What ever happened to Virtual Reality? At least three SF movies (eXistenz, The Thirteenth Floor, The Matrix) were made based on the (eyerollingly obvious) premise that VR is so perfectly realistic that the characters/audience don’t always know when they’re in it or not. But I haven’t seen the first home VR kit on the market yet.
Of course, you are omitting his chief claim to fame (being the pinchrunner on third base when Bobby Thomson hit his home run).
And don’t forget Joe Charbonneau (what, too late?) of the Cleveland Indians. He was the AL Rookie of the Year in 1980 and “Go Joe Charboneau” by the great Section Thirty-six reached #3 on the Cleveland area singles charts. In the next two seasons (or, his last two seasons) he hit .210 and .214 while logging barely two-hundred plate appearances total. At one point, he was sent down to the minors with the explanation “purple hair and .203 averages don’t mix”.
My wikiing reveals that he was an extra in 1984’s The Natural, so there is that.
In a reversal from the OP, I remember when everyone proclaimed reality TV dead after the “Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire?” fiasco. Finally, TV had gone too far and the public wouldn’t take it!
They must have been thinking of some country where people don’t slow down to look at the wreckage.
A shame too, I remember the craze and street fairs and local markets sold emu, it was damn tasty 
On the meat craze topic, goat is apparently the next big thing. Farmer’s markets here are pushing roasts, steaks, sausages, even had “goat bacon” which was yummy.
Also don’t forget that he did his own dentistry and could remove the cap from a beer bottle with his eye socket. Some girls found that hot.
I played around with VR in the mid-1990s at an arcade in St. Louis, it would have been. (Anyone else remember Dactyl Nightmare?) It was a true VR experience: You put on the full headset, stood in a special ring, and interacted with the game by moving your head, waving a joystick around, and pushing buttons on the joystick. You got full 3D and surround sound. It was, in short, the real deal.
It was also monstrously expensive and possessed of graphics that would have been impressive on a home system many years prior. They were too soon: They had to do everything needed on mid-1990s hardware, purchased at mid-1990s prices, and with mid-1990s expertise in the area of true 3D gaming. They likely took in massive amounts of money for a while (the arcade was packed), but it apparently wasn’t enough to tide them over to a later era with better hardware and more knowledge.
Someone might well be able to make a better go of it now, if they could only find sufficient funding.
I have this album (SoD). Fucking brilliant.
I think TTD did all of the career suicide moves… Intentionally. He was hyped wonderfully in the UK music media (I’d never heard him and I read several articles on him in Smash Hits). He had the pipes, and after Introducing the Hardline… it seemed he could have milked the R&B vein for some time. He instead refused to sit in a niche, took forever crafting records, and shunned the spotlight.
The man can sing, though.
I was heartened that one of my favorite bands, INXS, recorded with him for a while and it looked as if he might have replaced Michael Hutchence but it fell apart. Too bad, because he had the singing ability and persona that would allow him to create the frontman position for himself rather than having to imitate Hutch.
Last I heard he changed his name and made an album for a small label. Gotta check that out.
Dio, Charlie Sexton went to my high school (he’s a few years older than me). He was huge and outside of the Vaughan brothers, the Fabulous T-Birds, and Timbuk 3, was the first artist that I remember coming up and makin it big out of Austin. In the mid 80s anyway. I think I saw him on a bill for a show here in town a year or two ago.
There was a VR Doom-a-like in my local arcade. It was overpriced because I think you were on a timer, so the game ended soon no matter how well you played. I remember the sensation being incredible though. It is curious that nobody has come up with a newer, better system. Perhaps there’s too much scope for people to injure themselves? There’s also the fact that video arcades have largely died out. Funnily enough the only game I see in most places nowadays is House Of The Dead or one of its sequels. A game like this in VR would be amazing.
I doubt that’s it. I think it’s more because people still remember what happened to VR in the 1990s and don’t want to get burned when the new incarnation goes bust. Arcades have died back, it’s true, but that only affects the big VR rigs; it wouldn’t stop someone from making smaller systems that are just headsets and joysticks that plug into a console.
It might still be the technology. I don’t know. However, if it could be done on big, expensive machines 15 years ago it seems reasonable to think the computational aspect of it, at least, could be done on much smaller, cheaper machines now.
Bounding around your living room essentially blind? It sounds like it would be a recipe for broken bones and broken china!
And it would be more expensive to get into: The headsets alone would represent a lot of NRE cost (Non-Recoverable Engineering cost, which is what you pay to design something new that becomes a sunk cost in your venture) which you need to have up-front from either your own pocket or your initial investors. Then you need a lineup of launch titles, which means getting developers to make good games for a system that barely exists (or else you’ll be shipping something with no games) and that introduces fundamentally new hardware. Not easy. Very likely to screw up. This means the initial consoles would be expensive, and easily killed in the market if they prove too vomit-inducing, even if only in publicity and not so much in real life, or if the launch titles are not up to par.
You wouldn’t need to get up and race around like a moron to move in the game. You have joysticks and gestures for that. Also, have you seen people playing with the Wii? You don’t hear too many bad stories from them, even though staring at a screen and playing a game can be pretty engrossing.
Yes you are right. Apparently Giants manager Leo Durocher (who also doubled as third base coach) used Hartung because he was a big strong fellow and Durocher was afraid that a fight could break out.
The Space Shuttle has lasted for about 30 years and 135 flights but back when they started it was supposed to be a lot cheaper and more often…flights every week if I remember the NASA propaganda correctly.
Of course it is fun to see those old 1960s TV shows like “Star Trek”, “Time Tunnel”, “Lost in Space” where they are talking about manned space flight to Mars by 1980s, permanent moon bases by 2000. It wasn’t just the movie “2001”.
I apologize if this has been mentioned before but how about the “Bay City Rollers”? Certainly very popular in Great Britain and had mild success in America. But when most of us first heard of them was when they were introduced on Howard Coselll’s live variety show “Saturday Night” as possibly the new Beatles.
The left wing radio network “Air America” came in with a lot of publicity on how they would compete with the right wing Rush Limbaugh (who never needed the NY Times, the TV networks or weekly news magazines publicizing him to become popular). As he predicted, they flopped, at least ratings wise.
I used to think videophones were a stupid idea. Now I have Skype. The universe mocks me for my hubris.
I went to High School in the same area and at the same time as Ron Powlus. He was supposed to be the next Joe Montana.
Wasn’t there a kid that “Sports Illustrated” called the “best baseball prospect ever”. He was right out of high school, and was on the cover and everything.
Whatever happened to him?
Clearly, you’re not watching Timberwolf games.
Dylan and Donovan meet in “Don’t Look Back,” and Dylan makes fun of him by citing him in “Talkin’ WW III Blues.” Dylan had slightly more of an impact on music than Donovan, not counting longevity.