By Denise McCluggage

Whatever the word "Vibe" evokes for you, Pontiac got "with it" in choosing the venue for its press introduction of its new little crossover vehicle of that name with a youthful appeal and an ageless usefulness.

We are staying at the Mondrian Hotel to drive the contours and bends of Mulholland Drive, as intriguing and indirect as David Lynch's film by the same name.

First the hotel, then the car. (Or skip right to the car review - click here.)

I sit in one of Phillipe Starck's unmatched and matchless chairs (kin to the breed found in his Hudson Hotel décor). These are in a cluster of eccentricity in a corner near the gift shop in the lobby of the Mondrian Hotel, the five-year-old Sunset Strip hotel in La-la-land.

As I approach the empty grouping I get the impression I have interrupted a conversation. But we - the seats and I - view the scene in wordless companionability. My eye slides over the pale wood floor which shines as if under a pour of clear plastic.

Dominating the lobby is a large central cube, its glass walls curtained in white filmy drapery (another Starck signature). It glows with an interior white light, rather mysteriously since the elevator doors open into this cube. (Just how do they do that light thing, I wonder.) All in this lobby is blond, light, white and airy. The expanse of filminess hanging at the exterior glass is cut off at the knees, as it were, so you can see enough of what goes on outside without the hardness of glass (or its harsh night reflections.)

Bright lumps of color - orange, yellow - provide seating (of course) near some massive pillars. There are other groupings, some inviting more curiosity than actual use. Still it’s still a lobby for more than passing through.

To the far right as one enters is the desk and to the far left a bar area with a tall, long narrow table slanting through it. That's where our group had breakfast so I assume others do too. For all its exposure that space has a receptive, almost coziness, about it.

As I sit eying the lobby from my estate-sale seat I discover that I'm oddly offended by people entering this space. Actually clumping to the desk or searching for the elevator buttons (on that post to the right, stupid.) The people don't look right in their jeans and sandals or even their trim black dress-for-success suits and high heels that click sharply.

How, I wonder, could a designer design a public place that doesn't look good with people in it? Then I decide it's the people who are at fault. They should dress like Tom Wolfe or maybe in a splash of vintage Pucci prints. The staff proves half the point; they wear suits the color of French vanilla ice cream. I'm placated. As for me I am wearing the usual invisibility cloak of the journalist. Or so I fancy.

(CONTINUE...)