David Blaine is letting it go to his head. Not the fame - the blood.
The magician and endurance stuntman is hanging upside down from a bar by his gravity boots at a private gym in the Flatiron.
He's trying to keep his T-shirt tucked in, deciding whether he looks better with his shades on, and discussing the hazards of pulmonary edema.
It's all part of the preparation for his newest stunt - spending about 60 hours suspended like a bat from a cable over Wollman Rink in Central Park.
"This is a lot more difficult than it looks," Blaine, 35, told the Daily News while training last week for "Dive of Death."
Blaine said he came up with the idea a month ago, drawing inspiration from a famous picture of his hero, Harry Houdini, hanging upside down in a straitjacket.
"I was always obsessed with Houdini," he said. "[But] I never wanted to copy anybody."
The Brooklyn-born illusionist decided to turn Houdini's escape feat into an endurance test and began training for three days of head-first hanging out.
That has mostly involved losing some weight, doing upside down pullups and situps, and just dangling by his feet. Eight hours is the longest he's gone.
At 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 22, he'll be hoisted to a cable 60 feet above the ground, which will become his perch for three days and two nights.
He'll clamp on with electromagnetic boots but won't have a safety net, airbag or harness.
He won't eat and will urinate through a catheter. He can't sleep because he needs to constantly move his legs to keep blood flowing.
Doctors will check on him every few hours. A cherry-picker will lift visitors to his level, and the curious can gawk from the rink's terrace.
ABC will air a live show during the last two hours of the act - 9 to 11 p.m. on Sept. 24 - which ends with Blaine dropping to the ground.
He hasn't worked out the details, but his publicist swears it will be "heart-stopping and death-defying."
Blaine - who was voted the "biggest loser" of 2003 by the BBC after he spent 44 days in a glass box over the Thames - said he knows some people root for him to fail.
That doesn't bother him as much as the folks who think he's a fake.
"I'm more upset when people think it's an elaborate hologram," he said. "I just want people to show up and help me get through it."