Trickless Magician To Baffle Gotham Again

Trickless magician David Blaine will hang upside down over Central Park's Wollman Rick for three days next week.

At 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 22, he'll be hoisted to a cable 60 feet above the ground, which will become his perch for three days and two nights. He'll clamp on with electromagnetic boots but won't have a safety net, airbag or harness. He won't eat and will urinate through a catheter. He can't sleep because he needs to constantly move his legs to keep blood flowing. Doctors will check on him every few hours. A cherry-picker will lift visitors to his level, and the curious can gawk from the rink's terrace. ABC will air a live show during the last two hours of the act - 9 to 11 p.m. on Sept. 24 - which ends with Blaine dropping to the ground. He hasn't worked out the details, but his publicist swears it will be "heart-stopping and death-defying." Blaine - who was voted the "biggest loser" of 2003 by the BBC after he spent 44 days in a glass box over the Thames - said he knows some people root for him to fail.

Somehow I always run into Blaine's dumbass stunts. I walked over his face when he was buried in ice in front of Virgin Records in Times Square, I joined in with Bryant Park lunchers urging him to fall off that 50-foot pole, and I think I was with the Farmboyz when I flipped him off as he was submerged in a water globe in front of Lincoln Center. How does this guy make money off these stunts?