It's not often that a magician's trick actually creates the opposite effect on the observing audience. I mean, when Houdini escaped from a straightjacket, the effect didn't cause the audience to be inprisoned in straightjackets. And yet, that's what's bound to happen during David Blaine's latest stunt, an attempt to break the world's record for staying awake.

If you tried really hard, do you think you could you think of a less-appealing trick? Him covering himself in paint, and us watching it dry? Observing him in a hair-growing race with a baboon? Staying awake is slightly more impressive than watching a petulant child hold its breath in defiance of... Oh wait, that was his last trick, and he failed. That presents a scenario I don't recall ever happening before.

Isn't this like if Houdini had failed to escape from the water-filled milk jug, waited a few months and then announced an escape from a mid-air, upside-down straightjacket? Um, hey, what about that other thing? You, like, didn't do it yet. Hmm, if only there were some sort of well-worn expression or idiom to point out the way in this situation... something about the order of things... maybe drawing a comparison between walking, for example, and that step that always comes after walking. Ah, well...

How is he preparing for this latest feat?

That's a pretty restricted diet. Especially considering that he goes on to say:

So, then, why did you just arbitrarily make up a super-specific menu? "There's no research on how to go about this. Guess I better practice speaking Klingon and learn the banjo, just to be on the safe side..."

I'm not sure of the upside in doing a possibly life-threatening and yet supremely uninteresting stunt where the ideal end result is someone going, "Uh, yeah he did it, he stayed up the whole time... So, you guys wanna get something to eat or..."

And, I'm not sure why, as an illusionist/magician he's allowed to skip the actual magic in favor of "stunts." Trapped in ice, buried alive... That's not magic, that's just us watching him endure hardship. You know who seems to be pretty good at that trick? Our military, most poor people, and dozens of countries around the globe. Maybe he can cut them in on some of the profits, a friendly gesture from one "magician" to another.

His next trick should be us, as a country, beating the shit out of him, and then watching him crawl the 30 feet to the ambulance. Just hours of that. "Is he dead?" "Nope, his arm just twitched, he's still going! Or was that him dying?" "Somebody poke him with a stick!"

Either that or he should bring back the Houdini "punch in the stomach" test. Only, it takes place 24/7 and we get to strike without warning.




TheCoolerKing drunkenly performs the Houdini "punch in the stomach" test, every year on his birthday. He sort of regrets starting the ritual.