Trucks, baby. There hasn't been this much going on in the pickup truck business for years. You have the new aluminum body Ford F-150, Chevrolet's killer mid-sized pickups including a diesel version of the Colorado introduced in Los Angeles last week, and Ram, which has been on a growth boom, partly because of its own diesel 1500.

The 2015 Hyundai Sonata, seriously redesigned, has gotten its share of mixed reviews from dealers, buff books and consumers, who have opined that, while the car may be highly competitive in terms of its features, amenities and technological refinements, it has lost one striking differentiator: its looks. Now, they say, it is not all that different, from the aesthetic point of view, from the competitive set.

The autonomous car. It's not ready for the shiny tiled floors just yet, but visit your local Nissan/Mercedes/Volvo/GM dealer in five years and you might see one. That's when the Mayan calendar, Elon Musk, Google and several car companies say the world will end. The world of steering wheels, road rage and traffic jams and wasted, wasted time, that is.

I'm sure there's an Extruded Fibers Conference; a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning expo; Plumbing and Sprinklers convention; Paneling, Sheetrock and Aluminum Siding extravaganzas. I'm sure these exist, and that they are industry-only, as if the public would want a look. But one of the mysteries to me is why SEMA, until this week, has also been no-public-allowed.