Guest Contributor

Buying pretty flowers and taking a romantic stroll is par for the course on Valentine’s weekend, and this weekend is no exception at The Huntington gardens. Hundreds of red, pink, and white camellia blooms will compete for top honors at The Huntington’s 39th annual Camellia Show, co-sponsored by the Southern California Camellia Society. A wide selection of camellia plants will also be available for purchase if the mood strikes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

According to the U.S. Census 23.6% of Los Angeles County are known as "some other race." There's no question that Los Angeles is a melting pot of cultures from all over the world. Each culture staking claim to certain areas of Los Angeles, and eventually making it their own. K-town, Chinatown, and Little Ethiopia are just some examples of Los Angeles' colorful identity. Along with the people, of course, comes their food.

The public school system is tasked with educating children, but should it also be responsible for its students’ healthcare? John Deasy, the newly appointed superintendent of Los Angeles schools, believes so. Though he does not take over the schools’ top position until April, Deasy is already making big plans, including a goal of providing all uninsured elementary students with medical, dental, and vision coverage.

Whether you want to be Dita Von Teese, Gypsy Rose Lee, or nearly naked Princess Leia, there’s a stage near you just waiting for you to shake your tassels and live your dream. Thanks to the rise of amateur burlesque, pasties are the new black. This rising tide of sexy, saucy stripping as retro art follows a trend of burlesque going mainstream.

Senior citizens, hipsters, and high-schoolers rustled among the crowded conference room of UCLA's Hammer Museum, waiting for the Jennifer Knox and Sarah Manguso reading to commence. The event was part of the Hammer’s New American Writing Series, which showcases notable contemporary writers. David Foster Wallace, John D’Agata, and Mary Gaitskill are among past participants. Curated by Benjamin Weissman, the series is hailed as one of the best in Los Angeles.

A community may not be able to change its history, but as residents of Highland Park are about to discover, it is possible to clean it up. On Saturday, volunteers will work to restore one of the neighborhood’s most cherished murals, “History of Highland Park,” located on the AT&T building on Avenue 56.

Westside foodies will no longer have to pine over the “exotic grilled sausages” of Wurstküche, known to many as the sausage kitchen for its literal German translation. The popular downtown location in the historic Arts District will expand to its own Venice locale. The Westside digs will replace the newly departed Air Conditioned lounge on Lincoln Boulevard.

When you go shopping at the mall, you assume you’re going to remember the exact location of where you parked your car. Well, sometimes that’s not always the case. There isn’t much you can do except to retrace your steps. And if mall security can’t help you, there is now new technology available to help you locate your parked car.