Magic Tricks Astound in ‘Frozen in Time’

If a hip, slender guy with a goatee walks up to you on the street one day and says, “Let me ask you a question,” prepare to be amazed.

In all likelihood, that fellow would be David Blaine, the splendid street magician who, in the waning moments of tonight’s mind-blowing ABC special Frozen in Time,” expects to emerge from a block of ice after 61 hours.

Yes, a block of ice.

The network’s advance tape does not include that live segment (to be seen here on tape-delay), but the hour nevertheless is packed with other jaw-dropping bits from Blaine’s remarkable repertoire, the kind that prompts one astonished witness to proclaim, “Wowzee, wowzee, wow!”

In one of the show’s early segments, Blaine pulls off a nifty card trick involving a knife, a basketball and some New York Knick players who can’t believe the result.

Afterward, he rubs the printed name off the lower right-hand corner of a dollar bill, somehow replacing it with the name of a man on the street. Said man cannot believe the result.

Later, he asks a woman for her engraved wedding ring, then promptly loses it on the street, only to find it elsewhere (we won’t spoil the segment by saying where). Naturally, the woman cannot believe. . . . Well, you get the idea.

Other slick sleight-of-hand feats are tied to a winning lottery ticket, a woman’s facial image and a swallowed diamond ring, the latter literally being as eye-opening and in your face as magic gets.

In other segments, Blaine gears up for the main event, talking with his doctor about the perils of being immobile in a giant ice cube for more than two days (“This is not just hard. It’s scary,” says the concerned physician).

Half of the amusement is watching the incredulous “How did he do that?” reactions of assorted onlookers. As far as you can tell, these stunts are not played out with any tricky editing. A bit of misdirection, perhaps. In any case, it’s all Blaine, and it’s truly something to see, as were his two previous specials, the first of which dealt with self-levitation.

Wowzee, wowzee, wow.

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* “David Blaine: Frozen in Time” can be seen tonight at 10 on ABC. The network has rated it TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, with an advisory for coarse language).