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Frank Bank, who as Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford served as the dim-witted foil to "Beaver" Cleaver and brother Wally on the classic TV comedy "Leave It to Beaver," died Saturday. He was 71. A spokesman for Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles confirmed Bank's death but did not disclose where he died or the cause. Bank had a number of illnesses and was hospitalized recently in Rancho Mirage, said Jerry Mathers who played Beaver Cleaver in the popular series that ran from 1957 to 1963.

If there's one thing people can't seem to get enough of on YouTube, it's cat videos, real and animated. “Simon's Cat,” from British animator Simon Tofield, has logged 280 million views since launching in 2008 -- and, by the time you've finished reading this, quite a few more. Tofield is coming to the L.A. Times Festival of Books -- not for the videos, but for the  “Simon's Cat” book series ; the third volume, “ Simon's Cat in Kitten Chaos ,” is out April 16. The book includes a sheet of stickers, as well as a section teaching readers how to draw their favorite “Simon's Cat” characters.

Things aren't going so well for Matt Lauer lately. The once-beloved "Today" host has taken a beating in the media, sparked by the awkward departure of co-host Ann Curry from the NBC show. Last month, the New York Times ran a front-page story discussing Lauer's dwindling popularity, and to make matters worse, the show's ratings have been in decline. While "Today" was once the champ of the network morning shows, it's now regularly ranked second behind ABC's "Good Morning America. " RATINGS: Cable versus broadcast shows But at least we know that Lauer is reading his own press, both good and bad. According to the New York Post, Lauer recently poked fun at his own troubles while hosting the UJA Federation of New York's Broadcast Cable & Film Division event.

Officials at Riverside County Animal Services had a hunch the story of Banjo the dog would get some attention. But this? So many people turned to the department's website looking for information on the fluffy poodle-terrier mix rescued from train tracks that the site went down Wednesday afternoon -- and still isn't up and running. "Banjo's causing some serious technical issues," spokesman John Welsh said. Interest in the dog exploded after the department revealed Tuesday he was rescued this month when a 78-year-old man apparently tied him to some train tracks in the Mecca area.

A new study from the NPD Group reveals that nearly all U.S. households own at least one device that can be used as a second screen while watching TV. It's not surprising that 87% of consumers are splitting their attention between the TV and their laptops, smartphones and tablet computers. Here's the kicker: Although such distracted viewing is common, fewer people are using these second screens to interact with the applications designed specifically for the TV programs they're watching.

Ellen DeGeneres' discovery on YouTube of two British cousins -- who loved to sing and dance in pink frilly dresses -- marked "the beginning of a beautiful friendship," to borrow from Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca. " In this case, the friendship that blossomed was between "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and YouTube, the popular video website owned by Google.  Executives at YouTube and Warner Bros., which produces DeGeneres' afternoon talk show, pinpoint the first appearance of the pint-sized crooners, Sophia Grace and Rosie, on DeGeneres' show in late 2011 as a spark that helped ignite DeGeneres' social media supernova status.

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic whose gladiatorial "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" assessments turned film reviewing into a television sport and whose passion for independent film helped introduce a new generation of filmmakers to moviegoers, has died. He was 70. Ebert, who had battled cancer in recent years, died Thursday in Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, where he had been film critic for 46 years. He had undergone several surgeries to remove cancerous tumors from his thyroid and salivary glands, ultimately losing his jaw and speaking voice to the disease.

Electric bikes are slowly picking up speed. Already booming in Europe and Japan, these bike-path legal bicycles combine a normal drivetrain with an electric motor, which is usually embedded in the rear hub. You decide how much to juice your pedaling with the motor, allowing you to fly up steep hills or commute to work without huffing and puffing, then push it manually when you want a workout. There are two types of electric bikes: a "pedal-assist" that kicks in only while you are pushing the pedals, and a throttle-actuated motor that works without pedaling.

Joe Weider, a Los Angeles-based bodybuilding pioneer who created a multimillion-dollar fitness publishing empire and mentored a young Arnold Schwarzenegger from the time the future actor and California governor was a struggling unknown, died Saturday, a family spokeswoman said. He was 93. Weider, who discovered a teenage Schwarzenegger at a bodybuilding contest in Europe and sponsored the young Austrian's move to the U.S., died of heart failure at a Los Angeles hospital, said Charlotte Parker, his longtime publicist.

The sleek man at the door bears no resemblance to the chubby pink-haired troublemaker whose snarky website made him as famous as the celebrities he loved to torment with nicknames like Sluttyienna (Sienna Miller), Potato Head (Rumer Willis) or Maniston (Jennifer Aniston). Gone are the schlubby T-shirts and hoodies. A body-skimming gray sweater now conceals rock-hard abs. Gone, too, is the outlandish hair color, replaced by a slightly thinning curly brown mop. His Park LaBrea condo and its Pepto-Bismol-hued room are history.