A sad day in LA news

Larry McCormick, a long time anchor in LA tv news died today. He was the weekend anchor and fill in anchor on one local station, the health and fitness report and the LA Times headline preview. He was also involved with many causes in LA, to help minorities, children, anyone that needed help.

If you're not familiar with LA TV news, you might recognize him from appearances as a newscaster in movies and TV shows, or from his job as emcee or moderator at many events. There's a tribute to him at KTLA with a picture.

I've been watching KTLA news and Larry for as long as I've watched the news. He's been off since February and I've really missed seeing him on air. He just had a pleasant voice and a friendly happy demeanor about him when he was giving the news, or chatting with his co-anchor. I'm sad to hear of his death and wish his family and the KTLA news staff my condolences. I will miss him.

In other celebrity news, my mom and I went to the home and garden show in Anaheim today. The big attraction of course was the appearance of Frank Beilec of Trading Spaces. He talked for about an hour at a time, answered questions, dished dirt about the other designers, etc. Lots of fun, lots of joking and stuff you'd expect from Frank's TV persona.

But in person, he's very grounded and quite taken aback by the attention. He had a lot of interesting things to say about society and how society elevates celebrities. I think he's quite right. Just because he appears on TV for an hour every week and paints the wall a crazy color doesn't make him more important on the street than the school teacher who taught you to do that math problem, or the guy at the gas station who takes your money so you can keep your car running. The people who really keep the world moving forward everyday.

I thought it was particularly relevant here in LA where the top 5 stories on the news are Courtney Love, Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton. Never mind there's an election, a war, and other much more important news than Courtney Love's legal and drug problems that probably no one really cares about. If you do care about it, please comment and let me know, I'd love to hear from you.