On Tuesday night, after I got done at my desk, I walked a couple of blocks down to the ABC building in Times Square to see David Blaine frozen in a block of ice. There was a long line, composed of Viacom workers from across the street, theatergoers who had just gotten out of their shows, and German tourists. The questions everyone was asking each other in line were “how is he getting paid for this?” and “he’s wearing a sweater, how cold can he be?”

Seeing him in person, though, was pretty impressive. The ice was much thicker than it appeared to be on the webcam; twelve or fourteen inches.

New Yorkers appear to be united in heaping calumny on the event, though. I took a cab home from Times Square, and the taxi driver, Abdul Hakim, was ranting about it the whole way. “He is cold, so what? He is wearing a sweater. Now, if he were dead for three days, and came back out of the ice, then his body would be not human, you know? So that would be something.”

Yeah, that would be something!