David Blaine entertains Sandy survivors

MANILA, Philippines – Magic tricks can help people forget their misery even for just a while.

So goes a report by Young Hollywood on illusionist David Blaine, whom the website says “did his bit to ease the misery of superstorm Sandy (sic) by performing card tricks for hungry residents queuing for food in New York.”

According to the report, Blaine was on his motorbike in Lower Manhattan on October 29 when he noticed residents lined up at the Old Homestead Steakhouse.

The line was “snaking around the block,” and Blaine found out that the staff of the restaurant were serving food during the blackout.

So Blaine asked for a deck of cards and entertained the 800 people who were waiting in line. He stayed with them for 90 minutes.

Blaine is known the world over for his high-profile endurance stunts, among them:

• In 1999, he was buried alive under Trump Place in New York (NY) for 7 days
• In 2000, he was encased in a block of ice at Times Square in NY for over 63 hours
• In 2002, he stood harness-free on top of a 100-m pillar that was 22 inches wide in the middle of Bryant Park in NY for 35 hours
• In 2003, he stayed in a plexiglass box suspended 9 meters in the air near the River Thames in London for 44 days
• In 2006, he was submerged in a water-filled sphere in front of the Lincoln Center in NY for a planned 7 days and 7 nights
• In the same year, he escaped from shackles while inside a rotating gyroscope that was hanging above an empty lot in Manhattan

On October 5, 2012, Blaine performed a stunt dubbed “Electrified: One Million Volts Always On.”

During the stunt, he wore a chainmail Faraday suit that conducted one million volts of electricity from 7 Tesla coils.

He was standing on top of a 22-ft pillar at Pier One in NY the whole time. The stunt lasted for 72 hours.

Watch the finale of ‘Electrified’ here:

Blaine, dubbed “Wizard of Grunge” by Time magazine, travels around the US to perform magic tricks for children in hospital wards.

He has a one-year-old daughter with fiancee Alizee Guinochet. – Rappler.com