MetaFilter posts tagged with 1974

When I see three oranges, I juggle. When I see two towers, I walk.

jessamyn — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:55:56 -0800

When Man on Wire won a Grand Jury Prize: at Sundance this year, many could hazily remember Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between the World Trade Center Towers in New York in 1974 (previously) but few knew the extent to which the entire endeavor was a wacky multinational caper. Additional trivia: The movie has gotten 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes; Debra Winger has it written into her film contracts that there should always be a visual tribute to Petit; [conspirator's] Jean-François Heckel's reward for the twin towers coup was to be unceremoniously expelled from the United States, whereas Petit received a lifetime pass to the WTC observation deck; Petit has been arrested over 500 times and can kill someone with an issue of People Magazine. Longer Petit interview from 1999 on Charlie Rose. In Petit's own words

I found out that the only way to protect my life was to know as much about the wire, about the rigging, about my limits as possible. Life is something to be cherished, and in this very, very dangerous profession of mine, a millisecond of inattention, a millimetre of being in the wrong place puts you out of balance and you lose your life immediately. Since I absolutely don't want to do that, I am in a very strange kind of solid control, in a world that is made of infinite fragility...

Free to Be... You and Me

thirteenkiller — Tue, 22 May 2007 04:31:19 -0800

F r e e t o B e ... Y o u a n d M e

Christine Chubbuck

spock — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:01:27 -0800

"In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color, you are going to see another first -- attempted suicide." The 1976 multiple-Oscar-winning movie Network is said to have been partially inspired by this suicide. [Aug. 4, 1974 Washington Post story (PDF)]. This guy doubts that a tape exists.

Welcome to EUROBAD '74

atomicmedia — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 14:09:26 -0800

Welcome to EUROBAD '74, an exhibition of Europe's worst interiors of 1974.

Without a Net

three blind mice — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 06:23:20 -0800

On this day in 1974 French stuntman Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between the still-unfinished (and largely unrented) towers of New York's World Trade Center. In the course of a single morning, the unexpected -- and illegal -- actions of a daring young Frenchman and a few of his confederates would change public opinion about the troubled towers, which were courting financial disaster and facing a barrage of architectural and social criticism (pdf).

The barbarian era of collecting

KS — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 05:33:57 -0800

How Marvel convinced us to cut up our comics “The program destroyed the value of countless Marvel comics of this era, and missing value stamps are the bane of serious Bronze Age collectors.”
¶ I was ten years old and I collected all 100 Series A Marvel Value Stamps, so I totally grooved on this remarkably comprehensive site. Ironically, the coolest artifacts are the empty collector’s books, which show off the artwork best, in glorius black & white & red, without the crappy colour printing of the era.

1974 Tornado

Johnny Assay — Thu, 03 Apr 2003 12:28:49 -0800

Twenty-nine years ago today, a single storm spawned 148 tornadoes across the American Midwest, including twenty-three F4 and six F5 tornadoes. Here are a couple of sites about this incredible storm. If you're feeling a little uneasy after seeing some of these images, maybe you can assuage your fear by boning up on your tornado safety tips; and, as an added bonus, learn how to detect tornadoes using your television.