A few snapshots from my iPhone in the last six months from a few corners of Los Angeles:

Egyptian Diaspora protests in front of the Federal Building in support of the Egyptian Revolution.

Iconic religious statues from India’s Sweets and Spices in Los Feliz.

La Morena, sliced green pickled jalapeños, Ralphs, Hollywood.

French macarons at a Koreatown mall, Koreatown.

Za’atar, Middle Eastern spice mixture and Armenian coffee, Shanto’s Bakery, La Crescenta.

Chrysanthemum Tea Drink, Sapp Coffee Shop, Thai Town.

Yerevan, Armenia t-shirt from Ara the Rat.

Left over Cinco de Mayor balloons from Mexico City restaurant, Los Feliz.

Matrioshka Russian Vodka.

Iran Air sticker, the country’s official airline.

It snowed in Los Angeles. I went mad. I took photos, video. I tweeted. I facebooked. I even made it to LA Weekly. It was beautiful. I’m sure my East coast friends and acquaintances are laughing at me, remembering the endless hours they’ve spent digging their car out of this white stuff, while wondering if their fingers would fall off from the cold. This is wuss snow. I know. Some might even call it hail, but I don’t care. It snowed in Los Angeles and I have proof.

Here’s some video as well. The last time this happened, it was 2007. Please come again soon, snow.

All photos taken in La Crescenta/ © Liana Aghajanian

A resident of East Valley Animal Shelter peers out of its kennel/Liana Aghajanian

I just got back a few hours ago from spending another Sunday at the East Valley Animal Shelter in Van Nuys, Calif.  for my Spot.us story. So much went on in the three or four hours I was there, that it’s hard to separate one event from the other. A timid American Bull Dog, hit by a car, unable to move its hind legs and found in Sunland was brought in. A German Shepherd, an Akita and several cats were adopted. Those unfortunate enough to remain in their cages got one day closer to a new home or a death sentence.

The psychological impacts on both humans and animals in a shelter is worth examining. As an animal technician, there’s a point where you have to put your emotions on the bottom of your priority list. After all, you’ve got a job to do, a job that, along with feeding, cleaning and caring for an animal, includes killing an animal. As a dog or cat, cooped up in a cage, with the details of your life hanging on a kennel card and the incessant sound of barking at every hour of the day, all you have to go by are your emotions. It’s a hard life, for both caretaker and resident.

Less than a week away from my deadline, there’s so much to think about and still a few people left to talk to. What has become clear from my research, from interviews, from visits to the shelter and trying to examine the situation that is animal euthanasia in Los Angeles, is that it takes a village working together to protect animals, much like it takes a village to raise a child. All components of the equation must work harmoniously, or else the entire operation will fall apart fantastically.

One of East Valley's 432 current residents/by Liana Aghajanian/Keegam Shamlian

I’m working on my second story for Spot.Us, dealing with L.A.’s struggles with animal euthanasia rates. According to past L.A. officials, the city was meant to become no-kill in 2010. With 2011 upon us,  the euthanasia rates have been actually increasing in the last two years. On a rainy Sunday, I took my first trip to East Valley Animal Shelter in Van Nuys. Here is an excerpt from my blog post on Spot.us:

“This is the saddest place on Earth.” Those are the first words I heard when I opened the doors to the East Valley Animal Shelter in Van Nuys. The man who said it, while visibly upset, was hurrying out to his car. Before I could stop him and ask why, an unfolding scene caught my eye.
Two women were dragging a beige and white Staffordshire Terrier mix that was whimpering to the front of the counter. His name was Charlie, with amber eyes and floppy ears. They began to explain the situation to Rebecca Summers, the animal care technician who greeted them. What situation? I moved in closer.
They were turning him in.
They said he was aggressive and had fought with other dogs, but when told that his chances of making out alive were slim, they changed Charlie’s conviction to “hyper.”
He was found as a puppy in a park when he was three months old, they said. But like all big breeds, he had grown in size and they decided they could no longer keep him. It was made clear that he could be put down if he did show aggression.
But their minds were already made up. Charlie would be calling the East Valley Animal Shelter his new home, at least for a short while, with the other 432 animals, including 244 dogs and 166 cats that were there as of Sunday, Oct. 17.
Summers was trying to get her camera to work so she could take a photo of Charlie for his ID card when I caught up with her. He seemed really sweet, she said, but she couldn’t tell what he was like yet.
Around the back, dogs and cats waited in the damp Los Angeles weather in their kennels and crates for someone, anyone, to take them home.

Read more here: “The Saddest Place on Earth.”

Is this not the most amazing vehicle you’ve ever seen?

I was driving down a street in Santa Monica after an absurdly long time spent at Staples surrounded by school supply buying children and their horribly depressed parents and I looked over to my left to see the rooster car.

It’s a good thing the road was pretty desolate because I slowed down, stopped and just stared for a good minute. I began to drive again, but couldn’t let the awesomeness of seeing a yellow car with a rooster head and tail sticking out just go by so I put my car in reverse, parked and took this photo.

It was glorious.

The rooster car truly made my day.

As soon as I got home I decided to do some research to see if I could find the origins of this creature-car, but wasn’t able to find much except a blog post at Laughing Squid and Nigel Stewart’s blog. Comments in both posts reveal the possible origins of the car, allegedly created by a man named Steven Cantin, and brought to California in 1997 to be used in a movie that apparently was never made. It is now owned by American race car driver and Santa Monica resident Tommy Kendall.

Steven Cantin it seems was trying to get in touch with Tommy, but there’s no internet evidence to suggest that the two ever did speak.

I hope this isn’t the last I’ve seen of this beautiful piece of machinery – I’m going to dream I’m riding in it tonight.

It’s hard to say “it’s summer time in Los Angeles,” because let’s face it, when isn’t it summer here?

While I usually complain about the heat here, this summer  has been unusually kind, until today, when the unforgiving sun reared its ugly head and made doing anything in L.A. unbearable again.
Hence why I’m inside and writing this post. A few choice photos I took this summer, in between writing assignments, editing work and breaking records for most time spent on the freeway.

Street art on Fairfax

Swept up cigarette remains

Robert Goulet?

Sad subject.

The Seven Up Bottling Co. of Los Angeles – swap meet find.

Driving down the 101. The emptiness of the freeway is deceiving, trust me.

I’ve been to three swap meets in the span of three weeks and I couldn’t be happier. You can complain all you want about traffic in Los Angeles (ahem), lament about all the pseudo-humans you meet here, but there’s one thing L.A excels at better than any city: outdoor flea markets.

Here are a few finds from the Rose Bowl Flea Market which has been existence for over 40 years.

While the Rose Bowl Flea Market is amazing, this outing left me disappointed. Not only was it too crowded and lacked any really good finds, the entire process has become so commercialized. You have to pay $8 to just get into the meet, with no pets allowed and performers who are hired to keep crowds coming through the turnstiles entertained – men on stilts, unicycles, that sort of thing. It just seems so…contrived.  On top of that, the food inside will take a nice chunk out of the wad of cash you’ve saved for those sweet antiques or chotchkies you’re after.

Still, it is definitely worth it – especially when you can find such treasures as “The Wandering Jew.”

I’ve saved my favorite find for last. I know you might be thinking – hello? Did you not see the incredible Sonny and Cher barbies above? What can be better than the plastic versions of the dynamic duo responsible for “I’ve Got You Babe,” (which plays like a loop in my head even if I sing it once)? Well I’ve got news for you, no pun intended.

Behold.

Bound editions of bound  bi-weekly New York Times newspapers spanning from the mid 1920s to late 1940s.

I KNOW. I almost went into cardiac arrest right then and there. Most of these beauties came to the swap meet from the libraries of universities, and were being sold for $20 each. After scouring to find one in the best condition and some haggling, we left with the March 16 – 31, 1943 edition of the Times, which came from the Stanford University Library in all it’s glory for $15.

As any writer can attest to, there’s nothing better than the scent of a musty old book. For a journalist, a bound edition of the Bible of Newspapers from 1943 smells like absolute heaven. Heaven I tell you. Full description and pages (complete with Old Gold cigarette ads and calls for Victory Gardens!) to come in subsequent post. Excuse me while I go smell my newspaper.

Welcome to the new and improved Writepudding.com. I needed a change, and so here we are.

Summer is almost here, but Los Angeles is suffering from some serious June Gloom, but I don’t mind because I love cold weather.  In fact, I hate summer in Los Angeles a lot. It’s disgusting, especially if you have to spend time cooped up in a car on a never ending freeway like I do.

I don’t think I’d be satisfied with any city’s summer unless I was in the South of France, on a boat, wearing nautical clothes and sipping on some champagne.  But since that’s not likely to occur any time in my near future, Los Angeles it is.

Woohoo.

All in all, it’s not that bad, because L.A. has some of the best summer events around, especially concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, where you can watch your favorite musicians play to the stars while you have a picnic at your seat. Then of course there are the festivals and while I’ve discovered many amazing festivals in my editing work, including the Cotton Pickin’ Fair in Gay, Ga. and the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in Linville, N.C., L.A has some great ones, including the Watermelon Festival, featured in these photos I took for LAist last year.

Once inside, you’ll more like you’re in the Southeast than Los Angeles, and that’s not a bad thing.

See more here

I love subcultures. Oh I do. I love them so much. This explains why I can watch endless episodes of Louis Theroux documentaries and never get tired. This is the reason why I look forward to Hoarders and 16 & Pregnant every week, as if my life depends on it. This is the reason why that when the chance presented itself to cover a Belly Dance Festival, there was no way I could say no.

You can find the article in the Glendale News-Press here: All The Right Moves, but here is a choice quote on the art and history of belly dancing:

“It doesn’t matter what year it is, this is never going to go out of style as women become more in touch with themselves, their own power and lives.”

Enjoy some photos!

There’s something you should know about me. I love prison documentaries and homicide/crime programs, especially on a lazy Saturday night.

I find them riveting. I’ll sit down to watch just one, and before you know it, I’ve spent eight hours learning about the New Mexico Penitentiary and the riots that went on there in 1980 (Thanks, MSNBC)

On one particular Saturday afternoon, I found myself watching a documentary on the L.A. County Coroner and how they deal with homicides. Of course, I couldn’t change the channel because a) It was about Los Angeles and b) I find the inner workings of government agencies that deal with criminals and death just fascinating.

This documentary was mostly about how the Coroner deals with deaths from gang violence, accidents, etc. and wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary, but something struck my interest enough to wander onto their website – which comes complete with a creepy gift shop named “Skeletons in the Closet,” mind you.

After a few minutes, I felt like I had struck gold:

The L.A. County Coroner has a database dating back to the 60s of bodies that have remained unclaimed, meaning no next of kin has come forward to claim and bury the body.

The wheels in my head started spinning with a million questions. But who are these people? How did they die? Why hasn’t anyone come forward? For days I thought about this list I had “discovered.”

The thoughts wouldn’t go away. I wanted to know more. I thought about how I could frame this into a story and who I could pitch it to.

Somehow at the same time, Spot.us, a new innovative journalism model was on my radar. I had been thinking about submitting a proposal to the site, which uses crowd-funding to support stories, for quite a while. Luckily for me, my thoughts about the coroner and Spot.us collided at the same time.

I immediately got to work researching, interviewing an L.A. County Coroner official, digging up facts, details and eating it all up all along the way.

The result?

A story proposal on the site which you can see here ( as well as on the sidebar of this site). Telling you that I’m excited about being a part of this is the biggest understatement of the year. This story makes me feel like my journalism dreams are finally coming true. For the first time in a long time, I feel so happy that I’m actually somewhat proud of myself, and that’s hard to come by for a writer, believe me.

If you’re reading this, and you also share a morbid fascination with me about where this vast city’s dead end up when no one comes forward to claim them (sometimes due to not being able to afford it), and how certain groups are helping fill the gaps where the city cannot, please consider donating to see this story come to life. Or at least pass it on if you can!

I promise to get you a “Body Outline Polo” on my way out of the Coroner’s office.