I’m fat. Nothing new there, but I am working on losing the pounds and keeping them off for good.

CaptainsCast is coming back. Ben has a renewed interest as well and wants to do the show again. I also realize how important it is for me to communicate with my boys and keep them on track. This is the way to do that.

Time Machine Toychest is coming back. More classic toys from yesteryear. This week brings the Frisbee!

Overgrown Boyscout is starting up anew. Since I have been thrust into the world of Scouting, I feel it is important to help others not that familiar with it. Look for me to hopefully be joined by Eagle Scout Jeff Hertlein as my co-host.

The Weekly Word Podcast will continue. For those looking for a great spiritual message, come listen to Dr. J, John Daniels, give his weekly message.

Coming soon – more blogging, more 70′s & 80′s history, and a few new podcast projects.

Our day started with us being late for breakfast. We are the closest camp to the dining hall yet the last one to get there. Still don’t know why. Our troop volunteered for the song for this meal. Our first years, Tim Carter, and myself led the whole camp in a stunning rendition of Alive, Alert, Awake, Enthusiastic. It was fantastic.

The boys know where they are headed now, so the pressure is off. Everyone knows where they need to be. Summer camp looks a lot like a college campus. Except no girls.

A few of us went through Scoutmaster training part one today. We basically learned how to gently guide the boys to run the troop while we advise. We each introduced ourselves and why we were attending the training. The older boys did it for me. They said it would be cool to have Captain Kirk as one of the Assistant Scoutmasters. It makes you feel good to be a part of the troop aside from the first years you came in with.

We did a troop service project this afternoon and dismantled tents in a camp that will not be used for the next week of camp. Have you seen Aliens? That’s what it was like with all of the wood spiders in the tents. We had to battle one. You can see it and the aftermath of the battle below in the photos. THEY JUST WON’T DIE!!!!!

Everybody went off and did their own activities tonight. There was the Blob, Archery, Boating, Magic the Gathering tournament, fishing, rappelling. Our kids did it all. Mel, Ron, and myself hit the archery range. I haven’t shot in nearly 30 years. It was awesome.

The night finished up with an Order of the Arrow ceremony. Some of our scouts were inducted. It was a proud moment for all. Congrats to Tyler, Tarak, Jacob, Ron, and Brody.

Time to head back to camp. Faygo time.

In other news, I went fishing with one of our assistant scoutmasters. What a great time. I caught a few and it was very stress-relieving. His daughter caught a nice bass too. She wasnt afraid of the worms like some of our older boys were. Check out the pics below.

Sidenote – we had a fire drill today. They then served us refried beans at dinner. Coincidence?

That’s it for now. Time to get out the chips and Faygo for the boys. It’s a troop tradition.

P.S. The 2 boys that got lost finished the course. Only 2+ hours. Nevertheless, we’ll have a full headcount at lights out.

As you can see from the photo, camp is clean and pristine. Just wait. Chaos will ensue.

Andy

Stay tuned.

This is it. The big one. #1. I think many in my generation would agree that the Atari 2600 was the best thing to happen to toys and technology at the time. Long before the days of the Xbox360, Wii, and PS3, this granddaddy started it all as far as switchable video games went. The Atari came with 2 joysticks, 2 paddles, and a pack-in game of Combat. Nowadays you get one controller and no game with a brand new latest generation system. Oh yeah – don’t forget the awesome RF modulator switch you had to slide to “game” or “tv” depending on what you wanted to do. It had the 2 leads you had to screw down to the back of your television. That was tech. It’s hard to believe, but the Atari went for $199 retail. That’s nuts. There were also a couple of versions. First generation models had six switches on the console and were much heavier. Later they were streamlined to just 4 main switches and less RF shielding to make them lighter. Atari really hit it big when they started buying the licensing for arcade games. Space Invaders was a mega-hit for Atari even though it was inferior to the coin-operated machine.

Do you remember? – Pitfall, Combat, Pinball, Kaboom, Breakout, Adventure

When I got this for Christmas it turned into family fun time. Rarely do you see families hang out together in the same room and play a game together let alone a video game. My family was the same way. That’s what we did that Christmas. On a 13″ color tv (Dad didn’t want to screw up the big one.) Me, mom, dad, Jon, Pam, Jerry, Cindy, Jenny, Rob, & my nephew Nick. We played Space Invaders until 2am. I threw up in the middle of the night that night. Mom thinks it was from too many video games. I think it was just the flu. For the past few Christmases we had the Kirk family Christmas at my brothers or sisters house in Columbus or Sidney respectively. Our family is much bigger now. We played Wii bowling till all hours on an inflatable screen in the basement as a giant family. I believe this is why I picked the Atari as my number one. It brought my family together for a moment from our hustle and bustle lives. It’s really more about family and friends than all the super cool toys from my youth. This is very Clark Griswold, but it’s about the times and memories you have and those times and memories you will still make.
I hope everybody enjoyed my top ten list. I wanted to get back into the blog again, and saw this as a great motivator to write again. I’ll try and keep it updated with interesting anecdotes and adventures. Most of all, thanks for reading. Have a great Christmas Day today. Enjoy your family, watch your kids open presents, and curse the toys you have to assemble. Merry Christmas everybody!

You knew I couldn’t get through this list without having Star Wars toys on it didn’t you? The big question people had was how many Star Wars toys would make the list? Anyone that knows me knows that that is not very possible. It would be a top ten star Wars list instead. Hmmm…maybe another time.
When Star Wars first came out there were no such things as action figures. In fact you may recall that Kenner released a cardboard box for purchase with the promise of 4 action figures by mail. When I received those action figures I would imagine play scenarios around them since there were no playsets or ships yet. I used the narrow end of a mini ironing board as the Millennium Falcon. Kenner then started trickling out ships. First the landspeeder, the xwing, tie fighter, a death star playset. Then the holy grail of all ships and playsets came out – the Falcon. A working ramp, opening cockpit, retractable landing gear, rotating radar dish, swiveling gun turret, holo chess board, jedi remote training area, and a hidden storage compartment. THIS ROCKED!!!!
This toy was not necessarily a surprise on Xmas morning. At the time midwestern Ohio was not very prone to get Star Wars toys when they first came out. Even if they were manufactured in Cincinnati, so it was hard to find anything let alone a brand new MF that everybody wanted. Hence Davenport, Iowa enters the picture. My sister and brother-in-law lived there and we would visit every now and then. Every trip to Iowa meant a trip to the mall (Sidney, Ohio had no such thing.) That is where I saw my coveted Falcon – at Montgomery Ward. Later on we all split up to do our own thing in the mall. I happened to spy my dad walking down the opposite side of the mall with a large bag under his shoulder with my new Xmas toy in it. Score! Many, many hours were spent piloting the hunk of junk from a galaxy far, far away.

Before Star Wars action figures there were the Fisher Price Adventure People. Kind of a post pre-school toy line to role play neat adventures. Recently you may have seen the concept of these toys transformed into the Rescue Heroes by fisher Price. There was a wide assortment to choose from. Check out the photos, you may see something you had as a kid. I had the kayak, the skydiver, a sea explorer boat, the rescue copter, and the blue news van.

Long before the days of Power Wheels, there was the era of the pedal tractor. Not the plastic ones mind you, but the cast iron, heavy duty models. Mine was a Ford 8000 in blue. To this day I still have memories of mom and dad taking me to a farm supply store. I got to ride one around the store, and threw the biggest tantrum because I didn’t get to keep one. Then on Christmas morning there it was. No pedal tractor is complete without a wagon. This one had that as well. I still remember the most frustrating thing about being a 4-year old, is not having the leg power to pedal the thing on shag carpet. Later on when the winter thaw came, I could ride it outside on our driveway. We had a circular driveway with a secondary lower driveway to a separate storage garage/shed. I remember coasting this iron missile down the hill full speed. In the early 80′s my nephew tried the same thing and ended up wrecking and breaking his finger.
I recently learned that mom and dad still have this same tractor in storage. I plan on getting it out and restoring it to the shape it was in when I first received it.

TCR Total Control Racing was a slotless track system that gave you more control over your racing cars than ever before. Because there were no slots for the cars to fit into, the TCR cars could change lanes. This was done by flipping a switch on the Hand Controller. However when the cars came to a bend they would always default to the outside of the bend due to gravity and centrifugal force. This meant that you could not overtake on the inside of a bend. Most TCR sets that were sold came with the added bonus of a third vehicle, a Jam Car which travelled at a slightly slower speed than the two “racing” cars. This meant that in order to win a race you would have to negotiate this vehicle as well as your opponent.
I used to have this set up in the back of our basement in a creepy storage room on top of the meat freezer. We used to have races, but had to count the laps ourselves. That never worked out because you always lost count. Wrecks never really happened either. You just rode the rails the entire time. Still a great track that didn’t frustrate you by having the cars fly off the track at a simulated 500mph.

2-XL was an educational robot that entertained you through material recorded onto 8-track tapes that you played through 2-XL. Everything was totally interactive based on the choices you made answering questions and pressing one of the four corresponding buttons on the front panel. Essentially it was nothing but a fancy 8-track player, with each button operating a particular track. The 8-Track tapes focused around a nerdy robot with a New York accent who would speak as if the listener was right there with him wherever he happened to be in the storyline. He would ask multiple-choice questions based on the subject of the tape, and the user would answer the question he asked by pushing the corresponding button. A right answer resulted in 2-XL congratulating the user on his knowledge, while a wrong answer would result in a razzing as 2-XL explained what the proper answer was. In between questions, there would sometimes be a story going on that the user was involved with, with the answers to the questions corresponding to the story line. Other times 2-XL would crack a bad joke and laugh at his own humor with a crazy-sounding laugh that was one of the many running gags that would be found on almost every tape in the series.
I have always been known for my wealth of knowledge in useless trivia. 2-XL is to blame for that. He is where I started learning everything about anything useless. Sure he spit out educational data, but the useless trivia was the best. If you step back and look at this toy it’s basically the prototype for NTN bar trivia.

Everyone had a Tonka Toy as a kid. Everyone has a fire truck as a kid. I had a combination of both. The Tonka Hook and Ladder Fire Truck. It had an actual extendable, elevating ladder on it. This is the best photo I could find online.

Before the PSP, before the Nintendo DS, before the Gameboy, handheld gaming was defined by little red LED’s and the molded plastic surrounding them. Mattel came out with a surefire hit by the name of Electronic Football. The great thing was that you could hand this off to your friend and play each other (that’s what we call multiplayer today), or simply play alone. Long car rides were made bearable again. Mattel’s version followed the basic rules of football, with 4 downs and a “full-length” football field. You couldn’t pass, nor could you run backwards. It seemed like a marathon when you broke free for a long run. You mashed on that button forever hoping you were getting close to the end zone and would hear the touchdown signal.
Football was very difficult to find after the initial release because Mattel relied on Sears to provide market data to tell how well the product sold. Production was halted at 100,000 units out of 500,000 because of “bad sales”. Sears revealed they had made an error, then asking for 200,000 more a week, then followed by 500,000 a week thereafter.
Mattel followed up with Electronic Football 2. You now had the ability to pass and move backwards. It couldn’t get any better.
Electronic Football is also featured in the ending of Supertramp’s 1979 hit “The Logical Song”. Listen closely and you can hear the 4th down whistle tweet about 3:24 into the song.
You can now re-live the experience again. In some cases you can still find the re-make of Electronic Football in stores. It was brought out again several years ago for around $10. It can also be found as an iPhone app created by touchGrove called LED football.

Many moons ago, my cousin had this toy. I begged and begged for this for what seemed like forever. Santa brought it for me I think in 1974. This toy was awesome and full of play features for the time. A helicopter with a winch, a landing pad, a ramp, a fire truck with a working ladder, an ambulance, little action figures, an elevator, and even an escape chute. Although after a while a toy loses its luster, this one is still a memorable one.

Ah yes. Hot Wheels kept the hits on coming throughout the 60′s & 70′s. One of my favorite toys does not qualify for my list. It was my older brother’s Cobra vs. Mongoose race set. You may remember it. It had the orange track and you mounted the launch gate to your kitchen table, it had 2 loops, and a parachute system. Mattel later came out with the ultimate racing system – Thundershift 500. A big oval with power shifters that propelled the cars around the track. You had to be careful, though. One bad shift and you would jam the car in the shifting mechanism and wreck. My set had two Dodge stock cars. A red one, and a yellow one. You had to time these particular cars just right & provide the proper strength to the shift, or the cars would either fly off the track or not make it around the entire circuit.
I found the secret to winning at this every time. An ugly orange GMC motorhome provided enough weight to stay on the track no matter how hard you shifted. It ran really smooth. Wasn’t very glamorous, but it worked.

Run Yourself Ragged was a puzzle game in which you raced against the clock. Kind of like Perfection. The game consisted of a marble-sized ball bearing which you would navigate through a maze of 10 different obstacles (parallel bars, catapult, etc.) Each ‘obstacle’ had its own little control assigned to it– a lever, button, etc. Ultimate goal was to navigate the course in under 60 seconds and ring the bell at the end. This game came out under several other names as well – Tricky Golf, Snafu, and Screwball Scramble.
This was a very fun game. The fun factor of this was great while on Winter Break. After that, I think it sat in the closet for a very long time. Then it was retired to garage sale purgatory. Sure wish I still had this game now.

Following the initial success of Star Wars, many toy companies started coming out with their own space-themed toys. Milton Bradley was no exception with their entry, Star Bird. Star Bird had a few, very cool features to it – press a button and their front lasers light up and fire, tilt the ship up or down and it makes engine sounds that raise or lower in pitch, removable front assemblies, wing fighters and engine parts. Milton Bradley made a playset to go along with the Starbird line, the Command Base. It is a large cardboard station with plastic accessories like radar dishes, laser guns, a working crane, little vehicles and space men.
Milton Bradley later released this toy under the name Space Avenger. The reason was everybody was hopping on the Star Wars bandwagon, copycat-ing everything Lucasfilm put out and were getting sued as well. Milton Bradley wanted nothing to do with that and promptly changed the name.

Huh? A hunk of Hot wheels plastic? No loops, parachutes, or ramps? Basically just a garage. Here’s some backstory. As a kid I was a semi-only child. My siblings were much older than I was, so I would have to come up with things to do on my own a lot. My older cousin would watch me a lot while my parents did the going-out thing. We would create huge environments out of Legos, Matchbox cars, and of course Hot Wheels. We had entire neighborhoods and scaled cities made. There were literally hundreds of cars, and even a big Matchbox parking garage. The Hot Wheels Service Center was a complement to my imaginary city. This toy had a working elevator, working dynomometer, gas pumps, car wash, a cool “road” your cars could roll down, and it folded up for “on the go” play action. It also came with a blue Trans Am. I think if I looked hard enough I might still have the car somewhere in my basement.
Even if it’s not the most awesome of toys, it’s more of the memories you have that make it great. And of course it has a Trans Am.

Vertibird (1974)

Now this is a classic. You may be able to find cheap, miniature knockoffs of this toy, but none will ever replace the original. This toy cost around $12 25 years ago. An original boxed in mint condition can fetch $500 on ebay these days.
You might remember the tv commercial where you had to stop the fictional bank robber from leaving town. You would send vertibird into action and drop a roadblock on the cardboard cutout of a road. Then you could swing in and hook onto the car and carry him away. This was nearly impossible to do in reality. I wonder how many takes it actually took to hook the getaway car?
Two things that did not work together in the 70′s – a vertibird and shag carpet. Always a tangled mess.

Andy ‘the captain’ Kirk

What, if any, kind of themed swing set did you grow up with?

***An addendum to this post***

Just wanted to update this post a bit. In keeping with the theme of the captainscast website, I decided to span the generation gap between father and son. I talked to my son Ben regarding the Peanuts gym and what I grew up with for a swing set. I am pretty proud of this aluminum structure. His reaction to it was lukewarm at best. He comes from the newer generation that has been raised with Little Tikes plastic super-fortresses, or the even more impressive wood-built playsets with rock-climbing walls, rope swings, and motorized gun turrets. Just kidding about the gun-turrets.

My Fantasy Football Setup

Here’s my fantasy football setup for NFL sundays. iMac 24″ with an Elagato EyeTV Hybrid for watching live games. The secondary monitor has twitter, my live fantasy football scores, and ESPN gamecast so I can monitor my players on my team.

On a side note, I put together my playlist for the run. Here it is:

Let’s Go – The Cars
Revolution – The Beatles
Feels So Good – Van Halen
You May Be Right – Billy Joel
Forrest Gump Suite – Alan Sivestri
Star Wars The Throne Room / End Title – John Williams
Theme from Superman – John Ottman
Rocky Going the Distance – Bill Conti

That’s 36.4 minutes. I should be able to complete my run in that time. Wish me luck and more to come after the race.

First off was Ed McMahon. Before I knew the man’s name, he was just known as ‘Heeeeere’s Johnny!!” to me. I used to share a bedroom with my brother Jon when I was a tyke. From what I recall, when I was in a crib up to 5 years old. When I was sent to bed, it was reasonably early, but Jon had two things in the room. One was a Soundesign hi-fi stereo playing Boston, ELO, Genesis, & hits of the 70′s. The other was an orange Zenith black & white 11″ television playing the Tonight Show on Dayton channel 22. I would stay up and watch Johnny and Ed quite a bit growing up in that room. I was also a crabby kid the next day for not going to bed early.
I also remember when the end of summer came, and it was time to go back to school. The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon was on. I don’t remember it for Jerry Lewis, but I remember Ed McMahon helping co-host.

Farrah Fawcett. I was too young for the”poster”, but I do remember Charlie’s Angels. Most importantly back then, Charlie’s Angels trading cards. Yes, that’s right. Trading cards. They weren’t easy to find, but every year we took a fishing trip to Rice Lake in Ontario, Canada. There was a little general store down the road from our fishing village that sold gumballs, toffee, and various trading cards. I’m sure they sold other things, but what did I care. Me and my cousins would buy as many packs as we could and try and comlete the puzzle on the back of the cards that showed the famous silhouette of the Angels from the tv show. You had Sabrina, Kate, but the best was Jill. It was sad to lose her today.




Michael Jackson. This is a shock. I don’t think anybody expected this at all. Jackson was the epitome of 80′s pop culture. Who didn’t have a Members Only jacket trying to be like Michael? There was the moonwalk, and of course, Thriller.I played drums as an adolescent and took my love of that, & Michael’s glove, and combined the two. I would play fake drums with a golf glove on. I don’t know. I guess I was imitating Michael in the only way I could. I knew I couldn’t sing or dance like him, but it was the closest thing I could do to be like the King of Pop. My mom even had a birthday cake made with Michael’s glove and drum sticks on it. Later in life, he had some rough times and very suspect actions. Hopefully the world will remember him for his contributions to the music world.

Time to head back home. We could stay a few extra days if we wanted to, but it’s just too hot in Florida. We hit the road at 8:39AM and made it back to Cincinnati at 10:00PM that night. I drove the whole way. I’m tired. Goodnight.

Today was spent lying around. After a week at the house of the mouse it was definitely time for a respite. We slept in, ate lunch, then hit the pool for a few hours. We then hit Chili’s for dinner. At this point we could definitely tell the boys were tired of vacation. They were rotten at dinner. They haven’t been this wild in ages. It was time to go home.

That was the extent of the day. We watched TV and I planned our trip for our early father’s day festivities to Kennedy Space Center on Saturday.

Poltergeist is released

They’re here.

And I am out. I hate this movie. I hate the chairs stacked in the kitchen, the face peeling, the meat exploding, the tree attacking, the tv, and of course the freaking clown. Why did it have to be a freaking clown?

The hands which pull the flesh off the investigator’s face in the bathroom mirror are Steven Spielberg’s.

As an homage to his friend George Lucas, Spielberg populated the children’s bedroom with Star Wars toys. He did the same in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

During the scene where Robbie (Oliver Robins) is being strangled, the clown’s arms became extremely tight and Robbins started to choke. When he screamed out, “I can’t breathe!” Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper thought that the boy was ad-libbing and just instructed him to look at the camera. When Spielberg saw Robbins’s face turning purple, he ran over and removed the clown’s arms from Robbins’s neck.

The sound effect for the beast that attacks the house at the end of the movie is the source for the current MGM lion roar.

The skeletons that emerge from the swimming pool while Diane searches for help are actual skeletons. JoBeth Williams didn’t know this until after the scene was shot.

Both of the terrors that plague Robbie came from Steven Spielberg’s own fears as a child, a fear of clowns and a tree outside his window.

Wargames is released

Is it a game, or is it real?

The studio had a Galaga and a Galaxian machine delivered to Matthew Broderick’s home, where he practiced for two months to prepare for the arcade scene.

The computer used to break into NORAD was programmed to make the correct words appear on the screen, no matter which keys were pressed.

When David comes home the day after the NORAD computer break-in, the newscaster on the television is talking about a prophylactic recycling center.

NORAD HQ set was built in the Cascades, the “Oregon” airport was really Boeing Field, “Goose Island” is really Anderson Island in the southern part of Puget Sound (all in Washington). The last ferry off the island really is at 6:30, and you really are stuck there if you miss it.

The scene of the jeep trying to crash through the gate at NORAD and turning over was an actual accident. The jeep was supposed to continue through the gate. They added the scene of the characters running from the jeep and down the tunnel and used the botched jeep stunt.

The dual 8-inch floppy drive is an IMSAI FDC-2, the monitor is a 17-inch Electrohome, the keyboard is an IMSAI IKB-1, and the 1200 baud modem (on top of the monitor) is a Cermetek 212A relabeled with the name “IMSAI”. The acoustic coupler prop was added for visual effect only.

The WOPR, as seen in the movie, was made of wood and painted with a metal-finish paint. As the crew filmed the displays of the WOPR, Special Effects Supervisor Michael L. Fink sat inside and entered information into an Apple II computer that drove the countdown display.

Mariners draft Ken Griffey Jr #1

Ever heard of this guy? The Cincinnati Kid may turn out to be something someday.

Star Trek III – The Search for Spock is released

Join the search.

Leonard Nimoy does the turbolift voice in the scene when Scotty says “Up your shaft”, while exiting the Starship Execelsior. The end credits lists the voice under the alias Frank Force.

When the Enterprise enters space dock at the beginning of the movie, just before Uhura comments on the Excelsior’s appearance (“Would you look at that!”), another docked ship can be seen, in shadow, at the upper left corner of the screen. This ship is one of the alternative models that was considered for use as the Excelsior. This alternate model also makes several appearances in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, usually as a wrecked ship or piece of space junk.

The shot of the Enterprise approaching Spacedock is later re-used in various episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” with the Enterprise-D overlapping the original Enterprise (Another cost-saving method often used with Star Trek).

I got married. Nothing of national historical significance today. Just that I have been married to my spectacular, awesome, wonderful, uber-super wife for 15 years.

Happy Anniversary, Babs!

I Love You,

Andy

Smokey & the Bandit

Buford T. Justice was the name of a real Florida Highway Patrolman known to Burt Reynolds’ father who was once Chief of Police of Jupiter, Florida.

The second highest grossing movie released in 1977 next to Star Wars (1977)

Near the end of the movie, one of the two Georgia State Patrol cars that block the entrance to the fairgrounds (the Oldsmobile) is equipped with an airbag (very rare for the ’70s). The airbag did not deploy in that minor collision but did deploy when they purposely wrecked the car years later. That car is shown in an airbag safety film used in some traffic schools.

The dog chosen for Snowman’s pet was picked by Burt Reynolds, chiefly because he refused to obey commands.

According to MapQuest, Atlanta to Texarkana is 665.2 miles, with an estimated travel time of 10 hours, 43 minutes (21:30 round trip). Atlanta to Boston is 1089 miles with an estimated travel time of 17 hours, 31 minutes. If driven the whole way, it would require an average speed of 121 miles an hour to do it in the 18 hours mandated by the “double or nothing” but the terms of the bet didn’t specify how they were to get to Boston and certainly not how to return so they could have driven to the airport and bought round-trip tickets.

This movie made the Pontiac Trans Am a superstar. Trans Am sales jumped from 68,745 in 1977 to 93,341 in 1978. And just one year later that number swelled to 117,108 units sold.

Hal Needham asked Jerry Reed to write a theme song for the film. A couple of hours later, Reed presented “East Bound and Down” to Needham. With an acoustic guitar, Reed started to play it and Needham immediately stopped him. Thinking Needham didn’t like it, Reed offered to re-write the song. To which Needham replied: “If you change one note, I’ll kill you!” The song went on to become one of Reed’s biggest hits.

When Hal Needham originally wrote the initial screenplay, he hired Jerry Reed to play the Bandit. But when Needham told Burt Reynolds about the film, Reynolds decided he wanted to do it and Reed was re-cast as the Snowman.

The Trans-Am used for the bridge jump was fitted with a Chevrolet engine, according to Hal Needham.

Congo Bongo

Congo Bongo was an arcade game released by Sega in 1983. The game has come to be seen as Sega’s answer to the highly successful Donkey Kong game that was released two years prior. The player takes the role of a red-nosed safari hunter who tries to catch an ape named “Bongo”. The hunter seeks Bongo to enact revenge for an apparent practical joke in which Bongo set fire to the hunter’s tent, giving him a literal “hotfoot”. The game was a commercial failure when it was released but was popular enough to be ported to nearly ever major platform of the day including Atari’s consoles, MSX, Intellivision, ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and IBM PC.

Combat

The one that started it all. Combat is an early video game by Atari for the Atari 2600. It was released as one of the nine launch titles for the system in October 1977, and was included in the box with the system from its introduction until 1982. Combat was based on two earlier black-and-white coin-operated arcade games produced by Atari: Tank in 1974 and Anti-Aircraft II in 1975.

Chopper Command

Chopper Command is a video game by Activision. The game was successful due to its perceived superiority to Atari’s home version of Defender; Chopper Command shares many similarities in gameplay to Defender.

Chopper Command involves the player controlling a military helicopter in a desert scenario protecting a convoy of tractor trailers that are in position on the ground. The goal is to destroy all enemy fighter jets and helicopters that attack the player’s helicopter and the friendly trucks traveling below. The game ends when the player loses all of his or her lives, or when the player reaches 999,999 points. The game also utilizes a type of radar in order to detect enemy craft not visible on the main screen.

Like many Activision titles, a player who achieved a particularly high score could receive a video game sew-on patch relevant to that particular game.

Burgertime

The game’s original title, Hamburger, was changed to BurgerTime before its introduction to the United States. The player is chef Peter Pepper, who must walk over hamburger ingredients located across a maze of platforms while avoiding pursuing characters.
While making burgers, Peter Pepper must deal with three enemies: Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg. Enemies can be dodged, killed, or temporarily stunned. Killing occurs when an ingredient is dropped atop an enemy, or when support for an ingredient is completely removed and the enemy falls with the piece. In the latter case, the piece will fall much farther than normal, depending on how many enemies are on it. Scoring depends heavily on killing enemies. The more enemies killed with a single sequence of falling ingredients, the higher the score. Therefore, to obtain the best score the player must endanger Peter Pepper by allowing more than one enemy to move onto the ingredient the player is on, just before the player drops it.
Peter Pepper has pepper shots to shake on nearby enemies to stun and render them harmless for a few seconds. Extra shots are obtained by collecting bonus foods, such as coffee, an ice cream cone, or French Fries, which appear in the center of the maze when a certain number of ingredients have dropped.

Mt. St. Helens erupts

Remember this? As far as living in Ohio it didn’t seem to have much of an impact here. The one thing I do remember is being able to buy baggies of the ash in the Dayton airport that they would clean off of the planes.

Skylab was the United States’ first space station, and the second space station visited by a human crew. It was also the only space station NASA launched alone. The 100-ton space station was in Earth’s orbit from 1973 to 1979, and it was visited by crews three times in 1973 and 1974.

Blue Thunder is released

When you’re 13 years old, nothing is cooler than the Blue Thunder helicopter. Roy Scheider stars in this movie about a cop, a helicopter, and a conspiracy. Here’s some movie trivia.

The television control room shown early in the film is the same control room set seen extensively in The China Syndrome (1979).

The helicopter used to portray Blue Thunder was a French-made Gazelle helicopter with bolt-on parts to change its appearance. Most notably the chin cannon assembly was too heavy, necessitating a weight attached to the tail to keep the nose from dipping forward in flight.

The control stick in the F-16 cockpit is identical to the one from the Viper starfighter cockpit in “Battlestar Galactica” (1978).

Although the city is Los Angeles and the action centers around the police department, the LAPD is never mentioned. The force is called the “Metropolitan Police,” and their badges are silver, of a more generic style, instead of the distinctive LAPD bronze-colored badges depicting old Los Angeles City Hall. However, City Hall does figure prominently in several fly-bys.

Actual chicken was used during the “chicken rain” sequence. Four huge vats of actual barbecue chicken were lifted by crane and released over the police car and three other cars. When the scene was over, homeless people quickly appeared to help the film crew “clean up” the scene (in exchange for the chicken, of course). No rubber chicken was used, according to director, John Badham, because rubber chicken costs 4-10 times the cost of real chicken.

Breakout was originally an arcade game relased in 1976. It was then ported to the Atari 2600 in 1978. In the game, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen. A ball travels across the screen, bouncing off the top and side walls of the screen. When a brick is hit, the ball bounces away and the brick is destroyed. The player loses a turn when the ball touches the bottom of the screen. To prevent this from happening, the player has a movable paddle to bounce the ball upward, keeping it in play.

The Natural is released

The best there was. That was the tagline for this all-time baseball classic.

The Bat that batboy Bobby Savoy gives Roy is called the “Savoy Special”. Savoy Special was a brand of beer in the 1930s and was made by the United States Brewing Co.

Hobbs breaking the scoreboard clock with a home run was inspired by Bama Rowell of the Boston Braves doubling off the Ebbets Field scoreboard clock on May 30, 1946, showering Dixie Walker with glass. Though he’d been promised a free watch by Bulova for hitting the company’s scoreboard sign, Rowell had to wait until 1987 to receive it.

PC-DOS is a freeware DOS operating system for the IBM Personal Computer, sold throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The original 1981 arrangement between IBM and Microsoft was that Microsoft would provide the base product and that both firms would work on developing different parts of it into a more powerful and robust system, and then share the resultant code. MS-DOS and PC-DOS were to be marketed separately: IBM selling to itself for the IBM PC, and Microsoft selling to the open market. However, at no time did IBM acquire the ownership of the source code of the operating system for its own PCs.

So, IBM improved the product, shared it with Microsoft, yet only sold it to itself while Microsoft sold it to everyone else? Bill gates was a freaking genius.

The channel tunnel, aka Chunnel, was opened on this day in 1994. The Chunnel is a 31.4 mile tunnel underneath the English Channel linking France and England.

The Mercury spacecraft, named Freedom 7, performed a suborbital flight. It was piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American in space as a result of this mission. The flight lasted less than 16 minutes and attained an altitude of just over 187 km.

Shepard did not orbit the earth, but simply went up and down, which requires a less powerful rocket and simpler guidance. He did, however, become the first astronaut to safely return to Earth inside his vehicle.

Released in 1980, Boxing shows a top-down view of two boxers, one white and one black. When close enough, a boxer can hit his opponent with a punch. This causes his opponent to reel back slightly. Long punches score one point, while closer punches score two. There are no knockdowns or rounds. A match is completed either when one player lands 100 punches (a “knockout”) or two minutes have elapsed (a “decision”). In the case of a decision, the player with the most landed punches is the winner. Ties are possible.

The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the North Vietnamese army. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period leading to the formal reunification of Vietnam under communist rule.

The Los Angeles riots also known as the Rodney King uprising or the Rodney King riots

Riots begin in Los Angeles, California, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 53 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.

Before Dr. J vs. Larry Bird, before Bulls vs. Blazers, there was Atari Basketball. A very simple & goofy game, yet still entertaining and competitive.

In the 1980 comedy film Airplane!, flight controllers are seen playing this game rather than watching the monitor.

XEROX PARC introduces the Xerox Star computer. Unlike other computers at the time, there is something unique about this one. It includes a graphical user interface (GUI). To operate this GUI, the computer also comes with something called a mouse.

The name mouse, originated at the Stanford Research Institute, derives from the resemblance of early models (which had a cord attached to the rear part of the device, suggesting the idea of a tail) to the common mouse.

The mouse remained relatively obscure until the appearance of the Apple Macintosh; in 1984 a prominent PC columnist commented the release of this new computer with a mouse: “There is no evidence that people want to use these things.”

Logitech just built its billionth mouse in November 2008.

Coke announces it is changing its secret formula. New Coke debuts.

In one of the business worlds biggest WTFs?, the Coca Cola company attempted to change the formula of Coke with “New Coke.” Follow-up taste tests revealed that most consumers preferred the taste of New Coke to both Coke and Pepsi. I call bullshit.
Management was unprepared, however, for the nostalgic sentiments the drink aroused in the American public. The new Coca-Cola formula caused a public backlash. Protests caused the company to return to the old formula under the name Coca-Cola Classic on July 10, 1985. New Coke stayed around a while and was renamed Coke II in 1992.

This video from CNN shows an experimental plane experiencing an engine failure over Winter Haven, Florida. Contrary to popular belief, airplanes do not fall out of the sky. They glide. This pilot and his passenger did an excellent job of assessing the situation,and landing the plane safely.

As an on again, off again student pilot myself, I have constantly been drilled on what to do if an engine fails and I have to glide to a landing.

Great work, pilot!!

BASIC Programming

10 PRINT “I can’t believe they made this!!!”
20 GOTO 10
RUN

BASIC Programming was released for the Atari 2600 way back in 1979. One of only a few non-gaming cartridges, this program allowed people to create simple programs using its own unique programming language, which was fairly the same as BASIC, but still differed in many different ways. The extremely small RAM memory size of the Atari 2600, 128 bytes, severely restricted the possibilities of this cartridge.

BASIC Programming required two Atari keyboard controllers, and came with special overlays to show how to type the different commands and letters.

Ten years ago today the worst thing you can imagine happened. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 23 others, before committing suicide.

The massacre provoked debate regarding gun control laws, the availability of firearms in the United States, and gun violence involving youths. Much discussion also centered on the nature of high school cliques, subcultures and bullying, as well as the role of violent movies and video games in American society.

As a parent, and a spouse of a teacher I think about my wife and my children’s safety constantly. This is one of those terrible situations you hope never comes true. Give your loved ones a hug today and remember the victims from 10 years ago at Columbine.

Apollo 16 launches

Apollo 16 was the 10th manned mission to go to the moon. It was also the 5th mission to land on the moon. What makes this event special is that it included a lunar rover with it. This was the 2nd lunar mission to use a lunar rover. The astronauts which included commander John Young, set a land speed record with the rover getting it up to a top speed of 11mph. The astronauts did cause some problems to the rover. They accidentally broke off the rear fender causing moon dust to be thrown all over them and the batteries when the drove. All of the dust covering the batteries caused the rover to overheat.

Originally, a player with a time or better of 33.3 seconds on game 1, 51.0 seconds on game 2, or 54.0 seconds on game 3 could send Activision a picture of their screen and receive membership in the Activision Flying Aces and receive a Flying Aces patch.

The ColecoVision

The ColecoVision is Coleco Industries’ second generation home video game console and was released August 1982. The ColecoVision offered arcade-quality graphics and gaming style, the ability to play Atari 2600 video games, and the means to expand the system’s basic hardware. Released with a catalog of twelve launch titles, with an additional ten games announced for 1982, approximately 125 titles in total were published as cartridges for the system between 1982 and 1984.

Coleco licensed Nintendo’s Donkey Kong as the official pack-in cartridge for all ColecoVision consoles, and this version of the game was well received as a near-perfect arcade port, helping to boost the console’s popularity. By Christmas of 1982, Coleco had sold 500,000 units, largely on the strength of its bundled game.

The date will vary from year to year at the discretion of the MLB Commissioner. However, the primary day will be the first Monday of the season. In recent years, the first game has taken place on Sunday night. That will simply be known as Baseballius Eve. That evening it is the responsibility of every parent to read Casey at the Bat to their children before they go to bed. The story will provide visions of strikeouts and Home Runs dancing in their head.

When the children have finally fallen asleep and long after the final out of the game, the parents hide their children’s ball gloves around the house. It’s okay to let the kids know that the parents hide the gloves. But if you want to add to the mystery of the day, tell your kids that it is the San Diego Chicken who hides all the gifts for the children who have been good. The gloves will be filled with small toys, packs of baseball cards, & Cracker Jacks.

The morning will be filled with shouts of “Play Ball!” as the kids search the house for their glove. “Play Ball” is the traditional greeting for Baseballius. “Happy Opening Day” and “Merry Baseballius” are acceptable as well. And don’t be afraid to give a “Season’s Greetings” as long as you are referring to the baseball season.

As the kids sort through their cards and watch repeat episodes of SportsCenter the parents prepare for the first game. It would always be preferred to go to an Opening Day game but for most, spending the day in front of the TV will suffice. Either way everyone must wear their favorite players’ jersey or at least the team colors.

The Baseballius meal consists of hot dogs, peanuts, soft pretzels, popcorn and cotton candy with root beer for the kids and 20 oz. draft beers for the adults. Depending on the mood, and where the dogs are, it’s okay to drop the peanut shells and, really, all the garbage on the floor just like at a ballpark. Just remember that ketchup and mustard are tough stains to get out of carpet.

At the start of the game it is important for everyone to remove their hat and show respect for the National Anthem. It is not really necessary to sing along but it is a tradition to bet whether or not the person singing will hit the high note on “…the land of the freeeeeee!”

The first pitch is the high point of the day. If your team is on the field and the first pitch is a strike your team will have a winning season. If you’re at the plate and your first batter gets a hit, your team will have a winning season. If the first pitch hits the batter and breaks a bone then both teams are headed for the cellar.

Unfortunately, the results of the games on Opening Day really don’t mean much. For all of the teams it is just 1/162nd of the season and a single game won’t likely determine a team’s fate. The same can be said for all of the fans. Baseballius is just the beginning of a holiday season that lasts seven months – Christmas is jealous. But the pleasure and happiness of the beginning of another baseball season can’t be matched.

I hope everyone enjoys this day of Baseballius. Root for your team, get to a game, and of course, PLAY BALL!!!!!

I promise we will get up and running with a new episode very soon.

Not a good start at all.