“What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen on TV?”
One word: Gormenghast. That was (actually, IS, since the second half is tonight) some pretty damn surreal television!
Yup, R. Budd Dwyer. He was the state treasurer at the time and was just about to be sentenced for his part in a kickback scandal. Instead, he called a press conference and blew his brains out in front of the assembled media types and no small number of his friends and co-workers.
Definitely the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen on TV, and probably the most bizarre thing that’s ever happened in Harrisburg.
Yer pal,
Zappo
Oh, you reminded me of why I absolutely do NOT watch ANY sports on TV. Long ago, I was watching Wide World of Sports coverage of an arm wrestling competition. In the final heavyweight match, one of the wrestlers broke the other guy’s arm. I mean, really REALLY broke it, a nasty compound fracture with the bone tearing right through the muscle and skin. And then they showed an instant replay SEVERAL times. And if that wasn’t enough, they had a closeup from a different camera, you could see the end of the broken bone as it ripped out through the guys arm, in slow motion, over and over. It was at that point I turned off the TV and decided that TV sports, of all kinds, are way too sick to watch.
Back in the early '90s there was a commercial for one of these over the counter treatments for yeast infections. In the commercial, it does its little spiel about the product and you see this woman, sitting on her couch, in the living room of her house, reading the pamphlet. The last seconds of the commercial show the woman putting on a rubber glove! WTF? Who would do that in their living room? I’ve not had any dealings with yeast infections (my plumbing isn’t the right sort), but none of my female friends I’ve discussed this with, have ever thought about doing such a thing! I mean, can you imagine, someone strips their clothes off and begins applying the yeast infection treatment in her living room, with the drapes open? Yuck!
If I see another singin’ BB commercial, I’ll switch to Herb Tarlick polyester plaids!!!
(God help us if half the rumple-butted women suddenly decide that they can actually wear these things; this would be a truly hideous thought)
Mike Lukas spanking jell-o.
Good heavens. Anybody got a link for this? I don’t want a video… but I’d kinda like to know more. Hasn’t anyone else done it? I seem to remember being told about a newsreader.
I’m wondering what kind of woman would put on a glove before touching her genitalia! Sounds like some serious repression, one wonders if she uses protection when masturbating as well…
Do a Google on Bud Dwyer. There’s no lack of information. Sad, information, however.
?? I’ve seen cats hump all the time. My fuzzface Zazou the Wonder Kitty doesn’t seem to realize he’s neutered and has been jumping my roommate’s cat Littl’un whenever she goes into heat.
Joe Franklin on channel 9 interviewing satanic death metal singer King Diamond of Mercyful Fate, and complimenting him saying that he was a “big fan of this young man”.
Maybe not bizarre, but definitely weird. I was drinking in a bar a few months back when one of the sports channel was running footage of an auto race. It was one of those small-dirt track, not NASCAR nor any of the other big boys. One of the cars hit the wall, stopped, then caught on fire. And burned.
And burned . . .
And burned . . .
The driver could be seen trying to get out . . .
More burning . . .
Crew members climbed over the wall with extinguishers. No dice. The gas tank was feeding the flames.
And so the car burned . . .
And burned . . .
A truck was driven onto the track and rear-ended the car, I guess in an attempt to do something. Unfortunately, one of the crew members was in front. He was nearly run over before they managed to stop the truck.
It seemed to go on for hours. I kept expecting the show to cut away to something, to anything, and while I assume that the driver did not survive, I couldn’t tell you for sure. The TV’s sound was overwhelmed by the jukebox, and, except for repeating part of the burning sequence, the show switched away to a commercial.
I still have no idea what it was about.
Runner-up would be another time I was watching TV in a bar, and saw a Bears linebacker give 49ers QB Joe Thiesemann an extra knee. That and the “Bass-O-Matic” sketch on the first-generation Saturday Night Live were the only times I came seriously close to loosing my cookies while watching television.
Many, many years ago I was watching TV at night and this concert came on. It was before channel changers, so I kept watching. I was wondering who it was and then all of a sudden the singer, busted up his guitar and they started throwing things all over the stage. At the time this was not heard of and I sat there in amazement and getting a kick out of it.
All of a sudden the screen went blank and in a couple of minutes they came on and said there had been some some kind of interferance. They started some old educational film on how wheat is grown in Kansas. I went to bed.
Later, I found out I had been watching Alice Cooper
Seeing Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald that Sunday morning. I was only 8 at the time, but a nation already in shock damn near went into a coma. The only murder shown live on television.
Speaking of Alice Cooper, I remember seeing him sing the Barney song (I love you, you love me) to Gene Wilder on Gene’s short lived sitcom Something Wilder. Definitely weird.
Thanks Sublight, I needed a better signature quote.
Here’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen on TV that wasn’t Monty Python related.
Well, it wasn’t actually on TV when I saw it, but it was obviously a TV commercial.
http://heff.bla-bla.com/movies/japanracoon.mov
The second weirdest thing I’ve seen on TV was footage of a woman giving birth sitting in a bathtub. Said footage aired at 5:30am where I lived, and I thought it was a sign I shouldn’t have stayed up all night.
The third weirdest thing I’ve seen on TV was some Mexican comedy sketch about two chunky guys carrying around this stunning Latina in a bikini, who didn’t move at all. I caught the phrase ‘gas polysomething’, so I guess it was they were messing with some weird areosol can from hell when she came in. At the end, the girl was revived and the guys got gassed by an old lady, and wound up posed like they were shielding themselves from getting whacked with a purse. Weird.
Fourth weirdest was a scene from an HBO movie I caught a glimpse of whilst channel surfing late at night. Detective looking man standing outside as searchlights sweep a house. Inside, some naked girl is licking another man’s amputated stump of an arm.
I’d include a VHS tape collection of 50s highway safety films, but that seems like cheating somehow.
Michael
Oh yeah… you remind me of a video I saw on my local cable access program. Someone made a video about home birth, including detailed closeups of the emerging baby. And in the midst of this blood and ick, the female narrator said “it is natural and healthy to allow your children, even young children, to witness the birth.” Then they cut to a shot of a young child, a boy about 5 years old, watching the birth. He was standing against the wall, pressing backwards, with a look of sheer terror on his face.
Annie thanks for reminding me. I was 24 and although I didn’t think of it as weird, it is by far the most remarkable thing that probably has ever been seen on TV. Now that you got me going there was the day in July, 1969 that we watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon.
It was the early 80’s. On Johnny Carsons show.
He had on Tiny Tim, who came out and “sang” Do Ya Think I’m Sexy by Rod Stewart; whilst he writhed around on the floor trying to take his shirt off(apparently in an Attempt to be sexy).Ha!
truly bizaare.
No armadillos were involved…
Wow I had no clue this thread would make it to fifteen posts let alone two pages! 
thanks.
Anyway- I was watching TV with my cousin yesterday and being bored, we flipped to MTV. We saw this little girl (in age anyway, she was kind of overweight) writhing around in weirdass make-up, in a bra and underwear, to a new Mandy Moore song (Hand in my Pocket I think its called). And there was a kitten involved for part of it, dunno why. Looked like an obscene pre-adolescent parody of something out of Striptease. It was a home video thing, something that a fan had mailed in. It scared the hell out of us. If anyone was watching TRL yesterday afternoon, tell me I wasn’t hallucinating. It was horrible. My eyes are scathed. You see, this is why I don’t watch MTV.
Also-
I watched this show on channel 25 (its one of the PBS channels), Japanese, with subtitles. Then they were giving Japanese lessons or something. They showed three people sitting at a table. A man opened a can and showed it to a woman, who recoiled as though a snake was going to pop out but nothing happened. And then she took it and it popped out and the guy got scared. Very very odd.