History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
In 1973, Jack In The Box ran a TV
commercial for it's Jumbo Jack burger featuring a cute little
kid named Rodney Allen Rippy, who held the Jumbo Jack in his hands
and said "It's too big to eat!". But being a little kid, it came out as "It's too big-a eat!". It became a national catch-phrase in 1973-1974.
This led to a 45 RPM single with Bell
Records called "Take Life A Little Easier". At age five, he also became the youngest person ever to have a Billboard charting pop hit. A record that to this very day, remains unbroken.
So whatever happened to Rodney Allen Rippy?
Well according to his website, after his Jack In The Box commercial run, he starred in other commercials, including Nehi soda, Chevrolet and others. He graduated from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1995.He's taken on a few TV acting roles since his childhood stardom backin the early 1990s and appeared in the 2003 David Spade comedy Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. He also hosted a Los Angeles radio talk show.
Contrary to many internet hoaxes and urban legends, Rodney Allen Rippy is still very much alive and well. He was badly injured in a bike crash in 2010, but he's fully recovered.
Apparently, there was supposed to be a meteor or an asteroid crashing into planet Earth. And God and his angels would blow their trumpets and we'll all be treated to the end of all humanity in a horrific catastrophe with a nice jazzy soundtrack. Or something to that effect.
The internet is filled with crazy videos and websites from wacky conspiracy theorists claiming that "The End Times" are coming.
You'll have to pardon me if I'm not much fun here. I've seen and heard it all. You can only see and hear so much of this nonsense before you just get bored of it (and before anyone starts firing off any comments about repentance and it's-for-real and you-just-wait, save your breath. Or keystrokes.)
You can't set an exact date on such a thing either.
But fear in America isn't just an emotion. It's a big industry. Politicians use fear to get votes. Radio and TV personalities use fear to get ratings and sales. And people on the internet like spreading fear for fun. Which translates into dollars for enterprising scam artists that feed off the money of the fearful, who are often the same people who tout the virtues of "freedom and liberty" (or the far-right version of it.) Which is odd because you can't have either if you're always scared.
Nibiru is an alleged planet that every year since 2003 was supposed to crash into Earth or tilt its rotational axis, causing the usual global catastrophe.
Much of this is spread further by radio hosts such as Art Bell, George Noory and
Alex Jones, who host syndicated radio talk programs to audiences who
are looking for something to justify their own delusions about "The Great Unknown" or "What The Government Won't Tell You". Who then make
outlandish videos for YouTube and websites supporting the theories these hosts entertain or these individuals add their own twist to them.
Religious people especially like to get people worked up over doom and gloom. And for the same reason; It makes money. Hundreds of books have been written on "The End Times", some of them New York Times bestsellers.
In 2011, evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping made an infamous prediction over his Family Radio network of stations predicting the return of Jesus Christ on May 21, 2011. This prompted many employees and listeners of Family Radio to sell or donate their worldly possessions in anticipation of "The End".
When this did not materialize, Camping pushed back the date by five months to October 21,2011. When nothing happened on this date, Camping quickly disappeared from the airwaves, replaced by reruns of his own program. Camping died on December 15, 2013. He is survived by the world. The failure of his predictions as well as falling listener donations have led to the sale of many of his radio stations.
But as any of you who have had to deal with friends or relatives who were panicky about the whole "Y2K" debacle, you begin to seriously wonder if there needs to be a law requiring a disclaimer to all these programs and websites to at least protect the mentally unstable (which will surely cause stock in tinfoil to collapse.)
Then when nothing happens, they scramble for some explanation to save their asses. Which makes them and those that believed in them the first time around look even more foolish.
Personally, the only thing that can really destroy the Earth is the greed of the human race itself. Not some bipolar "god". Or things from outer space. But as long as there are fragile minded, easily terrified people, there will be always be someone trying to exploit that fear.
And as I speak, there's someone out there making up another end of the world story. And this time, it's for real. It's the big one. You better get ready this time.
In 1958, Reader's Digest magazine published an article on how one mysterious afternoon in 1953, a signal showing the station ID card of KLEE-TV, Houston, TX appeared on TV sets throughout the UK - three years after KLEE-TV was sold and their call letters had changed to KPRC-TV.
Now here's the grain of truth: It's not uncommon for local over the air radio/TV signals to reach crazy distances under the right atmospheric conditions. It's a phenomena that happens every night on the AM radio band. But more rarely on FM and TV. But they still happen there.
Overseas reception of FM and TV signals is the rarest of all of what is known as "DXing", an actual hobby amongst radio/TV fans who surf over our ever increasingly noisy airwaves, trying to find those far off stations from hundreds, or even thousands of miles away on locally empty frequencies that can make brief appearances from a few seconds to even an hour or more on FM radio and TV. There are several online web sites and chat boards for DXers.
When you did find a far off station, the receiver of the signal would track down the address of the station and send them a confirmation of what they heard and at what time. To which the station engineer would send back something called a QSL card, which was like a postcard (which it was) with the station logo on them. Engineers used to look forward to getting these letters, as it was a testament to his/her engineering skills.
They don't send out QSL cards anymore (the last one I got was in 1982.) and there are far fewer broadcast engineers today than there were in those days.
In fact, the last convention of broadcast engineers I saw could have been mistaken for an AARP gathering with the number of grey, white and bald heads I saw there. And when they're gone, I'm not sure who is going to take their place. Not many young people seem to be taking up the profession.
But here's the letdown.
First, all broadcast signals fade away into the ether eventually. They cannot reflect back from a different time. If they could, the airwaves would be a far bigger mess today than they already are, considering all that has been transmitted over the last 100 years on every frequency around the world.
Second, the transmitting system of the UK is PAL. The US uses NTSC. Both are digital today, but were then - and still are - hopelessly incompatible with each other. You could not see NTSC video on a PAL TV set and vice versa without a very expensive, very large (which NO housewife would tolerate in the living room) and in the end, useless conversion system
Third, the transmission carrier frequencies of US and UK TV were also different.
And finally, it was all a hoax to sell TV sets in England:
"As it turned out, in a particularly clever marketing effort, a would-be British entrepreneur
had sent a form letter to all U.S. TV stations making the claim that their station’s
signal had recently been viewed in the UK. For proof, the sender included what
appeared to be a photo of that station’s test pattern on a TV screen. Hoping to
peddle a TV set he claimed could receive broadcasts from extreme distances, the
sender had been working from an old list that did not reflect the Houston station’s
change of hands. All the other TV stations getting the letter tossed it.
But when the letter from England got forwarded to KPRC, someone thought it looked
like news and the station did a story on it. The Houston station soon figured
out what the sender of the letter had been up to, but by then it was too late
and yet another urban myth had been born. Like a radio wave moving ever deeper
into space, it continues to live on...." - Mike Cox, The Great Texas/British TV Hoax of 1953
