Occasionally we find someone special in the blogoschmeer, a writer that not only stands out from the rest but who really puts the silly sturm und drang stuff into stark relief.

One well-known example is Kevin Sites, a freelance journalist who has been covering events on the ground in Iraq (facilitated by blogging.la and BoingBoing diva Xeni Jardin).

I’d like to offer another example, one from Los Angeles who you may or may not have heard of already. Bryan Frank has been posting on his beFrank site since last May. He is a news photographer with a local television station. This is from his very first post:

There’s nothing more hateful, than killing a child. Today I covered the murder of 11 year old Bryan Lockley. Freaks me out that his name and mine are the same right down to the spelling. We talked to his sister and she showed us the trail of blood that led to where the body was found. I can’t imagine the pain that something like that happening to one of my family members would cause….

Kind of puts your latest cat photos in perspective, doesn’t it?

What’s most intriguing about beFrank isn’t the dramatic human stories he covers, nor the celebrity sightings, nor the “insider” view of the TV news biz. What keeps you reading are the attitude and emotion behind the camera, evident from the very beginning in the rest of that post about the murdered boy:

…This wasn’t the first time I covered a kid’s murder. It just never gets any easier. Was it sad? Yeah, it was sad. I just hope we didn’t add to the pain that the family was going through. It’s pretty hard to keep focused on the job we need to do when we’d rather be somewhere else. When I got home, I had a beer and hugged my wife and daughter. I covered the story and I hope they catch the SOB who murdered Bryan. This is my first day out. Welcome to my world.

Like all the best writing, beFrank keeps you reading and impatiently waiting for the next installment. I urge you to give him a try.

(Also published at blogging.la.)

You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach when your car plunges down a big drop in the road? I just got that when I read Mariners sign 3B Beltre to five-year deal.

Between Adrian leaving, Lima Time leaving, Steve Finley going to the Angels, not to mention last season’s Paul LoDebacle, these Moneyball freaks have just about worked my last nerve.

As The Lakers Turns is getting so that I can’t bear to watch, my Cowboys and Raiders are auguring into the dirt, and scandals keep cropping up like weeds.

Of course I haven’t been right since hockey season was cancelled.

Maybe I need to wean off sports for a while. :)

MarsEdit makes weblog writing like writing email, with each post edited in its own window, the ability to save posts as drafts, spell-checking, and a familiar Mac OS X interface.

While designed to be easy to use for new webloggers, MarsEdit also includes features power-bloggers need: support for categories, text filters, trackbacks, custom templates, AppleScript, and more.

Other MarsEdit features include image and file uploading, a bookmarklet that lets you send a page from your Web browser to MarsEdit, and custom tags.

MarsEdit works with a variety of weblog systems, including Movable Type, TypePad, Radio UserLand, WordPress, Blosxom, and many others.

It also works with NetNewsWire and other newsreaders for OS X that include a post-to-weblog feature. The newsreader’s post-to-weblog command can be used to send a news item to MarsEdit, where it can be commented on and then posted to a weblog. [Ranchero]

“Is this thing involving Barry Bonds in the same category as the guy who gambled on baseball?” Hank Aaron’s reference was to Pete Rose’s banishment from the game for betting on baseball as a manager. Then Aaron added with another sigh, “It’s gotten so that, baseball gets off to a good start, and then, Bam. Something sends it rocking and reeling. I just wish we could have about four or five years without experiencing any of this stuff.” (from ESPN.com)

Me too, Hank. Me too.