Rolling out the Rose Parade floats

Riding the City of Hope float for T2 test. Photo by Lisa Ely

I had a great time at the Saturday monring street tests for the some of the 2012 Rose Parade floats.  These partcular floats are being created by Phenix Decorating.  I got to ride the City of Hope float for its T2 test (meaning the cocoon was on and the mechanics working). I am following the City of Los Angeles/Natural History Museum collaboration as it is built, and posted a video of its impressive T1 street test in my Tournment of Roses column.

If you love the Rose Parade (and the Tournament of Roses in general), keep watching my column!

Los Angeles at it's darkest: The Black Dahlia Murder

No film noir could have been darker and more suspenseful than the sensational Black Dahlia murder.  The crime has fascinated Angelenos from the time the mutilated body of Elizabeth Short was found in 1947 to this very day. 

It had all the elements that make for a Raymond Chandler mystery--a beautiful and mysterious young victim, horrifically tortured and mutilated, an elusive killer, sensational press, countless confessions and more than a score of suspects (several of them prominent physicians), and of course that unforgettable moniker. But in the end, Philip Marlowe gets his man.  The killer of The Black Dahlia has never been officially identified.

Read my story The Black Dahlia: surrealer than fiction on a life cut Short on altadenablog.  Thanks to Tim Rutt for the great headline!