That’s Entertainment
Baseball movies? Football movies? Seen ’em. But have you seen these films, based on sports that are a little outside the mainstream…or don’t exist at all? Rollerball (1975) Sport: Rollerball, a combination of roller derby, basketball, and rioting, in which two teams skate (some players ride motorcycles) around a banked track and score points by […]
Muhammad Ali was a towering presence in sports and society. As a boxer he was “The Greatest,” and was equally well known as a social crusader and activist. The world loved Ali, and he crossed over into pop culture a number of times. The Greatest More than two decades before Will Smith was nominated for […]
Songs that made the whole world sing…or at least sit up and take notice. The Song: “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Recorded by: Band Aid Story: In November 1984, Irish rock musician Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats saw a TV news report about the millions of people suffering from a famine in Ethiopia. He […]
Before the days of instant interaction via the Internet and social media, the way to tell a celebrity you liked their work was to write them a fan letter. In return, you might get a signed headshot and a form letter. Here are some celebrities, from then and now, with creative responses to fans. Steve […]
Today most video games are played in the home, but in the 1970s and 1980s, if you wanted to play the newest, hottest games, you went to an arcade. Here are the stories of a few of the classics we played back in the golden age of arcade games. SPACE INVADERS (Taito, 1978) Object: Using […]
Lots of celebrities have endorsed products. Sometimes it helps sales. The George Foreman Grill, for example, has sold millions. Sometimes, on the other hand, it’s just a weird idea. (1) Wrestler Hulk Hogan lent his image to a line of cameras for kids. His face was painted on the lens, inserting Hulk into the corner […]
While Uncle John was listening to Prince’s eight-minute-long “Purple Rain” on a loop over the weekend, he got to thinking about long songs. Really long songs. The Longest Hit Songs Before the late ‘60s, radio stations rarely played songs over four minutes long. It took a band as powerful as the Beatles to change that. […]
Rock stars are cool, but they don’t emerge fully formed. They have to pay their dues, and many paid their dues in bands far different from the ones that made them famous. Billy Joel Billy Joel’s music is pretty simple: piano, singing, standard pop-rock backing band. It worked pretty well: Joel racked up 33 Top […]
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has hit home video after a box office run of $934.89 million, making it the highest grossing movie of all time. Here’s just how much money that is. If The Force Awakens were a country, it would have the 174th largest GDP on Earth, just behind Guinea-Bissau and ahead of […]
From the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad, Apple has had a lot of successes in recent years. It wasn’t always like that. Macintosh Portable A portable computer was positively revolutionary in 1989. Apple’s entry had a black-and-white LCD screen, which folded down over the keyboard to make the whole thing easy to cart […]
We’ve written about the bold leaps taken by Archie and the Riverdale gang before, but there are just so times this comic book about a bunch of high school kids got really strange. Faculty Funnies In 1989, Archie publishers apparently thought that what their legions of kid and preteen readers really wanted was a comic […]
Most major rock guitarists have custom instruments built for them. Some are truly odd. Rick Nielsen’s Multi-Neck Guitars Cheap Trick is probably most memorable for two things: “I Want You to Want Me” and Rick Nielsen’s two-, three-, four-, and five-neck guitars. Up until about 1980, he’d line up as many as five different guitars […]
In the 1980s and ’90s, Prince introduced lots of young singers to the world, writing and producing songs for them. But how’d they do without Prince? Sheila E. She started drumming professionally as a teenager, and it helped that her father was iconic Latin jazz drummer Pete Escovedo. She was an accomplished session drummer by […]
Who invented the Hokey Pokey? It depends on who you ask, or where and when you lived. DO “THE HOKEY COKEY” In 1942 Irish songwriter and publisher Jimmy Kennedy, best known for “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic,” created a dance, and an instructional song to go along with it, called “The Hokey Cokey.” Written to entertain […]
The late Prince was a prolific singer-songwriter, writing and performing dozens of hit songs for himself. But he wrote so much material that he couldn’t record it all himself (or he didn’t feel it was right for him). Here are some Prince songs best known for not being “Prince” songs. The Bangles, “Manic Monday” Prince […]
Here are some of the strangest game shows ever to air on American television. ACROSS THE BOARD (1959) Concept: Two contestants competed to see who could finish a crossword puzzle first. (Have you ever watched somebody else fill out a crossword puzzle? It’s pretty boring.) LUCKY PARTNERS (1958) Host Carl Cordell read part of the […]
Ever wonder how rock bands get their names? So do we. After some digging around, we found these origins. CHICAGO They originally called themselves Chicago Transit Authority, but had to shorten it after the city of Chicago sued. ALICE COOPER Lead singer Vincent Furnier claims to have gotten his stage name from a Ouija board, […]
There are only so many notes, so occasionally one hit song sounds a lot like another hit song. In 1982, the Australian rock band Men at Work hit #1 in the U.S. with “Down Under” a song about a proud Australian man traveling the world. It’s also notable for being one of few major hit […]
