By BILLy FRIeD

Of the hundreds of snarky columns I ’ ve penned over the years to polarize and agitate my readers , nothing will inflame them more than the following statement : I liked the drone show . Yep , I said it , and I can already feel your temperatures rising . It ’ s the same heat wave that washed over social media when the city announced they would be abandoning fireworks for a trial drone show . Forget Confederates versus the Union , L . A . versus New York , Beatles versus Stones , The White Album versus Sign o ’ the

Times , nothing ginned up anger and vitriol more than taking a year off from the rockets ’ red glare to try something new .

Could it have been better ? Way . Should it be further out to sea if possible , so more people can view it from their homes ? Certainly . Should we take better advantage of this amazing , emerging technology that – instead of killing people – can inspire , amaze , and expand our consciousness with mind-melting visuals that evoke sacred geometry , the cosmos , the cosmic , the mystic , the mycelium world , and other dimensions ? I don ’ t know . Could be the edibles kicking in . But I have , in fact , seen better drone shows than this one .

Just the idea that these images can be programmed into hundreds of tiny flying machines and projected into the sky is way more compelling than a technology that hasn ’ t evolved in , well , ever , continues to blow peoples ’ fingers off and still seems to involve pyrotechnic families with Italian names . Plus , come on , they scare animals , traumatize veterans , trigger car alarms , pollute the environment ,

and send 10,000 people to the emergency room every year . Also , do we not get that 250 years ago , we weren ’ t living in high-fire risk zones ?

There were moments of beauty and astonishment in the Laguna show . And the sense that , like America , anything is possible in this land of innovation . Remember , it was a freshman try by a city that plays it safe so as not to annoy one side ( too late for that ) and , apart from the clip art look of those cliched Laguna images , there were still moments of absolute sublimity as the sky morphed threedimensionally into different colors and objects , spinning and rotating in the process . Let ’ s enjoy the reverence , and a rare moment of silence to actually process what independence means . You want sound , play your own soundtrack .

Stop with the loud noise already . We have enough of that day and night on our streets and in our restaurants . And I suspect that ’ s what this anger is really about . It ’ s summer . The city is a parking lot . And our beaches are trash receptacles . Your nerves are frazzled . Your cortisol levels are spiking , and

you barely want to leave home . It ’ s the worst ever this summer , and we still don ’ t do a damn thing about it . So , I get that some just want to blow some stuff up .

But it doesn ’ t have to be this way . We can use innovation and resources to slow people in their cars , frustrate them , divert them , and encourage them to use other means into town – or not come at all . I drove out the 133 last Saturday at 11 a . m ., and it was frozen with cars coming into town all the way from the 405 . Where do they all go ? Why aren ’ t we hitting the Irvine Company and Five Points with an Impact Tax , which could be used for shuttles from their developments ? Why aren ’ t we seriously considering peripheral garages at El Moro , Aliso Beach , and Act V and the Digester ? Or a lot at the 405 with a free shuttle ? Yes , it ’ s a massive infrastructure project – but that ’ s what America was built on . It will ensure a quality of life for generations to come .

Why aren ’ t we taking a serious look at gondolas to move visitors from

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