Photo courtesy The Guardian

Plenty of British magic fans flocked to their TVs over the weekend to catch a master mentalist and a street magic legend.

The Guardian reports that the first episode of Derren Brown’s “The Events,” which included an explanation of a lottery prediction, claimed a 20 percent share with 4.4 million viewers. The amount of viewers dominated other networks at that time slot. A show providing the explanation also

Channel 4, which aired the Brown special, also showed David Blaine’s “What is Magic?” and snared a 10 percent share for its time slot with 1.7 million viewers. Blaine’s show came in second place to BBC2′s “QI,” a rerun that snagged 11 percent, or about 2 million viewers. “What is Magic?” is basically “Dive of Death” without the Dive of Death — the finale was that sweet bullet catch.

Back to Brown: An explanation of the lottery effect didn’t go over very well with fans, apparently. The Guardian’s live blog got fairly cantankerous, actually.

In what surely won’t be the last such top-10 list, David Blaine’s “Dive of Death” made Fox News Entertainment’s list of the 10 worst TV moments, joining company such as Rosie Live, reality TV stars opening the Emmys and stars showing their secret talents. Ignoring Blaine’s explanation of how the stunt went wrong, the obvious physical difficulty and almost two hours of insane street magic (and two gut punches from Kimbo Slice), Fox packed a paragraph of VH-1-wannabe snark with a photo:

The dive itself, occurring live at the end of a two-hour telecast, was an anticlimactic flop at the end of what looked like the world’s least-bouncy bungee cord, after which Blaine was yanked off into the darkness, presumably so he could avoid network executives demanding their money back.

Hmm… A TV network publishing a list of the worst TV moments; yet only two out of 10 aired on Fox (Paula Abdul’s future prediction and “The Moment of Truth”). We’ll take their diss of Blaine with the typical grains of salt required of anything coming from Fox News.

K, I’m off my soapbox now.

Time to break out the bullets. No, not this. These:

• David Blaine’s latest stunt is officially legit, now that it has been immortalized in a gangsta rap song with the likes of President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. Clipse, in a special release for Play Cloths (link definitely not safe for work because of offensive lyrics), raps the following in their song “Intro”: It’s the hood’s Obama shoveling McCain / Out the project windows, the drama’s insane / The rap game’s upside-down like David Blaine / You fans is Times Square for following them lanes.
• So, you might have heard some rumors that Believe, Criss Angel’s collaboration with Cirque du Soleil, is headed for early closure because critics hate it and Angel isn’t happy with it. As usual, iTricks sets us straight and breaks the news of what’s really going on: The show will break throughout most of January so Angel can take a vacation. But the show will also undergo a major revamping in that time.
• Magic Newswire reports that Brian Brushwood’s Scam School, a 37-part dissertation in deceit, was selected as one of iTunes best podcasts of 2008. Dodd Vickers also features a podcast interview with Brushwood.

For those who wonder why David Blaine got away from street magic and concentrated so much on stunts (never mind how that was completely disproven by “David Blaine: Dive of Death”), the answer is in the skies.

Astrologer Julie Rimmer, who blogs astrological at The Twelve Gates, read a chart for the Mysterious Stranger and found that he is deeply driven to overcome challenges. She even compared Blaine to Franz Reichelt, the unfortunately famous Austrian tailor. Maybe that should be the famously unfortunate tailor.

Mars trine Pluto in air can signify an ease in expressing his will-power through the mind. Also present in his chart is Uranus in Libra opposing Sun/Venus and Chiron. There is the Promethean spirit here, Mars in Aquarius can be brilliant but add Jupiter and the Promethean vision is expanded. When Uranian energy is strong in the chart there is of course the danger of being perceived the fool.

Rimmer has also done charts for Warren Buffet, Marilyn Monroe and Nick Adams. Based on her reading of Blaine’s stars, and if you believe in astrology, then the ridiculing of Blaine won’t stop, and the next stunt should be even more insane. We can’t wait.

Brad Christian, President and founder of Ellusionist.com, is featured in a newly-released podcast from Magic Newswire.

He speaks for 30 minutes about a recent misquote in a Page Six Magazine story, gives personal thoughts on David Blaine and the recent special, “David Blaine: Dive of Death”, and speaks about the beginnings of Ellusionist and magic on the Internet.

The podcast is featured here:

Brad Christian on Magic Newswire Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Earlier this week, Page Six published the report about David Blaine and his feelings about the flubbed ending. Reporter Rachel Syme talked to Blaine, some fans and members of the magic community and wrote a story that Jonathan Bayme, CEO of Theory 11, told iTricks “was not a fair assessment at all.”

Christian was quoted in the story as saying Blaine was considered “a bit of a joke” among certain groups of magicians. His quote was used to suggest the magic industry feels betrayed by Blaine and his attention to stunts instead of magic. However, he told Justin Robert Young, of iTricks, earlier this week that he was taken completely out of context.

Today, Christian spoke at length with Magic Newswire about the story behind the story of the story. He also talks about the history of Ellusionist and more about David Blaine’s career.