Today’s the day that Nik Wallenda of the famous “Flying Wallenda” family will walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He needed a special exemption from the state legislature to do this, since it’s normally forbidden. As the New York Times reports:
In some ways, Mr. Wallenda’s walk is more audacious than those of his 19th-century predecessors. His rope has been set right above the falls, which throw off enough spray to drench those on the shoreline. By comparison, walkers like Jean Francois Gravelet, better known as “the Great Blondin,” walked across a tamer part of the gorge.
From the Boston Herald:
“It’s happening. This is going to be the biggest event on the planet!” said Jim Diodati, mayor of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Such hyperbole has fueled Wallenda mania, bringing flashing highway signs warning of Wallenda-related traffic jams and crowds gawking at cranes holding Wallenda’s 2-inch-wide cable taut over the roiling blue water.
Stadium-style lights were focused on the cable, which will sway several inches back and forth in the wind and bounce up and down. Midway through the 40-minute walk, Wallenda is expected to be wrapped in a bone-chilling fog far harsher than the soaking mist that showers visitors to the Falls.
The walk should take about 40 minutes.
But unlike his predecessors, some seen in the video below, Wallenda isn’t in much danger, for he’ll be wearing safety equipment (he damn well should—he’s got three young children).
Along the falls, there was much discussion of the safety harness that ABC, which is televising the walk Friday night, has insisted Mr. Wallenda wear. The Disney Corporation, which owns ABC, does not want a man to fall to his death on live television.
Here’s a brief video history of Niagara Falls daredevils:
But for me, the whole stunt was spoiled by Wallenda’s insistence that he’s doing God’s will:
I swear, these Christians are as incomprehensible and as creepy as pod people.
b&
Humans sure are strange.
Stupid tricks and unnecessary risk-taking is supposed to bring me to God?
Not going to work.
Oh, I don’t know. I know a guy who fell for a video about how a guy didn’t get electromacuted by a bazilliion volts because he was in a Faraday cage, er, I mean, because it was God’s will that he wouldn’t die. Not you personally, Jacob, but some rube will.
God probably double-dog dared him. What else was Wallena to do?
Faith poisons everything. Everything.
No kidding:
http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/Teacher-Rids-Teens-of-Demons-159140905.html
Well they don’t have any demons now, do they?
They got better?
b&
Damn your hair-splitting! Results are what matter.
Sounds like John Freshwater kicked up a notch.
If that’s not a schtick of Nik’s to attract the wide audience delusional nitwits he knows are out there to help him validate his goofiness, Nik is batshit crazy, crazy enough to be locked up in a rubber room, strapped tight in a straight jacket and fed an IV of Ritalin.
Holy shit, what a nut.
If he really had faith, he wouldn’t need the safety harness. Just sayin’.
If he really had faith he wouldn’t need the rope.
True, but it’s doubtful he would have gotten a permit for THAT stunt.
(As for the safety harness: he had no choice: that faithless Disney corporation made him wear one).
Yet, when (if) he falls, and the harness catches him, guess who will get the credit: Mickey Mouse? or Jesus?
The Mickey Mouse test of faith.
You’ve confused the christian love for money with having no choice.
According to a quote I read on a CBS News story, Nik is annoyed that ABC is making him wear a tether. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t be wearing one.
Exactly, It’s like the pope has faith, so why have the pope-mobile?
The christian snake bit faithers don’t need no stinking safety harness.
LOL – you mean the late christian snake faithers.
’em jus’ bean callead two ‘da lard do too dare greight and powerful faiths.
Yawn.
Tanker spills gasoline after hitting pole – far more interesting.
I wonder what the coverage would be like if he said he was doing it for the glory of Allah?
We’d all be watching to see him blow himself up half way.
“We need a new superhero, but one that walks in the light, in the shadow of the Almighty.”
Well, Nik, are you walking in the light or in the shadow????
Such is the gobbledy-gook that is religious (ESPECIALLY CHRISTIAN) “testimony.”
I read this after reading the post about all the accomodationism at the NSF-funded UC Berkeley site and think WHY WHY WHY do they want to patronize this stuff?????????
Well, I can’t be bothered watching if there isn’t at least the illusion of a possibility of disaster. Like Great-grandpa Karl in Puerto Rico – now that was entertainment.
/sarcasm
How could there be a disaster? If he makes it it is because God got him across. If he falls to his death (pretending he didn’t have a safety wire), it would just have been God calling him home to Jesus. Either way a win!
Like the snake handlers. And that worked out just fine.
Jumping the Shark for Jesus!
That’s probably more CBS’ style.
This reminds me of that Drive-By Truckers song…
We’ve had a bit too much of ideas about what God wants as Roger Waters song “What God Wants” nicely puts it. I put only the first stanza here
What God wants God gets God help us all
What God wants God gets
The kid in the corner looked at the priest
And fingered his pale blue Japanese guitar
The priest said
God wants goodness
God wants light
God wants mayhem
God wants a clean fight
What God wants God gets
Don’t look so surprised
It’s only dogma
The alien prophet cried
The beetle and the springbok
Took the Bible from its hook
The monkey in the corner
Wrote the lesson in his book
I could never figure out quite what Roger Waters was trying to say. I get the general tone but some of his lyrics are very ambiguous / cryptic. Sorta like the Bible, really. Only better orchestrated. 😉
But I have to confess, I’m more of the Gilmourite sect of Floydians, rather than a Watersite. But either one, Dave or Roger, have made some mind-blowing music.
How on earth can wearing more safety equipment equal a “more audacious” stunt?
It equals a more health and safety conscious stunt. But I guess that doesn’t sound quite as cool.
Personally I have zero attraction to these sort of stunts (with or without safety harnesses).
Mark 61:17-18
“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they walk on wire across misty cliffs with falling water; and if they fall from a deadly height, it shall not hurt them, so long as they wear a safety harness.”
He shouldn’t need safety equipment if he’s doing gods’ work.
A number of people have descended the Falls in a barrel. I recollect the beginning of a poem which I had thought was by Ogden Nash, but perhaps not, since I now cannot trace it, which, if my memory serves me correctly, commences:-
“I’d rather have pellagra
Than fall in a barrel over Niagara”.
Perhaps someone can identify the author.
He is the one next to the trashed wooden can of spam over there.
?
So he’s wearing a harness. In other words, he’s cheating and it isn’t for real.
(Don’t get me wrong, heights scare me. But compared with the guys who walked across depending entirely on their sense of balance to stay alive, he’s not risking much. It’s a bit like snake handling with a (small) boa.)
So my immediate reaction, which was a totally reprehensible hope that he falls off, didn’t really count for much anyway.
Of course, if he’s really serious about not wanting a safety line, he could always take it off half way. What’s Disney gonna do? – cut the transmission halfway through?
My sneaky doubt that he really wants to do without the safety line just proves I’m a nasty cynical person, I guess.
Now that’s more like it.
As a true test of faith, I think
all baptisms should require walking
across a giant, raging waterfall on
a tightrope.
Perhaps someone will throw him a poisonous snake to really prove his faith!
…now if Evel Knievel had jumped the falls on a motorcycle; unless they made him tie a safety bungee cord to the back bumper. Visions of just making it to the Canadian side and the bungee snaps him back to dangle mid-falls: Now, that’s entertainment.
I knew since I was a child that I would do God’s work. Because he told me. Unfortunatly the only thing I’m good at is walking on a tightrope, so……. walking on a tightrope is doing God’s work now!
Religious logic, ladies and gentlemen.
Why did he do the walk at night rather than in daylight?
The ‘drama’ factor.
So they can add in a five second delay to avoid bad words and nipples, but not for this?
If God wants him to do this, wearing a harness is spitting in God’s face. Presumably someone will stone him when he steps back on terra firma.