Pitting David Blaine - lying already about stunt

The BBQ Pit
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He doesn’t deserve to be punished. But if someone wants to make $3.5 million by sitting in a box for 44 days, he shouldn’t be surprised if people are going to show up to make the challenge a little more amusing than “starving oneself to death”. He wanted the attention, and he got it. Positive, and negative.

Now, I’m outraged at the idiot who was trying to cut off his water supply. There’s no need to inflict bodily harm upon him. But teasing a self-elected hunger striker by flying a remote controlled helicopter carrying a burger up to his box? That’s just fucking priceless, man. :smiley:

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Precisely. We’re amused at people hitting the box he is sitting in (note NOT the man himself, they are SEPARATE THINGS) with eggs. We’re amused at the very concept of a wedding cake trebuchet. We’re amused at the idea of a burger van setting up underneath him and a burger 'copter being buzzed up to him.

I think that those of you who have your hands raised in horror to your mouths and are half way through a dead faint at inhumanity of the situation really need a reality check. The fact that he’s inflicted this relatively mild attention on himself is really just the icing on the (wedding) cake.

Now cutting off his water supply is a different matter and none here have supported that. But even that over-the-top action is really only threatening the stunt, not Blaine himself. No water = Blaine comes down. A shame that outside influence has prevented him claiming $7 million but not life threatening.

This isn’t the US. Nobody has attempted to shoot the fucker. So cease your collective infernal whingings.

pan

303

Thank you. Can you give me an explanation of what it is I’m supposed to be impressed with:

If it’s the fact of illusion or mystic-magical theatre then fine, he can drink his nutrients – and do whatever else he might or might not be doing - but he shouldn’t be surprised if people don’t (a) enjoy the garbage entertainment or (b) accept this weird Hollywood, special-dude, man-of-mystery, reality; after all, an illusion is by definition an illusion.

If it’s that he’s achieving a remarkable feat of endurance then I disbelieve what we’re asked to believe and, in any event, why not do something of merit, like climb a mountain or trek to the South Pole?
But, as best I know, he’s not actually claiming anything in particular. Indeed, what’s he’s actually doing is, in fact, accumulating considerable wealth while sitting in a box seemingly doing nothing – that’s the true illusion here, and I/we aren’t buying it.

This entire stunt is about money, with London and Londoners providing the compliant, pretty-picture and gullible backdrop – whether or not he’s ‘cheating’ depends on who’s definging what it actually is he’s claiming to be doing, but he’s certainly mugging us all off by pretending it’s not about the cash.

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I think what a lot of you aren’t getting is that the reason he’s being slagged (minus a bit of reprehensible racism) is his not the stunt, but his attitude.

There was a great deal of hype about this before it started, during which Blaine portrayed himself as a pseudo mystic. Lemme give you some examples.

Big pile of wank.

Uh… no, Dave. It’s wank.

Utter wank.

Wank wank wank.

Many Britons abhor pretension, and are not scared to demonstrate this. Blaine is about as pretentions as you can possibly get.

As I’ve intimated before, if Blaine had gone in saying “it’s an experiment, let’s see how far I can get, and besides - it’s for charidee” then the reaction would have been significantly different.

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have a look here for why americans dont seem to get whats going on.

if you also look at the channel 4 website, its seems even theyve lost interest in this. and further to previous comments, i dont want to be anywhere near there when they pull him out of that box. i know what i smell like after not washing for a couple of days (not a regular occurence BTW), never mind after 6 fucking weeks. bleeegh!
:stuck_out_tongue:

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oh, and i agree whole heartedly with everything jjimm says. salient points, beautifully illustrated, no?

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I laughed heartily at this:

Obviously this woman has never been in London when the pubs are closing.**

I’m guessing C4 is currently more interested in the upcoming antics of actual magician and mentalist Derren Brown and his live Russian Roulette game. Should be interesting, although I can’t say I really plan on watching it; if he dies I don’t want to see it, and if he doesn’t there’s no point in watching.

There was a story in the newspaper the other day (which I can’t find on the web) about some woman who got locked in one of those shipping containers for sixty-some days. Maybe someone should give her a few million quid as well?

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] I’m guessing C4 is currently more interested in the upcoming antics of actual magician and mentalist Derren Brown and his live Russian Roulette game. Should be interesting, although I can’t say I really plan on watching it; if he dies I don’t want to see it, and if he doesn’t there’s no point in watching.

There was a story in the newspaper the other day (which I can’t find on the web) about some woman who got locked in one of those shipping containers for sixty-some days. Maybe someone should give her a few million quid as well? **
[/QUOTE]

i want to see Derren Brown blow his brains out all over the shop. its not going to happen, but ill watch it. is he going to mind control the volunteer shooter?
the woman trapped in the container was in todays Sun, the source of all human knowledge. shes more deserving than Blaine. id give her comp for experiencing that.

309

There was a guy that mailed himself by airmail too, wasn’t there? Credit to him.

I’d like to watch Derren Brown. I hope that he doesn’t blow his brains out, actually. I really enjoy his shows. That thing he did where he subliminally got the advertising guys to come up with a campaign identical to his own was simply genius.

pan

310

I’m glad someone else feels the same way I do. The build-up is also going to be excruciating; I don’t know if my heart could take it. Of course we know nothing will go wrong. But then again… And if it did, it could seriously scar one for life. And it would be a tragic loss of someone who’s verging on genius.

I might watch it like I used to watch Dr Who - behind the sofa peeping out from between my fingers.

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You have a sofa peeping out from behind your fingers?

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Yes.

I used to have a chaise-longue peeping out from between my toes, but that’s SO last-season.

313

I once knew a bloke with a stool stuck in each nostril.

Go on, ask me “How did he smell?”

314

Okay – “How did he smell?”

While we’re already hijacked, and speaking of Dr. Who, Tom Baker revealed today that Eddie Izzard has been tapped to be the next Dr. Who (although the BBC will not confirm anything yet, so it may just be wishful thinking on Baker’s part). I would so watch that…

315

Now that’s fuckin’ funny. When it comes down to it, I don’t really care how moral something is (within reason) so long as it’s actually funny.

I guess I should’ve illustrated that in this sense, I’m just trying to show the flip side. I mean, I agree it’s a dumb stunt, and those aforementioned quotes (assuming they weren’t taken out of context) do rather smack of hubrisitis. Especially when trying to pump up such a profitable triviality by saying he’d be willing to die for it (huh? There’s ballsy dedication, then there’s stupidity.) But I don’t think whipping eggs at the box can be justified by what a dick he is. Didn’t mama ever teach you guys that two wrongs don’t make a right? I mean, it’s not like I’m horrified by the conduct of these Britons, just kinda dissapointed. The whole situation, both sides included, just seems more and more tacky the more I read about it.

Besides, if you really wanna humiliate the guy, this isn’t the best tactic. Just ignore him. Praising him will inflate his ego, and throwing shit at him will just make him feel persecuted, and there’s arguably no better way to inflate a man’s ego than to let him think he may have some sort of moral high ground, even if only comparatively speaking. But if he’s as much of an attention whore as so many here seem to think, the worst thing you could is just let it flop, slowly, and unremarkably. But, once again, MHO.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough earlier, but I’m really, really not trying to defend this guy. And I don’t expect much of anything, from anybody. I’m just surprised by the lack of civility and nigh overwhelming level of vitriol displayed by some people here.

I guess this is the part I don’t understand. I don’t see this stunt as being very meritable, but neither do I see the point to climbing a mountain or walking a really, really, really long way. I mean, in the end, what’s the point in any of these stunts? Except of course to be able to say: “Hey, lookit what I can do!” In which case, I can hardly blame these stunters (my band name!), but I find it equally difficult to give half a shit.

BTW, can any of you think of someone who’s dedicated their entire lives to a skill, but wasn’t a self-aggrandizing, socially incompetent, major/minor dick?

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I think I should further clarify that I don’t feel there’s anything particularly serious, or even that objectionable. I guess it’s just the attitude I’m seeing here, or perceiving here, that bothers me.

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I think it’s all great. From the creative (like the helicopter) to the crude (like hucking eggs at the guy and banging drums.) In fact, to show my appreciation, the next time I find myself in London, I will supply beers at my own expense to every Doper who hits Blain’s box with an object. One beer for every egg and two beers for each biscuit. Make me proud, mates.

Haj

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bring plenty of money with you Haj. clip after clip of jammy dodgers can be quite expensive, especially when im going to make his box look that car at the end of Bonnie & Clyde.

(but with biscuits, rather than bullets)

i still dont think youre getting it, Weirdwithwords. your comebacks fine, but as said before, theres a great deal of us taking the piss here. irony, son, irony. ive been to see Blaine, and my indifference was astounding. you think its a dumb stunt as well, as it serves no worthwhile purpose but to make Blaine some money and try and boost his standing in this country, but as jjimm quite rightly pointed out, his pretentious wank statements trying to elevate it to some spiritual event hold no water with a massive amount of british people. if he was doing it for charity, fair play to him, but its not even anywhere near the world record, as detailed before. his people are desperately trying to make it seem so but the guinness book of world records are having none of it.
watch the south park when hes hypnotized most of the world and Jesus + the superfriends have to save the world, or even better, Bo Selecta! where Avid Merrions doing his unique impression of his iceblock stunt in Trafalgar square. i can only do so much with a biscuit cannon on a message board, but that guy hits the nail on the head.
so while hes still in his fishtank, im going to have fun with him.

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You want more Blaine wank? I gots yer Blaine wank here. (Remember that this sort of toss was on our TV sets for weeks prior to him entering the box (fnarr). It was the equivalent of someone standing on the table in a pub and shouting “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!”)

$7.5 million nothing to do with it, Davey boy?

Puke.

The only excuse for this one is that the question was wank too. But still. “Truths” me arse.

Oh dear. This makes me queasy.

That’s the final straw. Biscuits away!

320

Like David Blain’s jockstrap, I expect.