Well, I am old enough to have seen the moon landing. We were at a White Sox doubleheader (men flying in jetpacks between games!!!) and my dad wanted to leave early - we didn’t want to leave, but we got home just in time to see the whole landing and first step.
I am also old enough to have seen Ed Ames throw a hatchet an outline of a man target on the Johnny Carson show. It hit in a most uncomfortable spot. I was a lttle kid staying up late illegally and could not stop laughing - thought for sure I would get caught. It was supposedly one of longest uninterrupted laughs in TV history.
The most amusing part of that wasn’t the pictures of the comet smashing into Jupiter (even though that was cool), but rather the pictures of all those astronomers getting sloppily drunk.
I remember the Saturday morning my cartoons were interrupted to announce the Tiananmen Square protest. I also remember the tanks rolling in.
I saw Crispin Glover go on “Late Night with David Letterman”. I was young, possibly only 5th or 6th grade. This was back when Dave had a big “cult-like” following. He was on late at night, and could basically do whatever he wanted. Grispin Glover comes out wearing test-pattern striped “high waters”, what seemed to be a woman’s wig on backwards, and 6 inch platforms. He begins to ramble incoherently about his fighting prowess, saying that he can kick, he can punch, that he knows karate. Dave is a bit confused, until Glover stands up, and almost kicks Dave in the face. Misses his face by what looked like centimeters. Dave was totally freaked. They got Crispin Glover out of there, and went to commercial.
I was sleepy, up past my bedtime, and wasn’t sure it had really happened until I confirmed with one of my friends the next day at school.
When my twin and I were babies in a play pen we saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and my dad says we screamed and jumped like teenagers. I saw the Sinead O’Connor thing and, a few weeks later, I saw her get booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute. I saw the Princess Di wedding and funeral. Watching the funeral at that early hour made me remember getting up before dawn 16 years ago to watch her wedding. It was very poignant. I saw the OJ thing. How disappointing the way it ended with everyone still alive. I saw the verdict too, at work. It was a small office with three white women and 1 African American woman working there. We had a temp in that day who was also African American. The white people just stared at the TV and the African American people hugged and cheered. It was a truly bizarre moment, especially since our co-worker had been saying all along that she thought OJ was guilty.
Penn State football game on ABC. “classic” game at the beginning of the season, like kickoff or pigskin… anyway as the credits roll at the end of the game a male cheerleader is holding a female cheerleader overhead while she does a split. well she hadnt shaved close enough for that view. it went on forever. I called my brother who was watching it also. it was a classic game.
Monday night football. at halftime the camera is panning the crowd and zooms in on a sign saying “ABC #1” but as the sign gets close , it is flipped over and says “cosell sucks”.
Monday night football. halloween game in NY city. camera pans the crowd and zooms in on a guy with a “old wrinkled man” mask on . but as it gets close you slowly realize that it was a mask of a male genetalia. with the pecker for the nose and twins for the chin.
4th a bonus. Monday night football. during the broadcast someone throws firecrackers into the booth. cosell has a fit and yells for them to catch them … and dandy don just sat there laughing.
Oh, they weren’t drunk! At least, not on alcohol; they were just very excited to see such a once-in-a-lifetime event. They did pop a champagne bottle though.
I saw the scars left by SL9 on Jupiter a few days later (it was cloudy that night when the impacts occurred). Even in a small 'scope the black pocks were obvious. Brrrrr.
Apollo 11 moon landing. It was the middle of the night in Britain, and I was only seven, but I was allowed to stay up.
Tiannamon Square–specifically the part where the guy with the carrier bags stands in front of a column of tanks. I watched it live from Tokyo, and even thinking about it now still moves me.
Tommy Cooper keeling over from a heart attack on live TV.
England beating the follow-on in a test match against the Australians. Can’t remember the year, but Botham was captain. I’m not a big cricket fan, but that match shows that a sporting event lasting several days CAN be excruciatingly exciting.
I remember seeing a SNL episode a few years back where Pam Anderson was the host and Rollins Band was the musical act. Anyway, Tommy Lee showed up for a couple of skits with Pam (this was after the infamous video, but before their split, apparently). Anybody familiar with Henry Rollins knows he has no love for the glam rockers of the 80’s. At the end of the broadcast, everybody is standing around for the “goodnight shot” and Henry has a banana in his hand. He peels the banana, shoves the thing halfway down his throat and bites it off, all with a big s**t-eating grin on his face directed at Tommy and Pam.
How could I have forgotten, two TV moments that were so dumb they won Sports Illustrated’s Heidi Award.
WCVB-TV, Boston. The Boston Marathon. Susan Wornick, who had never done sports reporting before, was getting all worked up because she couldn’t find champion runner Joan Benoit anywhere in the race. Not only was Benoit not running that year, she was one of the WCVB commentators.
WCVB-TV again (just in time for the next year’s award). WCVB learned the hard way that if you’re going to set up a live camera feed in a locker room (Boston Red Sox), don’t point it at the entrance to the showers! “Hi, I’m Chet Curtis, and this is the News at Schlong… I mean Six!”
Boy, I recall most of these, being old and all…
I remember at age 10 and a half, my mom saying “Watch this, its history”. The moon landing.
I’m like, Yah, right…
I remember the Lou Rawls coughing incident.
In fact, in 89, I went to see Robert Klein here in Cleveland. The same thing happened to him during his jokes.Afterwards, everyone applauded wildly.
I dunno, is it that big a deal for folks to recover from coughing?
I remember the first SNL skit: the wolverines.
Paul Shaeffers’ skit where he had to keep saying floggin four beats, and slipped and said fokkin.
Many many many I’ve seen…More than I realized, actually.
News of the JFK Jr. plane crash
The Elian Gonzalez saga
San Francisco earthquake, 1989
OJ’s Bronco chase
2000 election mess
Waco
Columbine
A few I haven’t seen mentioned yet (I don’t think)
The MTV awards with the famous Jennifer Lopez dress. The one where the guy climbed up on top of the stage prop and was arrested for disorderly conduct. The one where Diana Ross jiggled Lil Kim’s barely covered boob. Was that all in the same year?
Sports related…1996 Summer Olympics. Women’s Gymnastics team for the United States. The girl (can’t remember her name for the life of me now) fell hard on her first vault. I thought for sure we had lost it then. But when her second turn came, she nailed it and we won. I remember the coach carrying her from the area because of the severity of the injury resulting from the fall.
The final episode of Johnny Carson when he broke down and his voice cracked. Bette Midler singing “One More For The Road”
A couple of OKC bombing related ones. Since I live in Oklahoma, we saw hours upon hours of coverage that wasn’t seen by the rest of the country. I was at work when it happened (not close enough to OKC to have heard or felt it) so I didn’t see the initial coverage, but I saw way too much unedited video in the later hours of that night and into the next weeks. I saw Chris Fields and his emotional meeting with Baylee Almon’s mother Aren. (Baylee is the baby in the infamous picture of the firefighter cradling the baby - Chris Fields was that firefighter.) I saw the memorial service, and I remember Edye Smith sitting with pictures of her boys, Chase and Colton, both killed in the bombing. I remember the first pictures of Timothy McVeigh as he was escorted from the courthouse in Perry. I remember thinking how “normal” he looked to have done something so horrendous. I saw the announcement of his guilty verdict. I also saw live coverage from Terre Haute when he was executed in June of this year. A woman from one of the Oklahoma City news stations was selected to be a witness. I couldn’t have done that. I just kept imagining the things people were describing over and over again. It was almost as heartwrenching imagining those things as it was to remember those he had killed…Almost
I saw Jimmy the Greek, on NFL Today, explain why blacks were better atheletes than whites, something about how their leg muscles go all the way up to their backs or some such nonsense. Bye-bye Jimmy. Also, when Howard Cosell called Art Monk a little monkey. I’ve since read the “little monkey” was simply an expression that Cosell had used his whole life, as in “I can’t find my keys, where is the little monkey”. Unfortunately he was vilified for it.
I saw OJ in Bar X on 23rd St. in New York City during the $5 all you can drink happy hour. Surely someone else out there remembers Bar X ?!
I may have dreamed this since no one I have ever talked to remembers seeing this:
Early 90s, some awards show (maybe American Comedy Awards?). Jamie Lee Curtis is presenting an award. Jon Lovitz walks up next to her and starts poking her breast. She turns to him and grabs a handful of johnson. He says into the microphone “you missed!”.
JFK’s Assassination: I was in 8th grade english class, diagramming sentences or some boring grammar crap when the prinicpal came on the loudspeaker and told us all to pile into the gym so we could watch Walter Cronkite tell us he was dead. Not a dry eye in the room, and there were about 600 people there.
Johnson announces he won’t run again: I was in the middle of my freshman year of college and I hoped afterwards I could go to work on his campaign (I had retained hope that he’d run). I heard there was going to be a big announcement on TV that night, so I went to the co-op. I nearly started crying when he announced he wouldn’t run again.
RFK assassination: I was spending the day at home in Taunton, MA, after my freshman year. I was at my friend’s house when I saw him win CA, and I was sure he could kick Nixon’s ass in the general election. I thought about working for him, even though I knew he wouldn’t need help in Massachusetts. Then, a few minutes later, we heard he had been shot. This time I wasn’t the only one who wanted to cry.
Nixon’s resignation: I was living in a shitty department off of Capitol Hill and pretty much everyone in the building (like me) was a hill staffer. Little did I know that I was pretty much the only one on my floor with a television. When word got around that he was resigning about ten other staffers piled into my tiny apartment and sat on either my crappy couch or the floor watching Nixon saying he’d resign on a 12 inch color (barely) screen. Ahh, the sweet memories of poverty.
As I recall, perhaps incorrectly, what put the medal in
jeopardy was not Kerri Strug’s first vault, but Dominique
Moceanu’s vaults. Anyway, the gymnast was Kerri Strug.
Also, though it’s not as good a story, the U.S. woulda won
the medal anyway, but nobody could know that at the time.
Gosh, so many! If you mean AT THE MOMENT THEY HAPPENED:
Nixon’s resignation
and the death of John Lennon. Which creeped me out, actually, because the local radio station had played “Just Like Starting Over” that afternoon around 2:00. I remember saying to myself “this could be the start of a terrific comeback!”
Otherwise:
Princess’ Grace Funeral
The extrication of Baby Jessica
The Apollo Moonwalk
The funerals of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy
and too many more to list.
When it happened (in the first half) it went by completely unnoticed and uncommmented upon. It was only some time later that (Frank Gifford?) said, "We’re getting something from the AP folks. They’re saying you (Cosell) used a racist remark when you called a player a “monkey.”
Cosell, of course, took great umbrage on this, really defending himself on how he was not a racist. If it hadn’t been for that incident (the AP folks, etc.), it might have been largely forgotten.
I know you’re a well respected poster at the SDMB, and I’m just a low life lurker ;o) but how could you have not cared (as much) when Dale Earnhardt died? He was, and is an American icon and a hero to many. I remember watching that race with a group of friends. We were having a blast, it was a great race. However, when they showed what had happened, and the accident scene, everone in the room just got silent. Even the “haters” of Earnhardt became concerned. When I got home an hour later I was just absolutely shocked that the Intimidator had died. He seemed invinceable (sp?). To this day, NASCAR just isn’t the same. You have to admit that.
Oh, I saw the OJ chase, Princess Dianna accident coverage, The election fiasco, Columbine…etc. I’d have to say I’ve seen everything major as it happened in the 90’s and 00’s. I think that means I watch too much TV considering I’m 19…
