When Stu and I moved to Seattle in 1990, we quickly learned the important stuff, thanks to the wonders of television. That is to say, we had a comedy show called “Almost Live” to tell us about our city and we watched the local news because we liked the anchor. This guy named Aaron Brown had an intelligent, occasionally sardonic delivery, but he was good. Damn good. Wry, talked like he understood the issues and assumed you did too. We didn’t know, I don’t think, that he was so close in age and experience to us (now 56 to my 52, for example) or that he was Jewish. But we noticed – and usually, we notice news anchors only to roll our eyes at their hairdos. He was, in the end, so good that he disappeared into the wilds of New York, snatched from local news by ABC not long after we got here. The next thing we knew, he was reporting from a rooftop on the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center for CNN, where he had just signed on to do the news.

So since 2001, we’ve watched his show change, mutate, change again. It’s had stupid shit applied to it and more stupid shit. (okay, we like the rooster, but "The Whip" just wasted time that could be used in reporting.) We liked "On the rise" and we liked his good relationship with Jeff Greenfield. We still watched, although we gave up when they started doing hour long “celebrity news” bullshit about whatever – the Scott Peterson Trial, I guess it was. But we’d get Aaron’s email every day and know what was coming. And we liked that even he’d show frustration at some of the non-stories he had to cover. Again, he still seemed to think his audience was intelligent enough not to want to spend an entire hour on a “celebrity” trial.

We haven’t seen Brown for several days. The emails stopped coming in the afternoon. Everyone and his grandmother has been reporting in that time slot including Paula Zahn, who doesn’t impress us, Wolf Blitzer, who’s got the world’s strangest delivery style, some guy tonight who seems to be YELLING instead of speaking (Stu says he comes across as a sports reporter) and yep, shoulda guessed it. While trying to track something else down, I just found the AP story that reports that yep, should known. Aaron Brown is leaving CNN. His place will be taken by Anderson Cooper in a 2 hour show, with Wolf and his apparently flashy video screens. Or something. So let’s see. We can’t stomach the local news which is offensively stupid, full of “be scared, be afraid” reporting on fires, car crashes, crime crime crime crime crime, and possible crime, and assault and crimes and crimes (complete with the inevitable misspelling of a city name or a person’s name) and oh yeah, a cute feature on 3 year olds playing tackle football or something. Anderson Cooper? I have no idea how good he is - he got the "part" because they're interested in looks, not depth. ANd because they apparently think it's sexy when your reporter gets wet in a hurricane. Or something. Maybe someday he'll be able to do what Aaron Brown could do. Not yet.

Good thing we can get BBC and “The National” on Canadian tv.

Oh crap. And did you know postage stamp rates were going up?

Maybe I’ll go back to watching “Jeopardy!”