Kevin Scanlon

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

Luigi Francis Rossi -- better known as Shorty, titular star of the Animal Planet "docudrama" Pit Boss -- was not, as some have said, "made for television." His recently released memoir, Four Feet Tall and Rising, is, as one fan put it, "an amazing must-read for anyone interested in showbiz, pit bull rescue, dwarfism and how to make pruno" -- aka prison wine.

Rossi, the son of dwarf parents, grew up in lily-white Reseda with two average-height older sisters. An enterprising youngster, he ran away from home, fleeing his abusive father and landing with his "second family" at Nickerson Gardens in Watts. He later joined the Bloods and served a decade behind bars for a gang-related shooting.

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Courtesy Omar Von Muller

Uggie

Stardom came late in life for Hollywood's Next Big Thing. Before he played opposite Reese Witherspoon and landed a scene-stealing role in an Academy Award-nominated film, he endured random parts in commercials, TV shows and films -- and even performed tricks on Third Street Promenade for pocket money.

He didn't hit the big time until he was in his mid-50s. Which is to say, mid-50s in people years: In dog years, Uggie is just 10.

Uggie, of course, is the orange-and-white Jack Russell terrier in The Artist. Already a veteran of such movies as Mr. Fix It and Water for Elephants, Uggie became a movie star in his own right by playing sidekick to Jean Dujardin's tragically declining film star in the dark-horse silent film. There was the Palm Dog award at Cannes. There was the big splash he made at the Golden Globe Awards, getting photographed on the red carpet and then stealing the show during the moviemaker's acceptance speech. There was his guest appearance on the BBC's Graham Norton Show. And then there's Movieline's ongoing "Consider Uggie" campaign, a general effort to honor the terrier for The Artist.

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Courtesy of DooD

Andrea Carrano of DooD, and his dog George

Startups is a new column about new companies, big ideas and bold discoveries happening in the L.A. area.

Andrea Carrano was raised in Italy, which means he grew up with table-fed canines. That also was true of his brother-in-law, Ali Niroomand, who grew up in France.

"Very few people were buying store-bought dog food there," Carrano says. "My parents would give the dogs basically table scraps, chicken leftovers and brown rice."

Fast-forward a few decades, when, weary of industrial-size bags of puppy chow and lethargic pets, the Carrano and Niroomand families again began feeding their pups homemade food. They noticed a world of difference: Their pets' tails were waggier and their breath was almost pleasant (which, for a dog, is saying something).

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Wade Rouse with Marge

I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship: Hilarious, Heartwarming Tales About Man's Best Friend From America's Favorite Humorists is the new book edited by Wade Rouse, with essays by Jen Lancaster, Rita Mae Brown, Laurie Notaro, Jane Green, Beth Harbison, W. Bruce Cameron and many others, plus a forward by Chelsea Handler's dog, Chunk. It does not, however, contain the story of the time my shaggy mutt Guinness ate the umbilical-cord stump of my newborn son, but there's always the possibility of Vol. 2.

Rouse (author of It's All Relative: A Memoir of Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine) will appear at Book Soup on Jan. 25, joined by contributors Jiffy Wild, W. Bruce Cameron, and Annabelle Gurwitch.

Here's our interview with Rouse:

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Adam Gropman

Dash goes skateboarding

It's a pleasant summer day down at Venice Beach, the boardwalk humming with activity. On the paved path pointing toward the water, near where Windward Avenue ends at the beach, a skateboarder shows off, kicking sturdily against the pavement, leaning into ovals and figure-eights, occasionally falling off the board but then sprinting and jumping right back on. It's not Tony Hawk-level skating, but it's pretty damn good for a dog.

The mind has to adjust to what the eye sees. He's a scrappy little canine, with a pointy snout and a sturdy tail, and he's soon joined by another, much larger dog, also on a board. While together they make for a comical Mutt & Jeff duo, their skateboarding is seriously good.

On a beach known for many sights -- some outrageous, others randomly weird, but only a handful indicative of real, rarefied talent -- this act is rather mind-blowing. These pups aren't just staying on a rolling board that's been pushed by a human, they are actively, aggressively skating -- going against what one would imagine is every dog's powerful instinct, which is to get the hell off a moving slab of wood on wheels.

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"I just want a photo and the word lost and the telephone number and when and where she was lost and her name. Not like a movie poster or anything stupid." So rang the immortally frustrated words of Shannon, the secretary or assistant or generic office peon with the gall to approach graphic designer David Thorne -- also known as internet humorist 27bslash6 -- with the request to help her make a poster for her missing cat.

Their email chain, which tracked her fruitless battles against his mockery of both her distress and the accepted form of the Missing Pet Poster, lit up computer screens around the world last year, led to a book deal for him, and put a point on an aesthetic question for us: what is and isn't acceptable in the design of a missing pet poster?

And then we happened to walk by the above, a razzle dazzle affair ostensibly concerned with the recovery of East Angelean pooch Conchinta, but which much more obviously showcased the opportunity it afforded its designer to break out some new fonts and revisit the line art tutorial on Lynda.com. Something felt untoward about the poster, even as it's grab-you design work encouraged a long look, some cogitating and a mobile phone snapshot.

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Amit Itelman

Alice and Gertrude, right, have already made friends in their new home.

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The two white geese, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, were carried down from the house by Allie, the 16-year-old daughter of an animal rescuer up in Laurel Canyon. The mother-and-daughter team scours county animal shelters, from Los Angeles to Riverside, to save beasts scheduled to be killed that day.

There had been three geese, Allie points out, but recently a coyote had picked off one of them from the yard -- inflicting on the two survivors the goose version of post-traumatic stress disorder. This took the form of them clinging desperately to each other, checking in multiple times an hour with a honking call and response.

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It's a house shaped like an egg. For chickens. Who knew chicken farming was so design-minded? I certainly did not. The house is called The Nogg. Says the creator, "The Nogg transcends ideas of what a chicken house usually looks like. It is designed to encourage domestic farming while adding a touch of playful elegance."

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Do you want to save some orangutans? Do you like to run?

Twenty-five bucks buys you a ticket to run in Orangutan Foundation International's upcoming fundraiser Save the Orangutans 5K Run for Survival on September 26.

I know it takes a lot for us to get off our asses and do something truly good and meaningful in this society. I know it's hard to care for a creature that lives half a globe away in a forest you've never seen nor are likely to see in your lifetime, what with all the problems in your own backyard.

But we are connected to all living creatures in complex ways we can't even begin to imagine. If orangutans disappear--and there's a very big possibility that we won't have any left in ten years--who knows what the repercussions will be.

These guys are dying. They could use your help.

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Yeah, I don't know what's going on with this woman and her opossum, but I'm going to file it under "Pets" (because she seems to keep opossums as pets), and "Science" (because it is an instructional video), and "Weird" (for obvious reasons), and "Art" (because when a video is this sublimely good, it can only be called art).

"I would never make a moral judgment on an opossum," says ME Pearl, "and neither should you."

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