Me Are Usually Amused.

Within the last couple of months or so, I found a new station on my cable service.
One that I had not known existed until then.
It turns out that it has been around since the end of 2010 nationally.
I don't know when it reached my cable company.
But it reached me a couple of months ago.
It is called MeTV.
And it has since been cluttering up my Tivo all over the place.
Because it offers up classic old television shows.
Mostly from my youth.
Some of which I never got to see because they were on past my bedtime.
Some of which I never got to see because there was something else I preferred watching at the same time.
And some times it was a tough decision to choose the other one.
But some of them are my favorite shows of all time, and have not been regularly shown for years:
Sergeant Bilko, Car 54 Where Are You?, Naked City, Route 66....
And seeing them again, but now on my big 60 inch flatscreen, is a completely joyous experience.
There is a completely different perspective, watching these shows, most of which were made over fifty years ago.
Oh, there is also the usual crap that I didn't watch then, and wouldn't watch now, but there is enough really good stuff, and good stuff to talk about, that I will probably continue to watch it religiously, and write about the shows there frequently.
They also do this very nice thing that they advertise that they are proud of:
They show all the end credits of all of their shows, in the original sized letters.
Not any of that marginalized, miniaturized, unreadable stuff they do nowadays on major networks.
And in their ads for how proud they are to show their credits, they include MY credit for"Laverne and Shirley"
Thank you MeTv.
But they're not perfect.
No, not perfect.
Not even close to perfect.
It's not that the channel is not in HD.
Hell, none of these shows were in HD to begin with.
No, they do other things that are less than perfect.
Like, they keep showing all those reverse mortgage commercials, and Viagara or Viagara equivalent commercials, Funeral Insurance, or Walk-in Bathtub commercials.
Commercials designed for their target audience: Old people.
Of which they are constantly reminding me that I am becoming one of.
Yes, you can fast forward through them on the Tivo, but you still get the message.
Another thing that they do that is less than perfect is that they make cuts in these shows mercilessly.
So they can shove in more of those old people commercials.
I watched an episode of "The Odd Couple" on there last night.
It was an episode that featured Wally Cox in a small but hilarious role.
I was there. I saw it.
It was not long before he died, and it afforded me the opportunity to meet him.
What they did was, they cut his ENTIRE PART.
Oh, in one scene, you could see him in the background, briefly.
They turned him into no more than an extra.
Wally Cox.
And they jiggered the end credits so that he didn't get one.
Maybe that saved them a few bucks on residuals.
But this is nothing,
NOTHING, compared to the dastardly, horrible, reprehensible thing they did to Valerie Harper all of this past week.
Like she doesn't have enough problems.
I'll get into that next time.

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My books ,"Show Runner" and it's sequel,"Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne & Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not
e-books. But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one. If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@aol.com.
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.

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