• No direct link, but ABC7 has a large red breaking news banner at the top reporting that "Fox Hills Mall in Culver City is locked down while police search for a stolen car suspect."
  
• The leaning tower of Pisa. Check. The leaning tower of Hollywood? Double check. The Sunset + Vine building appears to be leaning. Timber!
  
• Donda West, mother of Kanye, who passed away after plastic surgery at a local hospital died from heart disease and "multiple postoperative factors," not from surgical or anesthetic error according to the coroner's report.
  
• The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a meeting today about "the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent decision to deny the state of California a waiver under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles." But the website for the meeting, which is held at City Hall next to the Red Line and many other bus stops, only gives directions for people driving cars. Good one.
  
• Damn those farming thieves! When the price of almonds got too high in California, thieves would steal entire tractor trailer loads of them, totaling a quarter million a piece, then selling them up in Canada.
  
• How's your commute been since the Writers Strike began in November? Tyke Johnson at MetroRiderLA notes that his "bus time to work has been nearly halved since the beginning of the writers’ strike."
  
• Former ''Lost'' star Michelle Rodriguez has found her way out of jail yesterday, serving only 18 days of her 180-day sentence.
  
• LAist Contributing Writer, Jessica Ogilvie, tried her skills on an outdoor flying trapeze for the Ventura County Reporter. Earlier today, for LAist, she got a work out with hoola hoops.
  

Photo by manmadepants via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr