish Airlines now. He was at the inaugural flight ceremony launch not too long ago. He appeared onstage at the Paramount Studios lot. He shook hands with the chairman of the airlines as the first flight was making its way from Los Angeles to Istanbul.

It was one of those surreal events that seem to belong more in a movie than in reality (think Bill Murray in Lost In Translation). A person from the county gave the chairman a certificate. The chairman gave the county person a gourd. The translator stumbled through the language barrier ("We hope that this will bring goodness to all of us").

They served airline food at the party.

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Coincidence? Have you ever noticed how much the Mir Mine in Russia looks suspiciously like Darth Vader's Death Star? The airspace above the mine apparently is closed to helicopters because "of a few incidents in which they were sucked in by the downward air flow." Holy crap.

That probably does not happen on the Death Star, as there is no air in space. The Mir Mine is an abandoned open pit diamond mine in Eastern Siberia. It was producing so many diamonds for a while that De Beers got worried it would lower the global price of diamonds and hurt their bottom line.

Giant hole built by Russia on the left. Giant hole built by Vader on the right.

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"Los Angeles is where personal freedom is defined by the automobile. A city where store entrances are accessible through parking lots rather than sidewalks," observes artist Diane Meyer in her essay, "Car-less in Los Angeles." The remark found instant resonance with my life in the city. A year and a half here brought home this city's love affair with their own four wheels. Such is the obsession, that I get detailed parking instructions, every place I go, people safely assuming that I have a car. Public transport are often dirty words, used with much restraint, when giving directions.

"Most Angelenos assume that there isn't any alternative to car culture because they've never tried anything else," says Meyer, who has interviewed 100 other car-less individuals like me, for her upcoming exhibition, titled "Without A Car in the World." Funded by the California Council for the Humanities California Stories Fund, which supports creative work based on interviews collected from a community of California residents, Meyer's exhibit features images and interviews about car-less dwellers in L.A. and aims to address how "car culture has shaped psychological, spatial and geographic perceptions of the city."

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Man, there was a lot of stuff at the D23 Expo this past weekend. And the weird thing is, it seemed like there wasn't enough stuff. Check out photos in the Disney slideshow and read more in "Disney Expo Channels Peter Pan."

Disney is famously hush-hush about how many people actually attend their events ("tens of thousands" is the best guess for D23). I went on Friday and Saturday. I saw enough mouse ears to last a lifetime. A few neat things:

I just love the guy in this photo. He was wandering around looking happy and overwhelmed.

Captain EO costume, worn by MJ

This is Michael Jackson's original Captain EO costume. Below are his boots. This was from the Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives exhibit. Can you imagine how much this thing is worth now? Also, I hear they're bringing back the Captain EO ride/show.

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The Porta Hedge is a mobile artificial wall of greenery made of discarded fake Christmas trees on the outside, and surveillance equipment on the inside. It plays prerecorded birdsong (to encourage birds to use the Porta Hedge as a home). It also has chalkboards (for taking notes), and peepholes (for spying). The Porta Hedge has been touring the country this summer. It stopped in Los Angeles last month on its way to Vegas. It was so inconspicuous, I didn't even know it came around to our city. The ever-observant folks at Machine Project did, however.

via Porta Hedge tour blog

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