In "Future Man: Tree or Mammal?" Robert Benchley writes that the top survival rate in the brutal future (like the Terminator movies, except just with regular cars and bright-color-phobic gunmen) will go to those who simply stay in. "This wise man stays right in his room and reads magazines all day, with an occasional look at the clock to see how late he would have been if he had kept that luncheon appointment. He has his meals brought in to him, and, when it is bedtime, he sends for a lot of friends and they play backgammon." Thus endorsed over Richard's Burrito (a theory of time travel advanced by Richard Norvick, of Peggy Sue Got Married; the Jim Carrey character says of him scorchingly, "He's a nice guy. He's writing a book"), I plan to do just that until further notice.

Today (this being Brooklyn, land of Walt Whitman, Jonathan Lethem, and second-class citizenship as far as the circulation dept. is concerned) will bring a new issue, of course, but I will also review Shooting New York: A Decade of Photography at The New Yorker, which you may remember as the lissome insert with the fab Richard McGuire cover slipped into one of the 2004 numbers of the magazine. Anyway, one of those weird Queen Mary 2 series takes up a lot of it, ad or no ad. It's essentially a pictorial, if you get my meaning, just with (horrible, purple) clothes. But more about that later. For now, I'll leave you with this question, from its final (symbolic-cigarette-lighting) page: "Will you ring the Pillow Concierge for one of nine fluffy choices?" Can't you just feel the copywriter writhing? It's a question for Donald Antrim, it's a question for David Foster Wallace, it's a question for the Pillow Concierge (he hopes not), it's a question for the Princess and the Pea, and it's a question for us. It's good to know there are nine fluffy choices—nine!—and friends and backgammon, and the answer is yes.

Categories: Benchley, Movies, NYer, Inserts