Moms for Xanax: Carmageddon and my General Distain for the LA News

By now you have all heard carmageddon is upon us. Specifically, it starts tonight at 7:00pm.

For my fortunate out-of-state friends, Carmageddon is the two-day closure of a 10-mile stretch of the 405 freeway, in both directions, between the 10 and 101 freeways. It is being preemptively called, “the mother of all traffic jams”.

Southern Californians have been hearing about it for months. Celebrities have been asked by LA city officials to tweet about it...and tweet they have. A city councilmen told the public at a press conference to, “stay the hell away” from the area. Classy.

OK- so we get it already. But it doesn’t end there.

The LA news affiliates are now providing special live coverage of the closure, including updates on the hour...every hour...for forty eight hours plus.

Which lead me to the real reason for this post- to complain and whine about LA television news.

Tune in for an evening or morning newscast and you get two big local stories and a national story...if you are lucky. The rest are fluff pieces about celebrities, television programming, the entertainment industry, and occasionally a new restaurant.

I don’t remember this being the case in Charlotte, or when we are near San Francisco. Don’t get me wrong- I am all for an occasional human interest story and an investigative report, but if I have to see where Kim Kardashian went for lunch post-workout I think I am going to scream.

Even the sports reporters are sucked into the hollywood scene. Forget about getting scores and highlights and updates on the NFL lockout. What really qualifies as news is the listing price for a local athletes Malibu home. I will admit, the McCourt divorce has been interesting, but I think that is because of the legal ownership ramifications...because I am a law geek.

And don’t turn on the news two days preceding or following the Emmys, Academy Awards, or the Grammy’s.