UPDATES on previous posts

To get maximum enjoyment out of this post, each time you see the word "UPDATE," please read it out loud the way Dennis Farina barked "UPDATE" for the added material he recorded to tack onto older segments during his "Unsolved Mysteries" reboot.

UPDATE Antenna TV will indeed bring out those older shows: A lot of us classic TV lovers, jaded by the shabby treatment given us by TV Land, felt queasy when Antenna launched without some of the true rarities that had been promised as part of the initial lineup. Well, the ever-informative Pavan of the indispensable Sitcoms Online news blog reported last week that "Burns and Allen," "Circus Boy," "The Iron Horse," and "Rin Tin Tin" really are coming at the end of May, along with more recent/less rare additions "Soap" and "Mad About You."

Pavan reported this on the site's message boards with maybe a wee bit of unseemly self-satisfaction, especially considering us skeptics weren't doubting HIS integrity so much as Antenna's genuine commitment to showing the rare and vintage. I don't think it's an unreasonable approach to say "we'll wait and see" with regards to this programming service, especially given that it is showing edited episodes of everything. Still, thanks to Sitcoms Online for setting the record straight, and thanks to Antenna for freshening its lineup without dumping anything of consequence ("The Nanny" will not be missed in my household). There are a lot of changes, though, and "Hazel" is getting booted to the wee hours, but, hey, change isn't always a bad thing, and "Hazel" is on the verge of completing a full run in the next few days or so.

The only disappointing aspect of this news is that we still have to wait for "Farmer's Daughter" and "Ford Theatre," two other shows postponed from that January launch--the two I may have been most excited to see. Antenna assures us they are coming as soon as they get usable tapes from Sony, and I will say this news certainly gives me confidence that they mean it. We'll just have to wait.

UPDATE RTV's Facebook page is back up: Well, not exactly "back up," as the old one was nuked and replaced with a new one. A few weeks back, I speculated that the demise of the network's Facebook outpost was due to company incompetence, but RTV reports it was a Facebook screw-up. Hmm, very strange. But I owe RTV an apology, and I welcome them back to social media.

Unfortunately, I'm not linking to the new Facebook page because...I can't find the damn thing! It may well still be there, but I spent 5 minutes hunting for it without success, and since that's about 4 minutes 57 seconds longer than it should take to locate a page for a major media company, I'm wondering if there are some kind of shenanigans occurring again. But I DID see it last week. Honest, I did.

***UPDATE to the UPDATE: A kind soul provided the link in the comments below, and kinder yet, did not add, "How could you have not found this, you idjit?" So thanks to that individual, and in case someone sees this post but not that comment, click here to get to the new, still somewhat undertrafficked RTV Facebook page.

Oh, and my local RTV affiliate carried the same schedule over to the second quarter, meaning no "Kojak." I don't hear any word about RTV freshening up its offerings, either.

UPDATE Not exactly an update to a previous post, but an update to a post I didn't actually produce: Ivan at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear wrote an entertaining review of "Sing and Like It," a fun little picture recently screened on TCM. I had thought about writing something about the movie myself, but Ivan did it first and surely better, and you should go read it if you haven't yet done so.

All I'll add is that any film with Nat Pendelton, Ned Sparks, John Qualen, and Edward Everett Horton is a must-see in my book, and that while I don't want to condone the roughing around of Pert Kelton performed by Pendelton's character, Pert IS tougher than the Saturday "Times" crossword in this movie and is even more menacing than he is.

UPDATE Budget DVD Theater to return to Cultureshark after all?: I'm almost too embarrassed to bring this up (and notice I'm burying it at the bottom of a lengthy post), but, uh, remember around the holidays--sadly, I don't mean St. Patrick's Day, either--when I touted the return of the occasional Budget DVD Theater feature with a fresh look at one of the worst things I had ever seen?

Well, it's been a while, yes, and I've been busy, but I DID see the material in question. Odd thing was, it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered. Oh, it wasn't great, but I found myself kind of understanding what it was going for and appreciating it on some level. So this kind of killed my enthusiasm for writing about it because, hey, if you can't go on your blog and make bitchy comments about something, what's the use, right?

But I do feel the need to revisit it at some point, and now that the second little shark in the family is getting older and life is getting a bit more routine at Cultureshark Tower, I do intend to bring back the feature. Uh, no promises as to when, though.