The More Things Change the More They...Change. 01/30,26

Since when did it become so hard to watch tv? Well that depends. If you’re reading this, chances are you remember the good old days. The days when you turned the tv on with an on/off switch. You actually got up from your coach and manually changed the channels. Not that there were so many choices.

In New York we had the three networks, CBS (channel 2), NBC (channel 4), ABC (channel 7). That was basically it for the big blockbuster shows. Oh sure we had fill-ins. Channel 5 was a local FOX station before FOX became FOX. Channel 9 was called WOR. They showed the Mets games for free! Imagine that. And they had Chiller Theater which used to scare the bejeezus out of me and my younger brother. You want Dracula, Frankenstein, Godzilla, King Kong (“Oh,no, it wasn’t the airplanes, (insert long meaningful pause) it was beauty killed the beast.”) And a personal favorite, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with one of my favorite movie voiceovers of all time, when Kevin McCarthy looks into his girlfriends eyes who had fallen asleep in one second and had become one of THEM. “In a second, the woman I loved was an inhuman enemy bent on my destruction.” If you’re getting the impression that I watched far too much tv as a kid, you’re right. But to finish the channel lineup, we had channel 11, WPIX, which showed the Yankee games for free and finally Channel 13, WNDT, which was the PBS station which I never watched. That’s it. 7 channels.

Now, I’ve got one remote that turns on the cable tv and then a second remote that turns on streaming tv, I do all this through an Apple TV, which is not a tv at all but a box that allows your tv to stream. Huh? Oh, and that’s not all. The cable has to go through HDMI 2, while the streaming goes through HDMI 4, requiring you to hit the input button on the regular remote but not on the Apple Remote which makes the switch automatically. But don’t worry, as soon as you figure it out, it’ll change again. No wonder I read so many books.

Which brings us to our next comic, corkage fees. If you don’t know what a corkage fee is, it’s something snooty restaurants charge when you bring your own bottle of wine. It can be as high as $50.00. The reason they do this is obvious. It’s to encourage you to buy their wine and discourage you from bringing your wine. Alcohol is by far the biggest profit maker for a restaurant. John and I were talking about this and the thing that seemed disingenuous was the term “corkage.” They’re really not charging you $30 -$50 to remove the cork, are they? So I asked John, what happens if you bring in a screwtop bottle, no corkage there? And he said, then it’s a screwage fee and bam, we had our second comic. Sometimes it seems so easy, but most of the time, it’s not.

Well that’s it for this week. Before we go I have to open a bootle of Snapple Diet Peach Tea. The best part? No cap opening fee. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John