Marculations

Dear Belly-Scratch Guy,

Hi. My name is Marc. You might better remember me as “the guy in the striped shirt in front of you in line at Carl’s Jr. who had the horrified look on his face.”

Yeah, that was me.

I’d like to talk to you about that horrified look I had. That was a funny face I was making, huh? Yeah, I’m sure you thought so. I didn’t think so. See, that’s the face I make when I see someone lift their shirt up over their stomach, so they can give it a good scratch.

Look, man. I know that sometimes, you just gotta scratch your stomach. I’m with you. I get it. But listen. This isn’t your bathroom. We’re not at your house. I’m not your annoyed-yet-understanding lover. We’re in line at Carl’s Jr. And I’m about to eat my lunch.

I don’t want to see you dragging your fingernails over your hairy, sweaty stomach while I’m waiting in line for my fucking cheeseburger.

The next time your disgusting, bloated gut decides to poke out from under your filthy, stained polo shirt, and I’m anywhere in the vicinity, you should probably watch out. Because I may uncontrollably vomit all over you.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Marc

Hi, Mr. Lawrence. You don’t know me, but I’m a huge fan of your work.

More specifically, I’m a huge fan of Scrubs.

You see, for me, television has always been rather useless. The idiotic, repetitive story lines. The canned laughter. The dumbing-down of all material to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Last month, I discovered Scrubs on DVD.

The DVD purchase was a whim. I was driving around Fort Lauderdale, looking for a hand wash shop to detail my car. I found one. It was packed, completely jam packed, with cars. I decided that I didn’t want to wait. I wandered into the Best Buy next door, hoping that my trip would not be a complete waste. And there sat Scrubs, season one, on DVD.

I figured, what the hell? And the purchase was made.

Sitcoms, to me, are terrible. I don’t know what would possess me to buy an entire season of one on DVD, especially one I’ve never seen before. With great trepidation, I popped disc one into the DVD player.

A week later, I’d seen every episode. And I needed more.

Back to Best Buy I went, and picked up season two. That lasted less than a week. Since then, I’ve snatched up every “quasi-legal” episode of seasons three, four and five that I can find, hoping to get caught up in time to start watching it on NBC when the Olympics are over.

That brings me to the purpose of this appeal.

I would love to work on Scrubs.

Paid or unpaid, useful or merely tolerated, no matter what, I’d love to be able to be a part of the creative team that brings this show together. Now, I’m not sure that Scrubs is still in production, or if it has been renewed for another season. But if production is still active, I beg you to consider the benefit of having a young upstart writer like myself, offering to work in any capacity you see fit for little or no pay. Because, quite frankly, there are few, if any, shows that I’d even consider watching, let alone working for. With any sort of role in the production of this show, I would know that I am contributing to one of the finest examples of what a sitcom should be. And I would be proud.

Think about it.

A debate rages on in this country about the way we receive our cable channels.

On one side of this debate, we have the current system. You pay for your cable channels in a package, and you get them all, whether you want them or not. Sometimes, you get new channels. Sometimes, you might lose a channel or two.

On the other side, we have a proposal known as “a la carté pricing.” Those of us familiar with that term will know what this means already. In essence, it means that you pick exactly which cable channels you want to receive.

At first glance, the choice may seem obvious. But let’s not get hasty.

This is a very tricky issue for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the revenue stream of the cable companies. What if everybody decides to drop everything except Discovery? That’s a lot of lost revenue.

We can’t go crying about the earning potential of major corporations, though. Well, admittedly, this next issue is related to revenue as well, but it also relates to us as viewers. That is, discovering new programming on cable. You may not know about a channel, or you may not know that it has shows you may want to watch. A channel may undergo a revamp in an effort to lure people back, or it may reimagine itself under new management (see The Nashville Network, which became The National Network, which became The Only Network For Men, which became Spike TV.) A network that most people would never think twice about may suddenly launch a break-out hit (see Bravo and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.)

There is also the issue of launching a new cable network. This ties into the previous paragraph.

Finally, there are technological hurdles. Without going into detail on how cable works, suffice it to say, there is a reason why channels are offered in blocks the way they are. For this reason, analog cable, the kind that goes straight from the wall into the back of your television, will never go “a la carté”. Digital cable, however, is more than capable of operating in this fashion.

This debate will most likely drag on for several more years, with proponents of either side becoming more and more vocal. As viewers, unfortunately, there is not much for us to do to influence either side, short of voicing our opinions to the FCC. Eventually, the FCC will decide whether or not to pass legislation mandating “a la carté” pricing for cable customers.

Until then, try to keep up on which channels you like. There may be a quiz.