Guest Contributor

STARTING ROTATION Clayton Kershaw: Let’s not forestall the simple truth: Clayton Kershaw is the best reason to watch the Dodgers. He’s what the old baseball heads call the Real Deal - that rare combination of age, passion, and, above all, ability. His arsenal: a whip-like, stinging fastball; a biting slider that’s gotten better every year; a billowing, sweeping curve; and a changeup that may see a little more action this year.

Celebrating Valentine’s Day but still racking your brain for a romantic and unique gift? Laguna Art Museum’s love-inspired auction this Saturday, Feb. 12, is the perfect event to find that special something for that special someone while supporting California artists and the museum. Boasting a reformatted agenda and complimentary food and drinks, the auction promises a “fun party” atmosphere, “punctuated with a lot more entertainment,” according to Bolton Colburn, museum director. Doors open at 6 pm; festivities continue until 10 pm.

The house is a little too cold and quiet, the winter holidays are over, Valentine’s Day looms like a horror movie villain. You’re tired of watching CSI by yourself, you need something to love unconditionally and your kids need to learn responsibility. It’s clearly time to get a pet. Here's how the Internet once again proves its worth thanks to a slew of forward thinking rescue agencies with a little social media savvy.

John Paul Getty III, an heir to the oil-fortune and once dubbed by the media as the “golden hippie,” who at the age of 16 made headlines when he was kidnapped, passed away on Feb. 5 in Buckinghamshire, England after a long illness. He was 54. Getty’s life was never free from tragedy. He was the grandson of American oil giant J. Paul Getty, whose fortune helped build the J. Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

It’s those times when all meat starts to taste like chicken and the rum and Coke you ordered tastes like Froot Loops, that the notion there is just a glitch in the Matrix starts to seem like a possibility. The sci-fi scenario of robots running amok is not just a thing for the books, according to the theory of singularity, and a documentary called the Transcendent Man.

The Natural History Museum’s First Fridays series picked up again last week, celebrating the normally unremarkable date of February 4th and continuing this year’s engaging amalgamation of intellectual, cultural, and musical intrigue. Unlike January’s, in which lines of anticipating concert-goers stretched far out into Exposition Park, this month’s turnout was impressive but modest; it was enough to make you feel like you’re a part of a pretty badass show while still able to escape from the madness in one of the stoic exhibits.

If there’s one thing that Dodgers fans can always count on from their beloved Boys in Blue, from season to season, manager to manager, divorce proceeding to divorce proceeding…it’s their inconsistency. Yes, those L.A. Bums never fail to thwart expectations, to show up one year as world-beaters, and the next as would’ve-beens.

World-renowned writer Jorge Luis Borges famously said, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” In LA, Paradise is closed twice a week, in need of new books, and hard up for hired help. In the wake of City Council’s 2010 decision to cut library resources and employees, while simultaneously enforcing LAPL to pay for their own water and power, the city is experiencing a library crisis.

UC Chancellor Mark Yudof and CSU Chancellor Charles Reed announced Monday that they will not seek further tuition hikes this year, instead trimming enrollment and services to meet $1.4 billion in proposed cuts. The leaders warned, however, that if voters don’t approve Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax extensions in June, more cuts and fee hikes may be necessary.

I wish I could say that I'm hungover this morning. I can't. I'm still drunk. I have no idea where my phone is. I'm not exactly sure how I got home last night. Some random girl is sleeping in my couch. I'm debating whether I should roll her onto the floor or just wake her up and push her out the door. Hell, you only win the Super Bowl once in your lifetime, or at least that's what I'm sure I told myself last night.