Most people I know hate this guy. They think he is an attention-starved, uninteresting sham. I like David Blaine. He is the modern day Houdini and Evil Knieval rolled into one. He’s the only guy out there testing the limits of humankind. I loved the living in a glass box over London. I loved the standing on the pedestal in New York. I even loved the underwater one last spring. But David Blaine’s newest stunt is just kind of dumb. On Tuesday, Blaine shackled himself to a gyroscope and was hoisted 40 feet into the air above Manhattan’s Times Square. He will spin around for two days and then leave himself 16 hours to escape from the shackles. If he succeeds, 100 children selected by the Salvation Army will get a $500 shopping spree at Target. Such bullshit. A) the breaking out of shackles routine is tired. And B) there is no way in hell Blaine or Target would allow the stunt to fail with 100 underprivileged children on the line. Like, is there a chance Blaine won’t escape and they show a bunch of poor kids crying on TV? Of course not. The corporate aspect of this event has stripped any and all suspense from the stunt. It would have been brave to incorporate the poor kids when he had to hold his breath underwater for 9 minutes, something no other human has done before. That would have been dramatic. And call me cold-hearted, but I hope he fails.
•Reuters: Blaine May Be Crazy