In one week, Kim Kardashian named her kid North West and Nik Wallenda walked across the Grand Canyon on a 2-inch cable. Oh yes, and there was other stuff happening, like dozens more people being killed by suicide bombers in the Mideast, the Dow dropping a few hundred points, the Voting Rights Act hammered and more shenanigans uncovered about the IRS. But hey, that stuff happens every day, right?
I wasn’t surprised that Kardashian chose such a name for her kid. That’s what celebrities and celebrity wannabes do. They give these kids a cross to bear as if life doesn’t offer enough obstacles on their own.
I suppose North West isn’t the worst name they could have come up with. Wild Wild West would have been worse or maybe Sonic Boom West. But now this kid must go through life wondering if someone is calling her name or giving her directions.
 I guess if she gets famous by her own rights, she may be called The Great North West. Hopefully she’s not overweight. Kids can be cruel. They may call her The Whole North West.
It’s almost like a rite of passage that celebrities do this. Nicholas Cage named his kid Kal-El after Superman. Whatever. He may be in junior high before he realizes he’s not Muslim. I hope they explain that thing about not wearing your underwear on the outside of your leotards.
Jason Lee named his kid “Pilot.” That probably beats “Driver” or “Trailer Hitch.”
Then comes Sylvester Stallone who named his son “Sage Moonblood.” And Bono named his kid “Memphis Eve.” Would “Christmas Eve” have been any better? How about “Summer Eve?” Think about this: someone one day will introduce her as “the day before Memphis.”
So much for those antics. I watched Wallenda walk across the Grand Canyon when there was a perfectly good helicopter sitting right there. I will admit that watching this live put a little twist in my stomach. I get weak in the knees when I’m raking pine straw off my roof.
So there he was some 1,500 feet from the bottom and 1,400 feet from the other side. I doubt I could walk a railroad rail 1,400 feet without falling off. And he was praising God and Jesus all the way. He even had television preacher Joel Osteen petitioning God for his safe journey.
“Lord we know that there are millions of starving children and people getting blown up left and right, but if you can take a break for a minute we would appreciate it if you would stop the wind, hold this cable tight and hold Nik’s hand across this canyon. Amen.”
And no that’s not what Osteen prayed. But it’s what I heard.
I need to go back and check, but somewhere along the way in Sunday School, I heard something about “not tempting God.”
Now I would apply such warning to such mundane events like fishing in a metal boat during a lightning storm. I certainly would not stick my fishing rod in the air and chastise him for letting the Atlanta Falcons come five yards short of going to the Super Bowl.
Of course there was no socially redeeming value to what Wallenda did anymore than Evel Knievel’s adrenaline exercises. It was pure entertainment in the tradition of the Wallenda family.
I’m sure some people watched it thinking that if Wallenda fell, they could always say they saw it happen.
I had not planned to watch it. It just happened to be on, and I had already seen the Pickers buy that Standard Oil sign and the Turtle Man catch those skunks under that house.
I think if I was the next child born to Wallenda, I would want my name to be “Heck No.”

Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer.