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When the first live television pictures from the surface of the moon appeared on our TV screens thirty-eight years ago tonight, they were gray and grainy and, for a moment, upside down.

Even when that technical glitch was fixed, and the black-and-white picture was right-side up, the images were difficult to understand. The television networks had shown us ground-based simulations of the first moon walk, but they never showed us astronauts with reflective visors that prevented us from seeing their faces, and they never showed the lower stage of the lunar module wrapped in a protective covering that looked like gold foil, so nothing looked familiar in the pictures coming from the moon.

Bright objects burned their images into the camera’s video tube: when Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin walked across the moonscape, the burned-in background seemed to show right through the astronaut’s ghostly body.

That first moon walk lasted about two hours. Baffling as the video images were, I watched every minute of it, and only wished that I could better understand what I was seeing.

So I was thrilled, a few years ago, when a company called Spacecraft Films started to release multi-DVD collections with all the video and motion-picture film from the Apollo lunar missions. The Apollo 11 set includes three video options for the first moon walk: the video, just as it was originally broadcast, a slide show of still photos synced to the time each photo was taken, and a combination mode in which the video plays with the still photos showing up in little on-screen boxes. This third mode made it much easier for me to understand just what was happening throughout the entire time on the surface.

The Spacecraft Films videos are tailored for real space nuts. They don’t provide much “hand-holding.” They don’t explain the cryptic jargon used by the astronauts or the ground controllers; they just let us watch as events play out. But, particularly if you can borrow them from your local library, I highly recommend these video collections.

If you’re a real space nut, you will probably want to supplement the videos with the NASA Mission Reports published by Apogee Books, or go explore the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and the Apollo Image Gallery.

And if you really want to capture what it felt like to watch men walk on the moon for the first time, thirty-eight years ago tonight, you can stand on your head, squint, and view the pictures upside-down.

Over at Boing Boing, Jay Kinney shows us a page from a 1952 comic book that predicts today’s Bush-Cheney mideast policies.

It was all there in T-Man #3, 55 years ago! Perhaps Cheney read this comic in his youth and just bided his time until he was in a position to actualize it in real life.

Let me guess — when Cheney was young, the kids used to call him Mr. Glass.

It was supposed to be an Instant Cultural Touchstone.

When I quoted a line from the 1968 pop song “Master Jack” a while ago — “It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack” — I was convinced that anyone who read it would immediately have that song running through his head.

I was wrong.

I’ve talked to a few people — people old enough to remember 1968 pop songs — and it seems I can’t tell an Instant Cultural Touchstone from History’s Most Baffling Trivia. Darn.

Here is an old music video of the South African group Four Jacks and a Jill performing “Master Jack.” Pay no attention to the very poor lip sync.