David Blaine Gives Me the Creeps

You know, that title almost makes the post itself unnecessary.

So the guy has been floating around inside a plexiglass sphere filled with water for the last week, simultaneously breaking the record for time spent underwater and most annoying New York sidewalk stunt. It's said to be turning ugly too - his hands are swelling up his skin feels like it's being constantly poked with pins and needles. Doctors had to apply lotion to his hands and give him special gloves, a treatment made more difficult because he couldn't come out of the fishbowl. He had to raise his hands out of the water, as if he was surrendering.

If you see his STREET MAGIC TV specials, you can see what Blaine does for a living. He freaks people out, and won't leave them alone. This isn't a magician, it's an attention-starved bully. It's a guy who wants you to look at him so much that he's willing to submerge himself for a week, half-naked, before performing a trick that Houdini perfected a century ago. 7 days of foreplay, 10 minutes of ordinary sex.

Also the trick has no narrative. Houdini told a little story - I'm trapped in a milk can, and I want to escape; hey I've escaped! Blaine is not trapped - you hope he'll just cut it off early on his own, because no one is forcing him to waterlog himself. Houdini: "There's not a chamber that can hold me!" Blaine: "I'm a slacker who lays (or floats) for as long as you'll let me!" I can't root for David Blaine. The best he'll get out of me is I hope he'll get a job - mechanic? PR man? Whatever. As long as I don't have to watch him any more.