Has anybody considered setting up strobe lights to step up the night time Blaine Blitz?
Lots of little ones scattered all around so he wouldn’t be able to avoid at least one getting into his field of vision. Maybe combined with the portable PA system suggestion I made earlier playing a recording of a human heartbeat and the soundtrack to the William Friedkin film Sorcerer.
See, this is why they allow us 'Merkins to have guns. Otherwise, we’d be spending our days building ancient war weapons and use them to rob one another and generally hurl cars at things we dislike.
You may think I’m prissy but I don’t really approve of throwing things at him for several reasons:
it’s rude
it’s immature
he’s an internationally acclaimed magician doing a free trick. If you don’t like it then just ignore him and allow those of us who admire it to enjoy the show
he’s a visitor to these shores, he should be treated with respect and civility
he’s up there doing an interesting thing; you (as an egg-thrower) are not doing an interesting thing. I’m interested in Blaine not you. Shut the fuck up already.
Assuming it’s a feat of endurance rather than a trick then he probably needs to concentrate his mind totally on the job at hand. Distracting him may mean he doesn’t last the 44 days. If he doesn’t last the 44 days then it means the trick has failed. Congratulations, you ruined the trick. You feel good now? You feel somehow “vindicated”?
you should never throw things at people in any situation. This is just a general rule of civilisation.
people who throw things remind me of people who talk in cinemas when the film is on. I want to listen to the film not to some jerkwad sat behind me.
whilst it all seems like a big joke to you, remember the guy has been in that box for a week now without eating anything. He’s probably feeling pretty frail and dizzy. It’s hard enough just doing the feat without having to ignore dickheads throwing things at him as well.
it’s rude.
I went to see him last weekend and I have to say I think it’s an interesting stunt for a few reasons. I agree with everything Scylla said.
As to whether it’s a trick or a genuine feat, I dunno. There didn’t appear to be any secret compartments in the box although it looked like the floor wasn’t transparent like the rest of the box, although he’s got a blanket laid out so it may have been that. Either way you can’t see him through the bottom of the box.
Also he had pinned a blanket up against one wall of the box to block the sun. The day I went it was a pretty hot day so I can imagine it got pretty hot in that plastic box. The other thing to remember is that the nights are starting to get quite cold now. In October the nights may start to get really cold. If he’s only got one blanket, he’s going to suffer.
The reason I like the trick is because I think it’s such a weird long-term trick. At the start everybody was quite light hearted about it but now he’s been there a week and still hasn’t eaten. Soon it will be two weeks, then three weeks, then four, then five and so on.
The longer it goes on the more powerful it will become.
These arguments about there being starving people in the world are just silly. So what?
I cannot understand why people whinge about it. David Blaine, one of the most famous magicians in the world, chooses London to do a stunt. And it’s a long term stunt. He’s there now as we speak, lying in that box and he’s gonna be there for weeks to come. You wanna see David Blaine do a trick? Just pop down to Tower Bridge.
How often do you get a chance to see David Blaine do a real live trick?
If you don’t like it for some reason then just ignore him. But don’t go down there just to throw things at him.
Dan:
I’m guessing you might need some further convincing about the number guessing trick, and besides, I like talking about magic.
The way I would do the trick you described is with the “one ahead” gimmick, which is a pretty basic mentalist trick. I’ll give this one away, because you can find it in any magic book.
To do the trick requires an accomplice.
Let’s say you have five people. They are going to choose a secret number between 1 and 50 and you are going to astound them by guessing all their numbers.
So they don’t cheat you make them stand in a circle and write their numbers down, carefully fold them and put them in a hat with their initials on the outside.
The reason you need an accomplice in place is because you have to “know” what the first number is going to be.
Let’s say your accomplice has agreed to pick the number “25.”
You take the carefully folded paper out of the hat, squeeze it and look at your accomplice. You say "My superpowers say that your number is “25.”
He says “golly gee, that’s right!”
You open the paper to confirm it, and say “Yup, 25.”
Except, you didn’t pick the accomplice’s paper from the hat, you picked the next person’s in line! In open and plain sight, you now know what the next person’s number is.
You work on down the line, staying “one ahead” and as long as you don’t make it seem unnatural that you’re looking at the paper to confirm the number, nobody ever suspects it.
The amazingly inept Scylla uses this trick all the time.
The highly astute among you will realize that there is no reason you have to use numbers.
I like to do it at restaurants with my wife as the accomplice. My signal to her, is that I will look at the menu and say “the chicken looks good.” This signal means that she is supposed to order as her entree the item below whatever item I have named (or above) if it’s the last in sequence.
A few minutes later, I then make a challenge. I tell the people at the table that I love them dearly, and that I know them better than they know themselves. To prove it, I propose to guess what they will order as entrees.
They will say “Oh no Scylla, you couldn’t possibly do that.”
If I am feeling evil I say “I will put my money where my mouth is. If I guess everybody correctly you must all split the cost of my wife and I’s meal. If I guess even one incorrectly than all your dinners are on me. Isn’t that fair odds?”
At this moment, they will decide that I am a sucker and take the bait.
Now, there is a moral issue at stake here. I am stealing a free meal. If they are good sports about it when they lose, I tell them it was really just a dirty little magic trick and they really don’t owe me a dinner.
If they still want to buy my dinner, I let them in on the secret so they can earn back a free dinner.
There are all kinds of other methods, but I suspect blaine was using the “one ahead.”
It is very effective with just a little practice. Unlike most magic tricks this one works better the more skeptical the group is. You make a big deal about keeping everything honest by writing things down secretly and folding them up, and putting them in a hat.
Now you too, can earn a free dinner by preying on your friends!
Here’s a good one. Take an old avocado and carefully remove the seed. It’s heavy and will throw well. the skin will protect the avocado mush inside which, on impact, will explode in a lovely green mess sure to please.
It shoud also stick pretty good.
Not at all; I would love to have all of the attention whores locked up in boxes.
hold on here. when did i ever say i was going to throw things at him? throwing is for peasants. read my posts JoJo. we are firing biscuits at his box. i dont talk in cinemas. and how is it magic? i could do this trick in all seriousness, except i wont get paid, what $7million in TV rights? if they had put a camera in the IRA prisoners on hunger strikes cells, would you have found that interesting and magical?
if he didnt want attention, dont sit in a box by one of londons greatest landmarks for fucks sake. you reckon he didnt count on people using him for target practice? pissed up suits coming out of the city and local + well, national idiots will think its their birthday, especially when the fireworks go on sale. it’ll keep him on his toes and may offset the hunger pangs.
and i’m rude? i’m not the one spoiling pauls view of Tower bridge with his big ass crane. i’m actually quite ambivalent to Blaine. he doesnt offend me, but put anyone in a box hanging from a crane by a bridge and people will open fire. thats your first rule of civilisation
all other points noted re: ammunition. the tuna melt deserves inclusion. i thoroughly hate the stuff tooGuin
i also thought it would be quite good to sample the end of Seven (the film) where Brad Pitts going “ahh, whats in the box?”. play it over and over again to a tune of air raid sirens, metal clangs, boings, star trek communicator noises and a 40bpm beat.
rude? no
immature? its point of pride
**Jojo ** - Bawdy defense but don’t agree. It’s a bloke sitting in a transparent box for 44 days so he can make a fortune while trying to tell us its something it’s plainly not.
He deserves a bit of stick for thinking us this incredulous and naive, and also for using (not in a nice way) London.
He’s taking the piss out of us, imho.
Blaine has given up his controversial stunt. He was told that 44 days doing nothing in a box is not going to break the record which is currently held by Emile Heskey at 4 years.
I can almost hear the sound of a thousand baffled eyebrows raising from here.
This is the funniest SDMB thread since “Gotcha ya”*. Well done.
Where the hell have you been hiding, paul? We could have done with the weapon of mass discrumbtion at the last Londope.
pan
*or at least it was until Twistyfat’s pun. Shame on you.
Thats what Garibaldi had.
Actually, I’d be amused if he’s only got a 30-day visa.
Christ alive, kabbes, do you want to ge me sacked?
Although, if I did get the sack, I could fill it with biscuits…er…ammo for this here mission and send it over to paulbeserker, our senior officer in the field, or rather on the river.
Serious question…
whats the odds of Blaine going into a coma in the box and awakening 3 days later?
Yes, but he was always a bit fruity.
Goddammit, the hamsters ate my post from earlier this morning!
Scylla, I know about the one-ahead trick; indeed, not only have I used it on people, but I’ve used knowledge of it to thwart the trick played on me. A little bit of sleight-of-hand on my part completely freaked out the would-be psychic: when he started opening the slips of paper to confirm his predictions, he discovered they’d all mysteriously gone blank. Oh, how I was amused!
And had you tried the dinner trick on me, I imagine I could’ve used a similar trick to get a free dinner ;). All it’d take is writing down for my dinner choice, “Guess everyone else’s choice first, but you’ll have to guess mine separately, at the end.”
The trick I saw Blaine do consisted of asking one person (a member of a couple) to think of a number; once they confirmed they had one in mind, he made a few descriptions of the number (“it’s at the high end of the range…it’s odd…it’s got a seven in it…thirty seven?”) and then as they were being amazed at his guessing, he nodded at a passing car with a large “37” painted on its side. Something along those lines – but definitely he only asked one person for a number, and they didn’t tell the number to anyone else (or write it down), and he didn’t ask them for any clues.
My conclusion was that he forced the number choice somehow, or else he knew which number was likeliest to get chosen. Assuming his mark wasn’t an accomplice, I couldn’t think of a way for him to ensure 100% success on the trick. Maybe I’m missing something obvious. But I ended up figuring that he was relying on misdirection: he was relying on my belief that the camera was a documenter, not itself an accomplice.
Daniel
i know, i only started looking at the dopefest threads after it was too late.
we’re off to the ship on the 21st sept. make it into one. i’ll bring the cannon.
see wendell wagners “dopefest in UK 13 - 26 sept” thread in MPSIMS from a week or so ago.
in fact even better, look for me on london tonight on saturday night. the ginger snap/tuna melt apocalypse im gonna bring down on Blaines box should entitle me to a bit of infamy. or my own little box in prison. or both.
i see no reason why i shouldnt ruin this ‘illusionists’ shit. i laughed when he was on C4 this morning too. he was jumping up and down and banged his head on the roof.
Hooray! No more baseball!