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        New Message Board Archives >> Jul-Sep 2003 >> David Blaine
        
(Message started by: KenB on Aug 19^th, 2003, 7:01am)

Title: David Blaine
Post by KenB on Aug 19^th, 2003, 7:01am

Imagine getting a cluster doing this!

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/arts/19BLAI.html?th

Title: Re: David Blaine
Post by BobG on Aug 19^th, 2003, 7:18am

???

Who's David Blaine and why does he want to sign up on the NY Times?

Title: Re: David Blaine
Post by HypnoticFreddy on Aug 19^th, 2003, 8:08am

David Blaine is a whacked-out magician. Maybe he knows a way to get on to the NY Times website.

Title: Re: David Blaine
Post by don on Aug 19^th, 2003, 8:16am

Nope, couldn't imagine having a CH and creating an account for the New York Times. LOL

Title: Re: David Blaine
Post by Woobie on Aug 19^th, 2003, 8:21am

Did I miss something - AGAIN??

Wow - I'm always late!!!

Cornfusdicated
Tina :-*

Title: Re: David Blaine
Post by KingOfPain on Aug 19^th, 2003, 11:40am

David Blaine.

Magician.

You go to link, he's not there.

He's invisible.

Magician.

I get it (I think). ???

KingOfPain

Title: Re: David Blaine
Post by KenB on Aug 20^th, 2003, 3:24am

DOH! Forgot you have to register first :P

Here's the text of the article:

Over the last decade David Blaine has become a famous magician with a combination of sleek sleight of hand and equally sharp publicity, using television specials, celebrity friends and bizarre tests of endurance to earn millions of dollars, thousands of fans and more than a few detractors.

In May 2002, for example, Mr. Blaine climbed a 80-foot pillar — in Bryant Park in Manhattan — and stood on a platform the size of a large pizza platter for 35 hours before jumping into a pile of boxes. Like his other recent stunts — including standing for 62 hours in a giant cube of ice in 2000 and a weeklong stay in a coffin buried near Riverside Park in 1999 — the conclusion of the pillar affair was shown live on ABC.

But now Mr. Blaine, 30, says he has become disillusioned, as it were, with the money, the models and the movie-star treatment.

"Everything I've done before is irrelevant," he said in a recent interview, speaking in a nasally mumble that falls somewhere between distraction and shyness. "This one is going to be different."

"This one" is the latest stunt Mr. Blaine has devised for himself, an endurance test with as few frills as possible (except of course a small television deal and a documentary to be shot by a friend, the filmmaker Harmony Korine).

Beginning Sept. 5, Mr. Blaine says, he will spend 44 days in a Plexiglas box, 7 feet long by 7 feet tall by 3 feet wide, suspended over the Thames River in London. He will have just a set of clothes and a blanket, no food, and will receive only water via a feeding tube. He will have pens and paper to keep a journal (perhaps to be published later) and very little else to keep his mind occupied. His bodily functions will be handled with a small backpack containing diapers and a tube to urinate in.

"I'm not doing this for entertainment, I'm not doing this for the networks," he said, though Sky One and Channel 4 in London will broadcast his entrance and exit as well as a television special shortly after he emerges. "It doesn't have anything to do with anything other than I feel I have to do it. I want to do it."

Dr. Alexander E. Kuehl, an expert in emergency medicine and the director of public health in St. Lawrence County, N.Y., said that 44 days was close to the limit that a human body could last on only water.

"It's sort of an extreme Atkins diet," Dr. Kuehl said. "Certainly there are cases of relatively well-nourished people surviving for long periods, up to several months, with just snow or water. Hopefully he needs to lose a little weight."

He added, however, that if the water were loaded with sugar or nutrients, the challenge would be much less impressive. "If it was clear Gatorade, you could probably survive on it forever," Dr. Kuehl said.

Mr. Blaine insists it will be pure water only, but he does appear to have bulked up in preparation for the stunt. A Brooklyn native, the darkly good-looking Mr. Blaine first gained prominence as a street magician in the early 1990's and soon found himself doing magic at swanky bars for the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and his supermodel posse. But that life seems to have lost some of its appeal. He quit drinking last year, he says, and has been concentrating — perhaps in preparation for his 44 days in a big glass box — on being alone.

"For me, that's the biggest torture," he said.