It’s amazing what some people will do to get attention.

Sunday, August 19, 2001

It’s amazing what some people will do to get attention.

In the news this week we had a tycoon balloonist from Chicago who made his fifth attempt to become the first person to fly solo around the world in a balloon. This makes one wonder why anybody still cares about balloon travel; aside from a nice novely for hobbyists or riders at county fairs, isn’t the era of balloons, blimps and dirigibles pretty much behind us?

But, this guy had the money and apparently plenty of time, so off he went in his little balloon, only to crash in a Brazilian pasture halfway through his trip. Maybe the sixth time will be a charm.

The strange thing is, when these billionaires take trips like this, it ends up being a news extravaganza. It was the same when a pair of balloonists recently became the first to circumnavigate the globe a few months ago.

Another strange journey ended this week when a man failed to swim across Lake Superior. He had already conquered the other four Great Lakes, and this was going to be the feat that made him one of the first people to swim all five. Chilly water and tall waves made it impossible, though, and he abandoned with 45 miles to go.

What motivates people to risk life and limb to perform useless feats like these? Is there any value in balloon travel when anybody can just take a plane? Is there any use in swimming the English Channel when they built a tunnel under the thing anyway? These kind of feats have no applicaton in real life.

It’s nothing new, of course. People have been trying to climb Mount Everest for centuries. They have gone over Niagra Falls in a barrel. They’ve tried to reach the north pole by dog sled. Why?

There are a few possible motivations: Maybe they are looking for fame and attention, or maybe they’re the kind of obsessive people who need to set pointless goals, then try to achieve them, just so they can keep busy. Maybe there is just some kind of mystique about doing crazy things that most people couldn’t dream of doing.

Whether it’s their intent or not, they end up getting the fame and recognition. For some reason, America is in a mood that seems to romanticize these kinds of feats. It’s becoming popular entertainment to watch other people do something you’d never be able to do.

Nowhere is that more clear than on television. NBC has game-show contestants eating sheep eyeballs and laying in snake pits for the chance at a few thousand bucks. And it’s ratings gold. When I was a kid, my brother and I used to gross each other out with these kinds of ideas – like, would you eat a bowl of live crickets for a million dollars? We never dreamed that we would ever actually be asked to eat insects for money. Now, it’s happening, and it’s on TV.

That must be the appeal of this so-called reality TV; it’s actually very far from most people’s reality. When was the last time you were &uot;surviving&uot; on your own in the Australian outback? Or racing a group of other people around the world? There’s really nothing &uot;real&uot; about these contrived scenarios. It’s just entertainment spiked with uncertainty. In a sitcom or drama, we all know the resolution is coming soon because there are only 5 minutes left in the show. With &uot;reality&uot; TV, there’s no guarantee of what will happen.

It seems that watching far-out fiction at the movies and on TV is too tame for us now. We need to see real people doing real dangerouos and outrageous things.

And we like to read about it in the news. These rich balloonists and brave swimmers are basically showmen, entertaining a willing audience through the newspaper or the TV news.

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Dylan Belden is the Tribune’s managing editor. His column appears Sundays. E-mail him at dylan.belden@albertleatribune.com.