{"id":1097,"date":"2007-08-10T10:39:56","date_gmt":"2007-08-10T10:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2007-08-10T10:39:56","modified_gmt":"2007-08-10T10:39:56","slug":"another_sign_were_living_in_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2007\/08\/10\/another_sign_were_living_in_th\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Sign We’re Living in the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the cheesiest episode ever of the old 70s-vintage Buck Rogers<\/i> TV show — which is saying a lot, considering how that entire series was one long block of yummy, yummy fromage — was “Space Rockers,” wherein evil Jerry Orbach<\/a> wants to control the minds of the galaxy’s youth via subliminal signals embedded in truly awful music. Actually, it probably wasn’t such a bad idea for a story, at least not back then, when people still believed there were backmasked<\/a> Satanic messages underlying “Stairway to Heaven.” The way it was executed, however… oy. I thought it was embarrassing even when I was a kid and Buck<\/i> was don’t-miss-viewing.<\/p>\n

Part of what made it so dippy was the appearance of the “rock” band Orbach was secretly using for his nefarious scheme. Leaving aside their cringe-inducing costumes — which consisted of body stockings and rope lights — their “playing” looked really, well, goofy. The series was set in the 25th Century, so everything had to be electronic and futuristic-looking, right? That meant that the “guitar” had no strings and Bonzo<\/a> played his “drum kit” by tapping plastic rods with a pencil. But the most ridiculous item was the synthesizer\/keyboard doohickey: it was just a table with colored circles on it, which was the musician “played” by passing his hands (or, in an over-the-top eruption of Velveeta, his leg<\/i>) over them. Have a look at the video<\/a>, if you dare.<\/p>\n

Silly, right? Well, maybe not. Via Scalzi<\/a> comes word of a new electronic musical instrument called the ReacTable, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t highly reminiscent of that old Buck Rogers<\/i> prop:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Wired.com has an article about this new instrument here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You know, if something from Buck Rogers<\/i> had to developed out here in the real world, I think I’d have chosen those spandex jumpsuits that Erin Gray always wore<\/a>. Maybe there’s still hope for those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the cheesiest episode ever of the old 70s-vintage Buck Rogers TV show — which is saying a lot, considering how that entire series was one long block of yummy, yummy fromage — was “Space Rockers,” wherein evil Jerry Orbach wants to control the minds of the galaxy’s youth via subliminal signals embedded in truly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-and-pop-culture","category-the-glass-teat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}