David Blaine Still Alive After “Dive Of Death And Twenty Minute Water Breaks”

David Blaine, the “endurance artist” who hung upside down in Central Park for “60 hours” in between taking breaks to stand up, has “survived.” Despite this being a lame publicity stunt to create revenue for both Blaine and his corporate sponsor Donald Trump, (the stunt happened at Trump run Wollman Ice Skating Rink and culminated in a two-hour ABC special last night), Blaine continues to get amazing global news coverage as a magician in a time when Avril Lavigne counts as punk rock and Sarah Palin is a legitimate candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States.

Blaine, 35, had dangled from a cable attached to a large scaffold structure built high over the park’s Wollman Rink since Monday, except for regular breaks for water and medical checks during which he was upright for periods of a few to several minutes each.

Scanning the internet turned up multiple witnesses who saw Blaine on break for much longer than the publicized ten minutes. As one Gawker commenter put it, “I’m going to stay awake for the rest of my life, pausing briefly to sleep every night.”

Entertainment Weekly Popwatch blogger Vanessa Juarez went to Central Park to see Blaine, (after being asked by many press releases), and found a camera feeding frenzy while the man was not even hanging. She has a suggestion for those of you looking for to see something a little more real:

If you want to see passion, go check out Man on Wire, which is still playing at some theaters. It’s a documentary about French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, whose dream it was to walk on a wire strung between the Twin Towers. It was on his wish list for about six-and-a-half years before his team actually planned out how they would illegally gain access to the roof of the towers and then rig the wire. It took eight months to map it out, but on August 7, 1974, they prevailed: Petit walked, danced, and even lay down on a wire suspended 1,350 feet in the air. He did not alert the press. He did not have a two-hour primetime special. Doctors weren’t there checking his vital signs, advising him that this could be the ultimate Dive of Death. He just did it — a true stunt, and for those who saw it, a magical one at that.

Let’s hope Blaine checks it out.

Magician Blaine survives his “Dive of Death” [Reuters India]
David Blaine’s Dive Of Death: I Don’t Get It [Popwatch]