"Will David be sleeping with the fishes" asks Roy Williams, the outstanding writer for UK's Express and Star newspaper.
Mr.
Williams' column is a must read if only for his take on how American's
take David Blaine. The magician may have both sides of the Atlantic
fooled.
A press release on David's site tells us he trained for this
experience with US Navy seals, which would account for all that barking
and hand-clapping. He may even run to balancing a ball on his nose, but
we shall see over the next seven days.
As you would expect from a man who inspires awe and wonder in his
native America and wonderful guffawes over this side of the pond, there
are websites devoted to lauding and lampooning what the man his own DVD
describes as "the hottest magician around right now" . . . but give it
a week and he may be cold as a cod in a cooler.
The popular view of this quirky man can be found on Wikipedia at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Blaine and there's a fan website at www.underworldmagic.com which tries to be a bit Blaine-ish, but ends up looking like a pale, if a little dark, imitation of the real thing.
The website www.youtube.com
features some "spoof blaine magic", though what is not made clear is
whether this is David doing spoof magic or a spoof David doing magic.
It could even be a spoof David doing spoof magic, but we may never know.
We love Mr. Williams' tongue in
cheek approach to describing a story that is paradoxically
under-reported and has yet already received too much attention. We're
kind of over it already and it's only started.
Apparently his best so far is seven, after which he fainted, which is probably not a good idea when under water.
The name of this challenge is a bit of an oxymoron (which could
actually be shorthand for an idiot who's a bit short of air, couldn't
it?).
David, we're told, will be Drowned Alive. I may have misunderstood
the concept, but I'd have thought if you were drowned you weren't
actually very much alive. But that may be just me being finicky.
The good news is that you can follow it all at David's website www.davidblaine.com , which is a bit like the man himself: a little dark, a bit mysterious, a bit showy and actually rather compelling stuff.
For the very latest on all things fishbowl, Mr. Williams suggests you check out the link www.aquariumfish.net for exotic fish videos.
Today's featured fish is the Freshwater Dwarf Puffer.
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