Where's The Dad-Blaine Magic?

David Blaine needs a new job title. "Magician", "Illusionist" and even "Stunt Performer" seem inaccurate. Maybe something like "Practitioner of Self-Degradation and Punishment" would fit better. Blaine isn't a magician because there's really nothing magical about locking yourself in a box. Similarly, he's no illusionist for the same reason; he doesn't appear to be trapped in water, he is trapped in water. And even stunt performer is a bit misleading because of Blaine's utter failure to recognize the benefit of brevity. When Evel Knievel jumped across the Snake River on a motorcycle, it was a stunt. Blaine takes weeks to perform his alleged stunts. Where's the drama in that?

Blaine's antics bring to mind the sustained and voluntary public humiliation of reality television more than any sort of chicanery or sleight of hand employed by magicians. Not that I find a run-of-the-mill magic act riveting, but it's far better than a man starving himself inside containers for no good reason. Sitting in a box for 44 days without food isn't a magic trick, it's a hunger strike, like Ghandi and Dick Gregory used to do. Except they never claimed it was magic. And their fasting had a point.

Blaine calls his latest desperate attempt to draw attention to himself "Drowned Alive"; after several days underwater, he claims to be in great pain all over his body. Well, imagine that! So being submerged in water indefinitely isn't good for a person? Maybe he expected his fingers and toes to get all pruney, but that'd be the worst of it.

In an old Monty Python routine, a self-styled daredevil named Ron Obvious attempted a series of failed stunts. The first was jumping the English Channel; then he attempted to eat an entire English Church; after that, he planned to split a railway carriage with his nose, tunnel to Java and, finally, run to the planet Mercury. David Blaine is a real-life Ron Obvious, performing acts of profound stupidity and pointlessness; the difference is, Blaine isn't funny. In fact, he's dead serious about this stuff.

At least Evel Knievel and his ilk got the foolishness overwith fast and we could watch "The Six Million Dollar Man" or something. It's enough to make pulling a rabbit from a hat fresh and innovative.