Hypothetical question: If you were, at the time, the fastest marathon runner in the history of the United States, what would you be willing to do for $100,000 and a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team? If you guessed that the answer was throwing up all over yourself on live national television , you’re right.
You’ve heard of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat? THIS was the agony of victory! And Pete Sampras did pretty much the same thing a few months later - and both of them went on to win their respective events!
More recently, a professional basketball player experienced a compound shin fracture, also on live TV. Thankfully, I missed that, and the network fuzzied it when I saw it later.
That reminds me of the mid 00s live interview I saw on CNN, after Florida passed a short-lived law stating that women who wanted to place their babies for adoption had to take out classified ads in local papers, at their own expense, to search for the babies’ fathers. It was a panel discussion with - are you ready for this? - Dr. Drew Pinsky, the then-president of NOW, and Rev. Jerry Falwell! And they all agreed. I have never seen this on any online platform.
The one thing I definitely remember was that Falwell said that his ministry ran a shelter for homeless pregnant women, and IIRC an average of 1,200 women a year used it. They had NEVER had a father contact them, showing any interest in his baby.
You know, I found out about this occurrence right before the pandemic, and I’ve been intrigued since. It’s so odd, and creepy. I recall liking a video by a YouTube creator; “Whang!”, though, I’d personally stay away from some of his stuff, because a lot of it is about grotesque stuff. Not my thing.
I wonder what the next development in that story will be, if anything. It’s sort of a “meme” among my friends that whenever someone brings up Chicago, I say “Chicago? That’s where the Max Headroom Incident occurred!”
The thing I most wonder about is why it never happened again after that night. That kind of piracy takes a lot of specialized equipment, and to set it all up just for one night seems like a waste. I wonder what the penalty for something like that would be if they were caught?
I’ll never forget the day Michael Jackson died, because that was the day I got my ASL diagnosis. I was home, processing everything, turned on the news and watched hours of helicopter footage of the Neverland Ranch, so an already surreal day pranced headily over the line into Twilight Zone territory. I wasn’t an MJ fan and hadn’t been since I was ten or so, but it seemed pretty monumental.
Echoing many above, I also watched the second plane going in, and I had a COVID work-from-hoome day on January 6 so I watched that lunacy unfold as well. The Berlin Wall fell when I was 16 years old so I don’t think I appreciated the enormity of the moment nearly as much as my parents, who’d grown up during the cold war, and I don’t remember being glued to the set. I do remember my dad calling me downstairs the night the U.S. Bombardment of Bagdhad in Gulf War 1 began. “It’s starting!”
That was another WTF moment. I was watching some feed from Saudi Arabia, and the reporter on screen said, “I can hear planes going by overhead…”, and then the feed cut out completely.
This was before we knew what a curbstomping the US was going to give Iraq. We still thought Iraq was going to put up a fight, and I honestly thought we’d just seen that reporter get bombed by an Iraqi plane.
Mine was not of a national tragedy or anything nearly so historic. When I was a kid, I would get dressed for school and go eat my breakfast at the kitchen table. My mom and sister would usually come along later.
Anyway, my mom liked to have NBC’s The Today Show on in the morning. I usually just read the cereal box while eating. One morning, though, the Today folks captured my attention with a segment about breast cancer. They had an actual woman demonstrate how to properly conduct a self-examination for lumps, etc. on her own real boobs.
I was… FASCINATED!
I was a big-time fan of The Today Show for a long time after that. Never missed an episode.
This one’s kinda funny, and much lighter than all the suicide and assassinations…(I feel like I told this story years ago but anyway)
The night that Morrissey was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Johnny barely knew who he was. Bill Cosby, who was the main guest, obviously didn’t have a clue. The audience was filled to the rafters with Morrissey fans, so I imagine that both Carson and Cosby were perplexed why the usual tourists had been replaced entirely by Hollywood goths and Latino kids from Alhambra. This was a not long before Johnny retired, and he had kind of checked out, and didn’t need this kind of hassle. His opening monologue bombed because, who cared? Bring out Mozz! Cosby comes out to do his routine, and, salvaging what he could, just spends five minutes going “I was just backstage talking to Morrissey…” then standing there mugging for a full minute until the screams die down.
I’m not even a huge Morrissey fan, but I thought it was hilarious, watching the venerated show collapse like that.
Back in the 90s, I had a co-worker who somehow managed to receive PPV events for free through his modified cable box. He invited a bunch of over to show off his rig.
The event? Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield.
We all stood there mouths gaping as Mike went nuts and started biting Evander’s ears, and the fight devolved into a huge clusterf*ck.
I don’t watch golf - it’s boring to me. One day I was flipping channels and saw one shot. It was the Tiger Woods shot that they show all the time. Now we know the shot goes in. At that time I didn’t know.
On the Tiger Woods shot, I thought there was one that stood out. (like I said, I don’t watch a lot of golf). It’s one they have shown a lot of times on commercials. It was the one where the ball was at the edge of the hole for a long time before dropping in.
Yes, the Tiger Woods article was the one I saw. I have seen other famous plays live (Joe Theisman’s injury, Kurt Gibson’s World Series home run, Michael Jordan’s drive where he switches hands in air) but for some reason the Tiger Woods one stands out. And as I mentioned, this just happened to be the shot that they played when I was flipping channels (back in the day when I flipped channels).