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Hey, Criss: Escape This, Then We'll Talk

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 27, 2008

Big deal.

The plan is this: Wednesday night, on cable television broadcast around the world, someone by the name of Criss Angel is going to attempt to escape an abandoned Clearwater Beach hotel before it blows up.

He says he will be handcuffed with cuffs belonging to the Clearwater Police Department and situated on the seventh floor of the old Spyglass Resort.

Angel says he will get out of the cuffs then work his way through a series of locked doors, make his way up three flights of stairs to the roof of the hotel and grab onto a 30-foot rope ladder from a waiting helicopter.

The copter then will climb 1,000 feet with Angel hanging on.

This will all happen within a three-and-a-half-minute period, at the end of which the hotel is supposed to implode, with 466 sticks of dynamite bringing 4,500 tons of cement down in seconds and Angel waving from the ladder where he has made his daring escape with seconds to spare. The show starts at 10 p.m. on the A&E network

Usually I love these live daredevil shows, like when Evel Knievel attempted to blast himself over the Snake River Canyon. But to tell you the truth, getting out of handcuffs and escaping a building before it blows up in less than four minutes is pretty lame.

A Truly Impossible Escape

For some real thrills, I'd like to see him do some of the same escape tricks all of us are forced to pull off on a daily basis.

I mean, I'd love to see him pull off the "kickoff escape." That's the one where you are in Publix to pick up some fried chicken and potato salad at the deli counter and it's 20 minutes before kickoff for the Bulls or the Gators on a Saturday afternoon. Suddenly you run into someone from church who wants to tell you about the building committee meeting you missed.

You're trapped. You have already missed the meeting and now you have to nod and look interested and somehow make it to the checkout stand and home before kickoff. Try doing that in less than four minutes.

How about the "Spanish bean soup arrival?" That's the one where you are in a Tampa Spanish restaurant and just as your bean soup order arrives, your neighbor who just had lunch with some guy running for city council stops by your table to introduce the guy you wouldn't have voted for in the first place.

As he talks, you can see the steam disappearing as the bean soup you wanted to dip your formerly hot Cuban bread into gets cold. You can't get away because he has your hand in his grip and is asking you for your address just in case you want to send in a contribution.

Or maybe you're sitting on your front porch on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and your copy of Mother Trib and you don't see the two young people with their clipboards coming before it's too late. They want you to give them a contribution so they can continue the war against global warming or saving the manatees. You want to help, but it's a Saturday morning and getting rid of them in less than four minutes is tougher than escaping a building about to implode.

Where's My Helicopter?

I suppose I'll watch the show this week. I just won't be as impressed as I would be if Angel were to answer his doorbell on a Saturday morning and get rid of the salesman/evangelist/politician without the aid of a helicopter coming to his rescue.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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