Blaine to Hover in Air for 6 Weeks

[fasteddie]

LONDON (Reuters) - American magician David Blaine, dubbed "the modern day Houdini," is to be suspended in a glass box over the River Thames in London for more than six weeks without food.

The flamboyant, 30-year-old New Yorker, famed for spectacular stunts atop poles and frozen in ice, is to be hauled into solitary confinement on Sept. 5 in what he called "the most extreme exercise in isolation and physical deprivation ever attempted."

Against the backdrop of London's Tower Bridge, he will spend 44 days suspended by a crane in his clear plexiglass box "with no food, no communication and no distractions of any kind."

He will have one tube to give him water and another for urinating.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Entertainment/reuters20030820_267.html

 

[fasteddie]

UPDATE:
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September 2, 2003 -- DAVID Blaine has told PAGE SIX for the first time about the mysterious Holocaust tattoo on his left arm.

Blaine - who'll attempt to spend 44 days with no food suspended above the River Thames in a glass box beginning Thursday - has always shaken his head saying, "Read the book," whenever anyone asked why he has author Primo Levi's Auschwitz number, 174517, permanently etched in his skin.

The book he refers to is "Survival in Auschwitz" and, as he tells PAGE SIX's Ian Spiegelman, "I was in Paris reading it and he mentions his number. The second I read that, I was so moved that I ran into a tattoo place to get it."

The tattooist, Blaine recalls, spoke no English so, "I just drew the numbers on my arm and had him tattoo them."

But there are dozens of great Holocaust books. Why immortalize just one?

"It's the most amazing book I ever read," Blaine said. "He told the story in a very truthful, unbiased way."

Unbiased?

"All the other survivor books said, 'All the Nazis were so bad - feel sorry for us.' But Levi wrote, 'Some Nazis were good and did what they could for us; some Jews were worse to us than the Nazis. Some Jews let their numbers go first to become martyrs.' "

Speaking of flesh and blood, Blaine's will certainly be at risk with this latest stunt. While he used a solution of water, sugar, Cayenne pepper and other ingredients to sustain him through previous escapades, this time he'll be drinking only water.

"This is just plain water with nothing in it - no nutrients, vitamins, glucose or anything. I was debating it and I decided it makes it that much more of a challenge. This makes it really, really dangerous and amazing, should it succeed."

Before an endurance test, Blaine usually cleanses his system with a product called Go Lightly, but not this time. "The doctor here says it rinses the electrolytes out of your system. While I'm doing this I'll be surviving on stored electrolytes, then on fat, then muscle tissue, and then organs - which get thinner and smaller."

He will also wear diapers, which he'll change while hiding under a blanket, passing the used ones through a hole in the floor.

http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix.htm