Video Maven Stuart Shostak operates one of the largest companies that sells videotapes (and, now, DVDs) of old TV shows. I've been an occasional customer of his since…well, I still have Beta tapes I purchased from him. Does that date me? Anyway, you can browse his catalog over at www.shokus.com and if you see something you like — and you will — order with confidence. He's been around a long time and everyone's been happy with the service and the quality.
Stuart writes to remind me of a correction I meant to make (and have just made) in a column posted here — the one about Soupy Sales. The director of Soupy's short-lived TV series in the seventies was Lou Tedesco, not Lou Horvitz, who is another fine director of television programming. Lou Tedesco is the gent I was thinking about as my fingers, darn them, typed the wrong surname. This is embarrassing, especially since (a) I knew the difference, (b) this column was published in 1995 and Stuart's only the second person to point this out to me in all that time and (c) the column was reprinted in Soupy's autobiography…with the error intact. One of these days, someone is going to look it up in there, get the wrong name and say, "Well, if Soupy published it in his book, it must be so." It's times like this I almost wish I was a rabid, right-wing Republican so I could blame it on Bill Clinton.