Carl Karcher, a figure from my childhood

Video is of Stormin Norman giving a forecast, but in the middle of his report is a commercial starring Carl Karcher himself — the only one available online now, from my cursory search.

As soon as I saw the news move on the wires — without an alert in front of it, for some inexplicable reason — I dropped the other stories I was working on to put this one up right away. Maybe its because I’m actually from Southern California and grew up going to old school Carl’s Jr. restaurants, and saw him in these commercials, that it resonated with me so deeply. (My favorite old school Carl’s Jr. sandwich was the steak sandwich — with nothing else on it. Just meat and steak. It was a preview of things to come. Yeah, I was a weird kid. And unfortunately, the one they have now is not the same.) This is so sad — three hyperlocal deaths in three days — don’t forget honorary Hollywood Mayor Johnny Grant — and I had to put out stories about each of them.

I also find it sad that most searches about Carl Karcher and Carl’s Jr. mostly bring up pictures and video and commentary about that silly Paris Hilton commercial. He would not want that to be his legacy.