It used to be that only the most obstinate brats threatened to hold their breath in order to get their way.
Now “magicians” are doing it to get May Sweeps numbers.
In “David Blaine: Drowned Alive,” the dumbest network special since his flagpole standing bit, he failed to set a world record for holding his breath despite getting sage advice from another guy who did dumb things for attention, Evel Knevil, and training for his event by standing in a water globe at Lincoln Center for 176 hours.
He must have been the weirdest ornament for those attending the Metropolitan Opera this week.
How they made a two hour special out of this tedium? The same way “American Idol” can stretch five minutes of results over two hours. In this case involved old footage of his last stunt and lots of little clips of him wowing gullible passerby. I’m not sure how anybody believes anything magicians do on TV – this is regularly a place where people fly and disappear, how could we be wowed if a “magician” does it?
The Blaine special must have been a low spot for the ESPN commentator Stuart Scott, hired to do the breathless commentary, as if what was being done was actually of interest. Some people will do anything to break out of cable and onto the networks – including damaging their reputation.
The whole two hours were impossible to watch – I’d only tune in during commercial breaks while on other stations – there was no way I was missing “24” even if Blaine’s show used the same digital countdown ploy. I did want to see the very end, though, if only to catch the inarticulate entertainer’s first comments. I remember that after the flagpole stunt, he remarkably had nothing to say, though the first thing they did was give him a microphone.
Monday, they did the same thing – just in case he had some insight to broadcast to the nation. Instead, he had to be bleeped when he took a look at his hands – the worst case of dishwater hands ever. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. “They’re numb,” he said of them, when asked by an attending doctor.
Yes, David. We know the feeling.
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