drowned alive...or not

did anybody watch the david blaine special on monday night? that boy was hooked up to a feeding tube and a catheter (in case he had to go #1), living in an 8-foot spherical aquarium for 177 hours. i'm pretty sure that is a new world record.

as a finale to his underwater endurance stunt, blaine also attempted to set a new record by holding his breath for nine minutes - the mark was set at 8 minutes and 58 seconds by germany's tom sietas. if you saw the special or read the news, you know blaine didn't quite reach his goal - two minutes short, actually. but seven minutes and eight seconds is still pretty impressive in my book. his time was a whole minute or so better than his trainer's record and his trainer was an expert free-diver from performance freediving. it's worth noting that there's only a small handful of people who can hold their breath for more than four minutes. let's also not forget that david was chained up, too, and had to free himself from those binds while simultaneously trying to break the record. towards the end of the seven minutes, blaine began to convulse underwater, at which point the rescue team went in and pulled him out. blaine's trainer said that if they had not, he would still be in the bottom of that sphere holding his breath.

while blaine's attempt fell short of the record, i still maintain that the whole stunt was very intriguing to watch, albeit a little too stretched out for dramatic effect and just *begging* for stu scott's jaw to be duct-taped shut. throughout the whole performance, though, i found myself glued to the television to see how it would pan out.

since his release from the hospital, blaine has already been quoted as saying that he wants to give it another shot, after he's in better shape and sans the week underwater prior to the attempt.

so maybe this is a little late for this, but while the event is still fresh in people's minds, i'd like to share this playlist that i created on monday night but just didn't have a chance to upload to the web until earlier this morning. enjoy, people.

DOWNLOAD: DrownedAlive.zip

david blaine: drowned alive...or not
01 badly drawn boy - magic in the air
02 spoon - 30 gallon tank
03 pinback - soaked
04 red house painters - bubble
05 idaho - wet work
06 belong - i'm too sleepy...shall we swim?
07 múm - sleep/swim
08 m83 - i guess i'm floating
09 two lone swordsmen - hope we never surface
10 boards of canada - aquarius
11 colleen - bubbles which on the water swim
12 colleen - summer water
13 pan*american - lights on water
14 the dead texan - the struggle
15 velour 100 - sky from underwater
16 my bloody valentine - lose my breath
17 adorable - breathless
18 british sea power - fear of drowning
19 the knife - you take my breath away
20 ellen allien & apparat - bubbles
21 namelessnumberheadman - going to breathe again
22 havergal - drowned men
23 pedro the lion - winners never quit
24 the smiths - i started something i couldn't finish
25 the walkmen - we've been had