So tonight is Richmond International Raceway which is the final race before the chase and “playoffs.” Richmond is a 3/4 mile D shaped track made of asphalt. The stadium fits just over 112,000 people and people will be glued to the television to see who will make the chase.

With Monza this weekend in Formula 1 and the Richmond race tonight it’s a weekend full of some great racing we cannot wait to come on television. My favorite NASCAR driver and the most hated man on the track Kyle Busch currently sits in 14th place. By my numbers it would appear he must finish in front of Brian Vickers by 3 positions and Matt Kenseth by 7 positions. This is going to be a great race weekend for fans so stay tuned to your television.

Sorry I have been posting so much non automotive related content but I will work on getting some more of that coming on the blog when I can. I am a huge tennis fan and have been for quite sometime. When I was little my Memere (French for grandmother) would always take me to watch her play tennis and I’ve been a fan every since. Countless travel hours on the road are wasted playing Virtua Tennis 3 and many hours watching endless coverage of the major events.

Watching the US Open I first noticed this girl from Marietta, Georgia when she faced off against my favorite female tennis player of all time, Maria Sharapova. Watching Melanie stay composed and defeat her was truly amazing. Melanie managed to win me over as a fan from her residence in Marietta, Georgia. I grew up right there until I moved to Los Angeles last year and love her representing in the US Open for Georgia.

Appearing in only her second US Open,, Oudin ousted seeded players Elena Dementieva (4), Maria Sharapova (29), and Nadia Petrova (13) on her way to the quarterfinals. Entering the quarterfinals she was the youngest to enter since Serena Williams in 1999. Last night she was defeated by a 19 year-old Caroline Wozniacki from Denmark in a tough 6-2/6-2 set. She shook up woman’s tennis and hopefully the next majors will be as exciting as this US Open ladder.

Currently over 35,000 acres have been destroyed north east of my house in Los Angeles near Mount Wilson and on Angeles Crest Highway. Driving home from Walnut yesterday you could see the insane smoke clouds looming on the mountain range.

I wanted to go explore and snap some photographs since this is my first big Los Angeles fire during my nine months living here. Instead, I spent the morning combing the Internet and found some amazing photographs from the fires as they burn. I cannot really see much from my house due to Laurel Canyon and the Hollywood Hills. Here are some great photographs that will leave you speechless.

Check out the fires in Los Angeles proper as well out by the ocean. These are pretty crazy as well!

Down in Irvine I attended a Mazda event down at HQ in Irvine, California. It was a motorsports luncheon with free In N’ Out Burger which was amazing. Dean Case invited me down and I had a fun time learning about some Mazda information.

They had on display the 700,000th Miata built. I didn’t realize they had produced that many Mazda Miata’s since the inception of the product. I think I am going to hold out and score 987,654 when that comes off the assembly line.

This ProParts USA Mazda 6 is gorgeous and was my favorite car on display for the Mazda event. I love the paint scheme and the cage work was just gorgeous on this car. Part of my love for this Mazda 6 falls under the fact that I secertly really want to own one as well I think.

The event closed with an unveiling of Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in the Middle star) will be running in the Mazda Atlantic Championshi series. His title sponsor is a new video game Stargate Worlds and his teamate is Simona De Silvestro. That about wrapped up the day at Mazda!

Before I start this whole topic I want to state that I am a proud GM shareholder. Saturn was a brand that was going no where and doing nothing for General Motors except burning billions of dollars with no hope for return on investment.

I made a comment on twitter.com/joeyredmond yesterday “Saturn is dead! Finally some good news in the automotive industry.” I received a blast of e-mails, tweets, and facebook comments bitching that other GM entities should be taken out and why Saturn should survive. Before I get to into the topic let’s have a little history lesson on the great Saturn brand.

Saturn was launched 24 years ago in January of 1985. The Saturn brand launch was GM’s response to “to the success of Japanese & German small-car imports.” The brand doesn’t hold a candle to the dominating sellers in the market segment and they cannot come close to a competitive price point.

Let’s look at the facts:
2009 Saturn Aura XE Sedan: $22,655 MSRP
2009 Honda Civic Sedan: $15,505 MSRP
2009 Mazda 6 I Sport Sedan: $21,150 MSRP
2009 Toyota Camry Base Sedan: $20,195 MSRP
2009 Toyota Corolla Base Sedan: $16,150 MSRP
2009 Honda Accord LX Sedan: $21,555 MSRP
2009 Nissan Altima Base Sedan: $19,900 MSRP
2009 Subaru Impreza 2.5i Sedan: $18,495 MSRP
2009 Mitsubishi Lancer DE Sedan: $15,090 MSRP
2009 Volkswagon Jetta SE Sedan: $21,020 MSRP

I picked the sedan base model Saturn Aura XE Sedan which comes in the cheapest at $22,655 MSRP. I listed 10 cars that were similar in category and either Japanese or German origin. You know those “small-car imports” that Saturn was created to beat and destroy, maybe even save America!? Ironically I picked 9 other cars that were Japanese/German sedans base models like our Saturn. They were carry a  cheaper MSRP and I would rather drive all of them before a Saturn.

Without a price point lower than it’s competition and some lucky design what is the motivation for purchase? The car has no real culture or adoption from a segment in the market. Aftermarket support for tuners is out of the question and way behind many other cars on the list. Most people purchasing a car use it to identify with a person brand they believe themselves to fall in (or want to fall in). Running that list above most of those cars fall into a category of purchasers or stereotypes that most people put the owners into. When I see a Saturn no branding, thoughts, or ideas come into mind. I don’t put Saturn into any category or relate to the owners because of any culture behind the brand.

On my last note let’s also remember Saturn was a failure from the start. It was launched as a property outside of the GM super machine. Saturn even had it’s own dealership network at first. Then as sales faltered and never met expectations it was brought in as another badge under GM. Sadly the public and shareholders do not know how much Saturn has lost in recent years because they don’t report the figures separately (or at least where I can easily locate them.) A general figure I can find is that Saturn has lost over $1,000,000,000 in recent years on it’s own. Next time GM wants to beat Japanese car companies perhaps they should focus on quality, performance, and durability while scrapping the plastic body. Just my two cents but a $22,000 plastic paneled machine on four wheels doesn’t seem to be luring me into any dealerships over the next year or two. Perhaps they need to steal some guys on the new Hyundai project because they have clearly figured something out.

Now I am by no means a Los Angeles resident or consider myself from Los Angeles. I moved here in December 2008 and have barely experienced the joys of surviving in Los Angeles. I thought I wouldn’t really learn much or experience many “new things” since I traveled here so frequently for work over the past few years. Well after being here a little over a month these are the things I have learned….these are the 10 Things I didn’t learn about Los Angeles until I actually moved to Los Angeles.

10. Los Angeles has amazing hamburgers and hamburger culture everywhere. The hamburger is my second favorite food item behind pizza and while putting forth great effort I have yet to eat at most of the amazing burger spots in Los Angeles. How I visited here for so long and remained unaware of this burger sensation in LA is beyond me to this moment! I will credit it with most of my friends being trendy “vegans” or into the lamest craze diet and unable to consume these products. If you really have doubts on the burger history of Los Angeles they made a movie about it called “Burgertown” which you can watch for free on Hulu so check it out.

9. People actually parallel park in Los Angeles. The only reason I kind of know how to do it or even what it is stems from the fact that to get my Georgia driver’s license I had to do it. In high school we talked about how stupid/funny it was that they made us do this because who in the world would parallel park? Once arriving in LA I figured I would just excuse myself from the task because I have a mid range semi luxury/performance car and surely that was a good enough reason to valet. That lasted about a week until I came to realize two very important things. I had spent $150 valet parking and watched one valet set off my car alarm and stall it twice driving it 500 feet to where I stood (not quite woth $150)! No one is above street parking here because you can find the likes of cars worth more than $250,000 wedged between cars everyday. Thankfully I have a backup camera!

8. Things like this photo above no longer shock me….if I saw someone dressed like above before living in Los Angeles I would either run away and hide or assume I missed the fact that today was Halloween. Now I just assume that someone is filming a movie or it’s Friday night.

7. How can we not talk about these tour buses…..Nightmare on Elm Street was filmed blocks from my current residence in Hollywood. No one really seems to find this a big deal EXCEPT every tourist from the midwest. These Hollywood Star buses are super annoying because they just stop randomly on the streets everywhere so these people can take pictures of places that look no different than any other block in Los Angeles. This boggles my mind.

6. Parking is virtually extortion anywhere in LA. It’s not like most major cities (Atlanta, Chicago, NYC) where the locals “know the spots to park.” These do not exist in LA, you are either going to pay $10 to valet, illegally park somewhere else, or stuff the meter and set your cell phone to go off 1 minute before it expires for a fill up. Most likely you will have several rolls of quarters in your glove box. If you actually take the time to read the 16 No Parking Signs or “Parking Rules” you won’t understand them anyway.

5. The years I wasted watching Saved by the Bell on TBS really taught me some useful things about California culture. Nobody likes the valley and anything over the hill is “uncool”, “gross”, and such “lower class” than everything in Los Angeles. Yet if you go to the valley nobody seems to be thrilled on Los Angeles. It’s just like the old Bayside/Valley High School wars I use to watch on TV. The secret here is 95% of the Los Angeles transplants all lived in the valley at some point before making it into actual Los Angeles County.

4. When your 2 miles away from someone that does not convert into 2 minutes. This was a habit I got into living on the east coast, it was simple math. Quickly I found that this is NEVER the case in Los Angeles. In fact, I found it a very hard habit to break and in turn was constantly late to appointments and meetings. In Los Angeles 2 miles is 20 minutes, it’s an easy formula, just move the decimal point. 1.5 miles is 15 minutes and 4 miles is just too far.

3. The only girls who actually WANT you to talk to them in LA are from the midwest. They are either aspiring movie stars/musicians/models but yet they all work in the food service Industry and YES they have a headshot/reel/demo tape. Please keep in mind they were the popular girls in high school (in case you were curious!)

2- People just don’t wear sunglasses to look cool in LA like the east coast. I have owned a nice pair of Electric Sunglasses for about a year that just sat in my door collecting dust. Once arriving in LA I have to use them at least once a day to avoid being blinded by the sunlight. Try driving down the 10 West an hour or two before sunset or really anywhere west in the evening and you will either put sunglasses on or crash.

1- No matter what anyone tells you, Los Angeles has HORRIBLE pizza everywhere. For a city so full of culture and delicious food (like the hamburgers mentioned in #10) you won’t see this one coming but as a diehard pizza fan I will tell you this has almost been the death of me. Luckily, I enlisted the advise of a former Philadelphia resident who pointed me to the only “acceptable” pizza joint in Los Angeles. It’s on Larchmont and called Village Pizzeria. Trust me on this, don’t let anyone else tell you about “amazing” pizza because it’s not true.

Going through Flickr I found these three amazing photographs documenting the Hudson River US Airways plane crash. The plane left New York heading for Charlotte when the pilot aborted route and veered over the Hudson River and safely put down the plane. Boats and ferries quickly came to the rescue of all the passengers.

As a new resident of Los Angeles I am pumped to here they have a bullet train in motion from San Fran. to Sa Diego. This is an amazing way to travel in case you haven’t before. I rode the train from Toyko to Osaka this January and it was the best way to travel ever, talk about avoiding the headache of planes. Although the plan isn’t slated for completion in around 20 years. It will be my travel option of choice once completed however. The photo above is a bullet train going through Ginza in Japan.

More info on the bullet train: http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/

After this accident at HIN Nightshift Phoenix I have been in some debates on forums about the safety of media at events and I must say that some people’s replies have really blown me away. After watching this incident happen at HIN and witnessed other accidents in similar environments I think we need to grow up as a motor sports community already.

As someone who owns a company in the media business and does a ton of work around the automotive industry I just see something lacking in a major way. Don’t misunderstand me for a minute either, we have been to these same HIN demo’s and our crew has filmed them in the same fashion as the people above in this accident video. The link below is a video we made for NOS Energy Drink at Hot Import Nights: Nightshift New York. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/HIN-Nightshift-New-York_167950.htm

Now the shot you see from the Drifting demo seems very harmless because no accident had happened but that was filmed by a friend in film of ours who isn’t exactly an automotive media expert. If something were to of happened, he probably had no idea the danger he could of been in around that area. The other thing is anyone with a general credential can walk right up to that wall at HIN or into a hot zone of Formula D. Especially on the Formula D side I think they need to move into a teered system of media.

There is no reason many of the people cluttering the media pits at these events should be inside the area they are in and it just makes it generally more difficult for people who know what they are doing and have a purpose to get their job done. I have witnessed (especially this season at Formula D) some people just doing very dumb things on a hot track even though Formula D takes many great precautions for the media’s safety. Sadly Formula D cannot babysit everyone in the media section constantly observe them to assure they are not doing irrational things but they have to take the liability. Look at this perfect example from Formula D Long Beach. This kid during qualifying hopped on the k-rail and took photos for several runs until security ran and took him down.

This is the major issue I really see that is going on. When you receive a media pass at HIN, NOPI, BOTI, Formula D, Pro Am or any other organization no one delineates you from a official media partner, 5 year shooting professional, blogger, kid on Flickr, local forum or anything. This is where I think a teer system can help everyone’s headache and safety. I think bloggers and local forums/sites are a key and should never have to pay to enter an event but do they really need to be allowed inside the hot media area? Perhaps we need an approval/vouch system to get into the hot area or you have to attend an event first under a cold pass to understand more of what is going on?

Another main reason that got me motivated to right this post is the events that I witnessed at Irwindale Speedway this year. So Friday I woke up wayy early to attend a mandatory media meeting which was no problem. I was upset but swallowed my pride and rolled into this meeting even though I had to bolt out to LAX right after and then head right back to the track. Well after being told for a good amount of time the basics we left and were told we had to come to the meeting tomorrow. I show up to the next meeting on Saturday which wasn’t as early but seemed as brutal time wise. The basics were like don’t run out on the track, don’t be an idiot, stand here, don’t stand here. Well during the main event what does someone do? They jump right across the k-rail while track is hot. The course worker spots them and they did get yelled at immediately. It’s like really though? What if something happened to the guy? Was he really someone worth having the liability of being in a hot zone of the race track? Hopefully he will not be allowed to return after a brash action like that took place. With all of this being said, I want to hop off my soapbox by saying that most of these concerns I am bringing here because I hope we can get this stuff solved before a fatality is caused in the sport. That I feel would be tragic for all of us in the community. If anyone would wish to contact me I am open to help with any way to improve safety at venues from grassroots to the professional series. Just drop a line through the contact form and I will get back to you.

Watch the video that sparked this whole post from HIN Nightshift Phoenix: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/watchvideo/s13-flips-at-hot-import-nights-nightshift-pho

Since my last post was about the “Pay your own price” Girl Talk Album I figured I could stay on theme and talk about Good Magazine. They launched a pick your price subscription for it’s magazine and I must say that I subscribed under this plan. I have only purchased two issues up to this point but I must say it’s an enjoyable read. They had a writer travel across the country on trains which I must admit was quite a comical piece as it was such a disaster.

Check out Good Magazine and pay your own price:

http://www.good.is/?p=12032