DAVID BLAINE

David Blaine was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish mother and Puerto Rican father[citation needed]. His mother Patrice Maureen White (1946–1995) was a school teacher living in New York, and his father William Perez is a Vietnam veteran. He was raised by his single mother. He attended many different schools in Brooklyn. At the age of 10, David Blaine's mother married John Bukalo and they moved to New Jersey. He moved to Little Falls, New Jersey, where he attended Passaic Valley Regional High School.[3] He has a half-brother named Michael James Bukalo.

On May 19, 1997, Blaine's first television special, David Blaine: Street Magic, introduced his unique brand of street magic to the world when it aired on the ABC network. With its strong focus on spectators' reactions and showmanship, Street Magic revolutionized the way magic is performed and portrayed on television. According to The New York Daily News, “Blaine can lay claim to his own brand of wizardry. The magic he offers in tonight’s show operates on an uncommonly personal level.”

In Street Magic, Blaine is shown traveling across the country, entertaining unsuspecting pedestrians in New York City, Atlantic City, Dallas, San Francisco, Compton, and the Mojave Desert only recorded by a small crew with handheld cameras. Many magicians respect Blaine's choice of material and give him credit for creating an image of the contemporary magician distinct from other magicians in recent television history. Jon Racherbaumer commented, "Make no mistake about it, the focus of this show, boys and girls, is not Blaine. It is really about theatrical proxemics; about the show-within-a-show and the spontaneous, visceral reactions of people being astonished."

On April 5, 1999, Blaine was entombed in an underground plastic box underneath a 3-ton water-filled tank for seven days across from Trump Place on 68th St. and Riverside Drive. The New York Daily News' Virginia Breen wrote, "Developer Donald Trump, who donated use of the space, tossed a shovelful of gravel into the grave in mock solemnity." According to CNN, "Blaine's only communication to the outside world was by a hand buzzer, which could have alerted an around-the-clock emergency crew standing by." BBC News reported that the cramped plastic coffin offered six inches (152 mm) of headroom and two inches on each side. During the seven days of the endurance stunt, Blaine ate nothing and drank only two to three tablespoons of water a day. An estimated 75,000 people visited the site, including Marie Blood, Houdini's niece, who said, "My uncle did some amazing things, but he could not have done this." On the final day of the stunt, April 12, hundreds of news teams were stationed at the site for the coffin-opening ceremony. A team of construction workers removed a portion of the 75 square feet (7.0 m²) of gravel surrounding the six-foot deep coffin before a crane lifted the 3-ton water tank. Blaine emerged from his underground coffin and told the crowd "I saw something very prophetic ... a vision of every race, every religion, every age group banding together, and that made all this worthwhile." Reiterating Marie Blood's remarks, BBC News stated,"The 26-year-old magician has outdone his hero, Harry Houdini, who had planned a similar feat but died in 1926 before he could perform it."

On November 27, 2000, Blaine began a stunt called "Frozen in Time", which was covered on a TV special. Blaine stood encased in a massive block of ice located in Times Square, New York. He was lightly dressed and seen to be shivering even before the blocks of ice were sealed around him. A tube supplied him with air and water while his urine was removed with another tube. He was encased in the box of ice for 63 hours, 42 minutes and 15 seconds before being removed with chain saws. The ice was transparent and resting on an elevated platform to show that he was actually inside the ice the entire time. CNN confirmed that "thousands of people braved the pouring rain Wednesday night to catch a glimpse of Blaine as workers cut away at the ice." He was removed from the ice in an obviously dazed and disoriented state, wrapped in blankets and taken to the hospital immediately because doctors feared he might be going into shock. The New York Times reported, "The magician who emerged from the increasingly unstable ice box seemed a shadow of the confident, robust, shirtless fellow who entered two days before." Blaine said in the documentary follow-up to this feat that it took "a month" before he was able to walk again and that he had no plans to ever again attempt a stunt of this difficulty.

On May 1, 2006, Blaine was submerged in an 8 feet (2.4 m) diameter, water-filled sphere (isotonic saline, 0.9% salt) in front of the Lincoln Center in New York City for a planned seven days and seven nights, using tubes for air and nutrition. During the stunt, doctors witnessed skin breakdown at the hands and feet, and liver failure. The New York Times' Kenneth Silverman wrote "his feat of endurance brought a diverse crowd of thousands of New Yorkers together, renewing for a while the city's waning spirit of democratic community."

He concluded this event by attempting to hold his breath underwater to break the then current world record of 8 minutes, 58 seconds held by Tom Seitas for Static Apnea -holding one's breath without the aid of breathing oxygen beforehand, although Blaine's attempt would not have qualified as static apnea under AIDA International rules. Blaine also tried to free himself from handcuffs and chains put on him upon coming out after the week in the sphere. He seemed to have trouble escaping from the last of the handcuffs. Around the 7 minute mark, he showed some signs of distress. He was pulled up and out of the water by his support divers after 7 minutes and 8 seconds underwater- one minute and fifty seconds short of his goal.

Blaine did claim to have succeeded in setting a record for being fully submerged in water for more than seven days straight (177 hours), and has since broken the record for holding one's breath using oxygen (as permitted by the Guinness book of records) - see below.

Blaine underwent multiple short hospital visits after the stunt ended and has entered an agreement with doctors from Yale University to monitor him in order to study the human physiological reaction to prolonged submersion.

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