of Tony and Larry

We began last night, watching CNN. I am, at the moment, a little adverse to watching CNN but sometimes one has no choice. There is CTVNewsNet, but I honestly forget about it most of the time.

But I digress. We watched CNN, briefly, while CNN watched an airplane meander around the skies of Los Angeles for hours on end.

And that's all CNN did. They talked to various and sundry people, some of whom knew more about airplanes than others, and they filled time with pointless prattle.

But, when Larry King asked an 'airplane expert' if he thought the people on the flight would be watching CNN, I risked bursting SigOther's eardrums by shrieking 'change the channel!!!'. I mean, really. I could almost hear the sheer glee in Larry's voice as he contemplated the little circuitous logic of 'I'm on CNN talking about the airplane, and they're on the airplane, watching me talk about them, being on the airplane, while they're on the airplane and I'm talking about it...'.

So, we moved to our local news. At 6pm, exactly, Tony Parsons noted the existence of the circling aircraft and it's defunct front wheel, and promptly moved on. We were informed, by Tony, that we would return to the plane in question when it was about to attempt a landing. And then we were treated to news other than that of the chronically aloft airplane. When the plane landed, we saw it. We said 'yay!'. Then, we went back to other news.

Not to belittle the stress that the pilot, crew and passengers were going through, but watching an airplane fly lazily around for prolonged periods of time is just plain boring. And it's way worse when random news anchors are trying, desperately, to say interesting things while watching said airplane. There was absolutely NO need to stalk this airplane while it was in the air.

The pilot and, I'm assuming, co-pilot did a kickass job landing that plane, everyone on the ground looked incredibly organised, and I'm sure the crew were commendable for keeping it together and keeping the passengers informed. And I hope all the passengers got through it without too much wear on their tickers. But if, god forbid, I'm ever in a plane that's circling because of some stupid wheel malfunction, the airplanes and helicopters that are flying around shooting footage of me will be causing me far more stress than the messed up wheel.

And I, for one, will not be watching it unfold ever-so slowly on any in-flight/satellite feed news channels.