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.

Charlotte Stuart doing pain reduction procedure, Nelson, New Zealand/Photo by Wonderlane/Creative Commons

Recently,  I’ve started work on my third Spot.Us story, an exploration into how traditional and modern medicine intertwine to aid patients with a variety of ailments and chronic diseases.

This follows up two other stories I’ve done, one about the high number of unclaimed bodies piling up in Los Angeles County and the other about the city’s struggles with caring with and killing its growing rate of unwanted animals in shelters.

It’s a topic I am very much looking forward to exploring, mostly because I think it has the potential to uncover some amazing personal narratives that would otherwise have remained hidden. When people think about traditional and modern medicine, they are always pitted against each other, instead of alongside each other.  This is definitely a sort of “East meets West” intersection that I think will unearth cultural practices that are aiding people such as cancer patients, who are going to radiation treatments while employing things like Reiki and healers. It will also hopefully emphasize that when it comes to health, getting better is not just a physical manifestation – our mental and emotional health seems to be in need of therapy too.

Because of my interest and ties to certain cultural communities that span the sprawling landscapes of Los Angeles, I can already see that this is going to be quite a gratifying story to be working on.

Growing up as an Armenian-Iranian-American (how’s that for hyphenation) I’ve been exposed to my fair share of traditional medicinal practices and if I’m being honest, to someone on the outside looking in, it all probably seems crazy. Really crazy. From firecupping to using donkey fat to cure ailments and a witch-y like woman who shall remain anonymous for now, that can literally “blow out” pieces of food stuck in your throat (a scene I’ve seen and experienced first hand), I have seen it all.

And those experiences probably bring me to another reason why I’m so intrigued by this topic – people judge what they don’t understand and that certainly applies to deep rooted ethnic, cultural and religious practices that are rarely discussed in a serious matter where medicine is concerned anyway.  I hope my narrative on this intersection can provide understanding as well.

In the meantime, if you’re reading this and know of anyone in the Los Angeles area who is using traditional and modern medicine in tandem, or of any cultural communities (and individuals within those communities) in the L.A. area who practice traditional medicine, please do leave a comment or send me an email – lianaaghajanian@yahoo.com. You can also donate to the pitch if it’s a topic that interests you or take this survey to earn credits and then donate, free of cost.

Two articles published in one week and another one completely funded make this girl a happy journalist.

It seems as though I’ve been on an animal beat for the last few months. I pitched a story on three dogs that were left at a foreclosed home which  ended up in the Los Angeles Times (!!!) blog section, and have been interviewing sources on the street dog situation in Armenia for a while. This week, another story I pitched, on a pet store that replaced its designer breeds with adoptable dogs from a nearby shelter was in the Business section of the Glendale News-Press. And of course, my Spot.us pitch is about L.A.’s struggles with its No-Kill goals.

It’s gratifying covering animal issues, especially because they are the members of our society who don’t really have a voice and when you write about their struggles, the abuses of their rights as part of this Earth or the human policies that decide their fate, you feel like you’re at the very least, giving them a place in the conversation.

It’s exactly the same way I feel about human rights (and international)  reporting and investigative journalism and it took me a long time to solidify my feelings on what moves me in the world of writing. Let me explain.  When you first get out of journalism school, you’re like a new-born calf. You don’t really know how to stand up, you’re hungry and all you can really say is, “I’M HERE, EVERYONE!” You’re thrust into a vicious world where you realize that many times, it’s not about what you know, but who you know. Your industry becomes volatile. Your emails that you spend hours on  don’t even get looked at, much less replied to. If you’re like me, where you graduated with old school values and taught yourself new school techniques, you still feel that the only thing that can validate you is seeing your name in print in the Los Angeles Times or New York Times, or [insert impenetrable time-tested publication here]. So you kind of start to try everything, to see what’s going to fit. In this industry, you have to be adaptable, willing to take risks, and above all in my opinion, have the passion and ambition to move forward no matter what.

It is truly an uphill battle. The fear and self-doubt alone can crush you. Believe me, I’ve been on this roller coaster. But when you find what you truly want to write about, how you want to spend your time on Earth, what contributions you’d like to make to society, everything else seems clear – not any easier, just clear.

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.

Hello.

Journalists (well, most of them anyway) tend to shy away from any type of self-exposure, including myself. It’s about the STORY, not about YOU – that’s what we’ve been told over and over again by journalism professors and editors and publishers, and rightfully so. It’s not about us, it’s about those we report on.

So you can understand the hesitation and anxiousness I felt when I decided to post the above photo of (gasp!) myself, but I’ve grown tired of feeling that way.

I have been wondering what to make of this blog ever since I started writing in it. I’ve written about baking bowling ball cakes and print newspaper consumption in Europe and my love of  kitsch, not fit for consumption movies like “Love is All There Is,” and why I hate and love Los Angeles all at the same time.

I’ve described how I must be the only person on the face of the Earth who can’t have a blood test because of impossible to find veins and how I wanted to crawl into a hole and die when I found my first white hair and documented Henry the Maltese’s entire knee surgery (the one section of my site I get the most emails about).

I’ve agonized over the very thing all young writers agonize about – having a career doing what they love and at the same time felt like all my journalism dreams were coming true.

I have complained, whined, explained how beautifully baking calms me down, highlighted some of the articles I’ve worked on over the last year and also probably talked a lot of crap.

I’ve done all this while wondering – what the hell am I writing about?

I always feel like I’m all over the place when I write here, which I guess is an accurate reflection of my life at the moment.

I want everything at once. And as such, I want to write about everything at once. And that’s why if you browse through the posts on these pages, you’ll find everything from pumpkin muffins to musings on the 2008 presidential election and recaps of Bollywood films.

For a very long time, I’ve wrestled with what to write here – the self-loathing and criticism that comes with being a writer is no exaggeration, believe me. I have stared at so many blank posts, only to write a few lines and delete the entire thing. I wasn’t wasting any paper, but it still felt like a waste.

And so, I was driving (more like standing still) on the traffic infested freeways of Los Angeles when it finally occurred to me what this blog was and should be about: The Human Journalist.

You might be thinking,  huh? what exactly is a journalist if not human? Well, according to this UK poll, being a journalist was recently regarded as the third most untrustworthy profession – so to some, I’m sure “journalist” is synonymous with Beelzebub.

Many people tend to think of journalists as soul-less leeching creatures who are always on the chase for their next story, no matter what the cost. And while I haven’t run across this too often in my career, there are times when I’ve felt the deep-seeded hate.

Today was one of those days.

I called a source to fact-check a few paragraphs of information and within the first few seconds of speaking to him, I knew he was going to lash out at me.

“Is that how you people operate?” he said to me in a condescending tone. “Is that how you work?”

Uncalled for kind sir, uncalled for.

A few months ago I was on a phone with a woman, trying to explain that I was in search of some information for a story and she cut me off and started explaining that the way I had approached her on the phone was all wrong.

“Don’t they teach you how to properly talk in journalism school?”

She went on and on, belittling me, refusing to answer questions, but I carried on and finally got what I needed out of her, while dreaming of ramming the phone all the way through the line and up  her nose and then going across the street to the bar to get a shot of tequila and cry. And I don’t even drink.

I guess what I’m trying to say, in the most roundabout way, is that my entire life I’ve been trying to find the central part of what ties all the other parts of me together. It would be easy and almost lazy,and not even  entirely true to say  that it’s my ethnicity that’s at the core of my being. Being Armenian is a huge part of who I am, but it would be unfair to say that it is the one thing that completely effects all other areas of my life.

But what does effect and infects its tentacles into all parts of my being, is journalism. It has always been my core, the one thing that I remained certain about above all others, throughout adolescence and high school and college and ‘the real world.’

It makes me feel alive.

And so in an effort to finally unify this blog under one concept, put a soul behind the third most untrustworthy profession and use this truly as a comfortable space to not only express my ideas, and half-ideas, but to connect with others, I’m now The Human Journalist. I write, I bake, I dream about seeing my byline in the L.A. Times and NY Times, I love kitsch, awesomely bad movies that would make any film critic lose respect for me. I love Los Angeles, but I’m not afraid to say I hate it too. I want to write about the problems this sprawling landscape has, and meet some amazing people in the process. I want to craft words together for my stories as beautifully as my grandmother strings together the thinnest of yarns for the winter cardigans she makes.  I want journalists to be respected and acknowledged and not underpaid. I want to write feature stories that have the potential to make someone stop and think, “Huh. That was interesting.” I want to see all the hard work I put into an investigative story and say – I really made some kind of dent in the world.  I want to be able to make other people feel the way I feel when I read stories from my favorite writers.

I want to feel (virtually) alive. And I want to bake some amazing desserts to reward myself with.

So here I go. This is an experiment into the human side of a journalist – about her wants and dreams, about her likes and dislikes, some of which have nothing to do with journalism at all and about discovering herself on this torturous yet rewarding path that only a crazy person would purposefully choose.

This is place where I’ll probably do a lot of what I was doing before, but without any fear or anxiety – and for a writer, to write without either the former or the latter is complete and utter peace.

I am intrepid, see me write. And of course, welcome.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon,  fellow journalist Darleen and I decided to partake in a past time we both adore: discovering new tea rooms in the vast city of L.A. and beyond.

And since we hadn’t seen each other for so long that I can’t even remember, we decided to go all out and indulge in some tea and treats at the Scarlet Tea Room.

I first met Darleen in a mutual class we both had.  I was really intrigued because I think she was carrying some knitting she was working on and I was completely impressed because it was something I would do.

Not only do we share a mutual love of knitting, writing, music, art and identifying annoying people almost immediately, but we also love tea. and tea rooms.

Located on charming Green Street in Pasadena, the Scarlet Tea Room has a set up I haven’t seen before. While most tea rooms typically fall into the “Old English Rosey” category, this one blends old Hollywood charm with sophistication.

The set up consists of big wooden chairs with glass blown light fixtures and mirrors all around.

But never mind how the place looks, lets get to the good stuff.

The tea, while very delicious, wasn’t hot enough for my taste. The China however, was beautiful. I think I got black peach tea, but we were so wrapped up in conversation about the ups and downs of our lives post-college, where we all sat in a room and poured our heart and souls into journalism, that I’m not completely sure.

The tea sandwiches however, were nothing short of amazing. I ordered “Fig and Goat Cheese Spread” and “Mascarpone with Citrus Marmalade.”

Heaven in two bites.

The Scarlet Tea Room is very vegetarian friendly as well – with hearts printed next to sandwich options without any meat.

The absolute best part of the afternoon, sans the conversation, came in the form of a dessert I couldn’t believe I had never tried: Strawberries Romanoff.

Made with strawberries, sugar, liqueur, ice cream and heavy cream, Strawberries Romanoff is like a party for your taste buds, who go wild with excitement when you take a spoonful to your mouth. It’s hard to pin point what’s better – the strawberries or the cream, but together they make an explosive combination.

For a few hours, the tea flowed, the dainty sandwiches came and we even got to gawk at a bachelorette party taking place across the room, neon thongs and all.

The world stood still.

Our problems melted into the leaves in our cups and just for a bit, we were free of responsibility, of what ifs, of haves and have nots, of wondering what we’re doing with our lives, or where we’ll be 10 years from now, or the cruel world of journalism.

For two hours, we were more than ok, drenched in the sweetness of strawberries and cream.

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.