Moon Landing Commemoration Issue:

Did You Know....
It is commonly perceived that Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon surface were “That’s one small step for man, one gigantic leap for mankind”. However, what he actually said was “Wild Thing, you make my heart sing, you make everything— groovy”. However, the watching millions were denied this version following the discovery, moments before air-time, that NASA’s entertainment officer had in fact forgotten to pay their performance rights licence, and so, in the face of copyright legislation, the “small step” speech was dubbed over instead.

On his return, the outraged Armstrong immediately left the space programme, and, after a brief spell with The Allman Brothers, settled back in Wapakoneta Ohio where he opened ‘Neil’s MoonShack’, a used guitar store, trading until the late ’80s when the market began to decline. “I don’t blame synthesizers” says Neil amicably, “I think it was The Cure. Young folk came to associate the guitar with fat, mascara’d English panty-waists, and chose Rap instead. Can’t say I blame ’em”

The ‘Performance Rights Fiasco’ wasn’t the only misfortune to befall the Apollo 11 mission. Irish rebel leader Michael Collins was left stranded in the orbiting capsule following a dispute with NASA tailors, Ritblat & Son of Dallas, who witheld the Third Moon Suit “pending the agreed remuneration”. NASA never did settle the bill, and although the Ritblats retained the Third Moon Suit, the original sequins were removed, and later reappeared upon Elvis Presley’s Vegas jump suit.


Shrink to fit
Apollo 11 was not alone in Suit-Related Ructions. On the following mission, Apollo 12 astronaut Charles Conrad Jr was to discover that, for the sake of $5, Mrs Aldrin had declined the dry-clean option, and had in fact put her husband’s Moon Suit “in with the whites” at home (Tumble, 200 degrees Fahrenheit), thus irreversibly reducing the illbefallen overall in size.
Consequently, mid-mission on the moon, on stooping to collect geological samples, Conrad inadvertantly split the ass out of the pants of his suit, (hence the verb ‘To Moon’). This instantaneously curtailed the mission as a television event, as sponsors across the South, in fear of losing family support, clamoured to withdraw their funding. “It was like one of them Mexican films!” said one.
Charles Conrad Jr. never worked again.

Insanitary, but unbowed.
Thus, reduced to one suit, the Apollo 13 mission was to have featured the lone Captain Jim Lovell on the moon; yet even this mission was to be dogged with misfortune as rookie pilot Kevin Bacon, in an attempt to jettison human waste products from the ship, keyed in the wrong sequence, and unwittingly occasioned a ‘blowback’, helplessly watching in horror as his colleagues were sprayed with ‘the living daylights’ inside the capsule. Desperate to make amends, Bacon ventured to alleviate the methane levels with a naked flame, only to bring about a catastrophic explosion which effectively ended the mission; not to mention his career in space!
(Tragically, Lovell never returned to the moon, yet managed to eke out a living promoting organic fertilizer in Texas, before becoming a ride technician at Disney’s Space Mountain.)

Thus, Suitless, and out of contract with RCA, the 1960s ended bleakly for NASA, who were to find the 1970s, and the onset of Disco in particular, increasingly difficult to handle.

(This feature was originally published on dogandponyny.com)