David Blaine, all time douche

David Blaine is not a particularly good magician but he is particularly good at self promotion. To illustrate: his street levitation trick is something I’m adept at and the rest of his tricks you can buy at a magic store. For example, cigarette through the quarter is, well, a gimmicked quarter. Chewing glass is easy (and a trick) and card tricks are, well card tricks.

Nothing wrong with any of that, nothing wrong with self-promotion either. But sometimes people cross a line and David Blaine didn’t only cross the line tonight he erased it with napalm.

Here’s the scenario: David Blaine has been stuck in a snow globe for a jillion days. Since floating in water isn’t impressive enough David decided to *ahem* go for the all time record for not breathing. Well, I guess that record goes to Adam, David was going for the all time record of not breathing while still remaining a sentient human being.

By way of showing just how dangerous the stunt actually was viewers were treated to the story, and video, of Audrey Mestre. Audrey was a free diver and she was going for a record dive. Her dive under the water was aided by what free divers call a sled, basically a weight attached to cable. Audrey dives to 545 feet.

At this point, she is supposed to pull a tether that would inflate a balloon tugging her back to the surface. She got the tether part right but the balloon didn’t expand. Audrey knows she is as good as dead, you can almost see the resignation on her face even while underwater.

The safety diver did as much as possible (ascend to quickly and he’ll get the bends, share the his oxygen and, ABC tells us, Audrey would die) but one has to wonder what the point of the safety diver is with record setting dives (corpse retrieval?)

So a guy in a snow globe invokes the story of someone 545 below sea level to show how dangerous his stunt is. The liar in the ball of water, who has hand signals if he really gets in trouble, compares himself to someone whose only hand signal at that depth can be pointing to her eye and then to her index finger, gladly shows the dying moments of someone taking an actual (foolhardy) risk to justify his bogus trick?

David Blaine you disgust me, ABC you should be ashamed. Though I’m sure it will go over big on DVD if you call it Faces of Death 27 or something.