Since Monday, the man who excels at looking death in the eye and reaping the P.R. benefits has been hanging upside down in New York's Central Park.

David Blaine's much-documented turn as a sleepy vampire bat will come to an end tonight, when he hits 60 hours defying gravity and makes a "dive of death" toward the ground. Naturally, ABC will be there to capture the entire drama on camera.

Judging by the look of things on the Web, the alphabet network might have a hit on its hands. Over the past seven days, lookups of Blaine's name have surged nearly 1,400%, landing the spectacle-maker among our top movers of the week.

Yesterday, queries like "david blaine upside down" and "david blaine live" spiked, and demands for the showman's secrets, his levitation abilities, and his conjuring tricks heaved upwards. The only query really missing from the bunch is: "david blaine—why?"

But ours is not the place to question, only to marvel. And marvel we do, at how adept this magician-turned-stuntman has become at sparking buzz

Slackers downloading. Michael Moore, filmmaker, activist, and rotund rabble-rouser of the left, is offering his latest undertaking, "slacker uprising" (+554%) for free, online. He tells the New York Times that this one is for the fans. The documentary that follows Moore on a campus tour stumping for John Kerry in 2004, is a rallying cry to get out and vote, a mere month and a half out from Election Day.

And speaking of elections... Sarah Palin was at the U.N. yesterday for some photo ops with world leaders and a meet-and-greet with the granddaddy of Republican foreign policy, Henry Kissinger. Columnist Maureen Dowd didn't waste a moment in skewering the scene, causing searches to jump on her reference to "jill st. john" (+334%). Dowd opined that Kissinger, who once chased the "Diamonds Are Forever" actress while running the world, was now relegated to "his hour briefing of a 44-year-old Wasilla hockey mom who may end up running the world." We've come a long way, baby.

Holy video games, Batman! There's a new game for fans of the superhero, causing a 183% surge in searches for "lego batman review." Gamers want to see what others are saying about the latest game featuring the Caped Crusader. Spoiler alert: Reviewers seem pleased with this one.

I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill, and I sit here on Capitol Hill.

If those words have triggered an incessant yet pleasurable hum in your brain, you belong to a generation exposed to Atari video games, Shaun Cassidy, jelly sneakers (when they appeared the first time around), and "Schoolhouse Rock."

Musical cartoon shorts or "educational interstitials," the '70s-era "Schoolhouse Rock" comprised enlightened breaks between Scooby Doo adventures and Bugs Bunny reruns, and put topics like multiplication, grammar, and history to a jazzy uptempo or moody folk beat. Culling from that vast repertoire, Disney (which now owns the cartoons) has repackaged an election special DVD this week, to help a new generation get in tune during a presidential year and induce random lyrical outbreaks among older folks.

Oh, we were suffering until suffrage.
Not a woman here could vote no matter what age,
until the 19th Amendment struck down that restrictive rule.
Oh yeah!

As with all seemingly good acts, ABC's motives to air "Schoolhouse" weren't entirely pure: Consumer activists rebelled against the inordinate advertising time on Saturday mornings targeting kids, and the FCC decreed children's programming had to have an educational component (a ruling lifted during the Reagan years).

Oh, elbow room, elbow room,
Got to, got to get us some elbow room.
It's the west or bust, in God we trust,
there's a new land out there...

After a long absence, rock versions of the songs were released, Disney bought the franchise, and attempts at a musical have been made. While the math and grammar lessons still hold up, Time magazine's TV blog Tuned In took Tuesday's DVD release to muse about these segments as a post-Watergate "kind of socio-political time capsule," and how they couldn't perhaps be made today.

We're gonna elect a president! (No more kings)
He's gonna do what the people want! (No more kings)
We're gonna run things our way! (No more kings)
Nobody's gonna tell us what to do!

All the more reason to brainwash a new generation, although serious reviews suggest getting the comprehensive 30th Anniversary edition, released in 2002. After all, in any good election year, you also got to know some choice interjections.

Hallelujah. Yea.