BLAINE

I had no idea at the time, but last week as I was downtown watching the soggy Thanksgiving Day parade, David Blaine was doing another one of his stunts down in Times Square. Seems he’d been shackled, spinning and not eating for two days in a giant gyroscope suspended above Times Square, and parade day was when he was going to make the big escape, all for something to do with the Salvation Army.

He escaped and crashed through a platform uninjured and otherwise seemed fine. Bravo. It was weird and perfect for New York.

Blaine is horribly full of himself but I like him anyway, it’s what makes him good, and his shtick is truly interesting enough to dererve attention, given the shit that passes for entertainment on prime time television (think American Idolotry). So it came as something of a shock to see The New York Times didn’t even bother to mention any of what happened. Not before, not during and not after. For a city paper that usually has no problem finding space for some obscure theatrical performance that should have never made it to the stage, to fail to write about an actual spectacle seemed like a colossal snub. Well fuck that, there were at least 40 other articles around the world talking what happened even it went over like a turd. It was a helluva lot more interesting than the floats with singers of questionable talent and giant balloons that looked like they were crawling around Manhattan for more camera coverage.