Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin was a guest presenter at the Spike TV Guys Choice Awards that were filmed over the weekend and aired last night, and the 83-year old American icon may have provided the most shocking moment of the evening. In between Jennifer Aniston’s semi-roast of Jimmy Kimmel and the cast of Man of Steel accepting the “Most Anticipated Film” award – it’s bigger than any Oscar – Aldrin presented daredevil and extreme skydiver Felix Baumgartner with the Mankind Award, when he blew everyone’s minds.
Aldrin riffed on Baumgartner’s Red Bull sponsorship by openly declaring his distaste for the official drink of astronauts, as he shouted to the crowd, “Tang sucks!” Of course, I can only imagine the confusion of the crowd at a Spike TV event as that comment processed.
But this isn’t an isolated incident of feistiness from the second man to ever step foot on the moon. Back in May, he was also vocal about his disappointment with some of the inaccuracies of the Will and Jaden Smith dud, After Earth. Of the film’s liberties taken with space travel for the sake of science fiction, Aldrin found the idea of noise in space to be the most ludicrous.
“There was a lot of noise. In space, you don’t get that much noise.”
Aldrin, who followed Neil Armstrong onto the surface of the moon during the historic Apollo 11 landing in 1969, says that “noise doesn’t propagate in a vacuum. We talked over headsets.”
“Fortunately, we were free of static. We could communicate with each other pretty clearly, and mission control, though we were 50,000 miles away.” (Via USA Today)
And I assume he also added, “But what do you expect from the guy who gave us Lady in the Water?”
Now who wants to yell at the moon with Buzz Aldrin?
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