Blaine ends London vigil

LONDON -- David Blaine is getting ready to leave his box.\nThe American magician is approaching Sunday's end to a 44-day fasting stunt in a dangling plastic case.\nThe 30-year-old, who previously has been buried alive and encased in a block of ice, says the feat is both the hardest and "the most beautiful" thing he's done.\nIt has undeniably captured the imagination of Britons. Over the past six weeks, onlookers have reacted with a pungent mix of support and ridicule, while commentators puzzled over whether the stunt offered tasteless spectacle or spiritual insight.\nBrian Keenan, who was held hostage in Lebanon for 4 1/2 years, wrote in The Guardian newspaper that people were "drawn to this half-naked man hoisted in the heavens. We eat our hamburgers and ice cream in part wonder, part homage, part adoration."\nThe same paper's theater critic, Michael Billington, judged that "this strange public confinement ... acquires something of the unresolved ambiguity of art." But in The Independent, columnist Terence Blacker condemned the "creepy" Blaine as part of a disturbing trend toward entertainment that "tweaked the public's sadistic impulse."\nBlaine brought out a streak of malice in some. In the days after his 7-foot-by-7-foot-by-3-foot plexiglass box was hoisted 40 feet above the River Thames' south bank on Sept. 5, the illusionist endured the sound of drums and foghorns, the smell of sizzling burgers and the sight of hecklers' bare breasts and buttocks.\nOne man was arrested for firing paint-filled balloons at Blaine. Another was fined for trying to damage the water supply to the box, which reportedly contains only a quilt, a pillow, a journal, a change of clothes and a photo of the magician's mother.