And for David Blaine's next feat ...

DAVID BLAINE was dragged from his aquatic bubble on Monday, after spending a week submerged in saltwater and then capping that mind-boggling feat by attempting, unsuccessfully, to hold his breath for nine minutes.

Once out of the water, a weak and withered Blaine thanked his fans. ''I am humbled so much by the support of everyone from New York City and from all over the world,'' he said.

But behind that brave and gracious front, Blaine was apparently one shattered (and partly pickled) shell of saltwater-soaked showman. After his rescue, he was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, reportedly suffering from dehydration, peeling skin, and, one can't help but suspect, both a severe case of water in the ear and the dismaying condition that George Costanza termed ''shrinkage.''

The adventurer, whose previous deeds of derring-do included lying in a transparent coffin for a week, perching on a small platform atop a 100-foot pole for 35 hours, being encased in a block of ice for 61 hours, and fasting for 44 days while suspended in a plastic box in London, was crying Monday night, CNN quoted the head of his medical team as saying.

''He still feels today that he let people down,'' Dr. Murat Gunel said on Tuesday.

Let people down? Why, he lifted us up, brought us together, gave us all something to cheer about! Not since Fear Factor slipped off NBC's airwaves has America's pulse raced so quickly.

Yes, Blaine has had some detractors. Some nasty Londoners threw eggs at his Plexiglas prison during that ordeal, while one enterprising tormentor used a model helicopter to fly a hamburger by his clear enclosure. And it is true that when his rescue team sprang into action on Monday night, Blaine hadn't even managed to free himself from the chains that had been attached just before his breath-holding finale.

But think of all he had done!

Who among us hadn't longed to know what weight-loss plan he had used to drop 50 pounds in preparation for the stunt? Who hadn't spent the previous seven days wondering how the intrepid adventurer was faring, standing there in warm water, breathing through a tube? Who hadn't leapt from bed at alarm's first beep and hurried to the computer to check for the latest news of our New York City Neptune?

And who can imagine what thoughts went through Blaine's mind as the perilous moments ticked by?

Was he reliving his childhood?

Trying to remember his course schedule from his sophomore year in high school?

Attempting to recall the solution to that vexing riddle about a man lost on a tropical island populated with a tribe of habitual truth-tellers and another of inveterate liars, a man who has only a single question with which to deduce which jungle trail leads to the beach and rescue and which to a bog of quicksand?

Or did Blaine's mind race so during the long minutes - actually, make that days - that there was time aplenty to cram it all in?

We will only know when Blaine finally quits his heart-stopping adventures and pens his memoirs.

Unfortunately for us, that day likely lies some years in the future. For now, thwarted in this particular endeavor, Blaine is already hard at work concocting ever more imaginative spectacles to make it all up to us.

He is said to be mulling several options.

''If all the logistics can be worked out, next year he will sit in front of an oscillating fan for five days, with no protection save for a pair of chinos, a polo shirt, and a thin coating of hair gel,'' one of Blaine's close associates tells me. ''And on the final day, he'll try to stay awake while watching an entire season's worth of back-to-back episodes of 'Joey.'.''

Other possibilities are said to include: standing in a corner with a piece of bubblegum stuck to his nose for three days; wearing a scuba mask with a mosquito trapped inside for 30 minutes, during which time Blaine will attempt to fend off the rapacious insect by frantically flexing his eyebrows; and gargling with Listerine for a full minute.

''If David survives that, he may try to buy a ticket on Amtrak solely by using the automated telephone attendant, without ever once pressing 0 for assistance from a real live person,'' the same source reports.

There have been daredevils before Blaine, certainly.

Charles Blondin walked a tightrope across the Niagara River gorge. Harry Houdini performed several escapes from locks and chains and trunks dropped into icy waters. Evel Knievel tried to pilot a steam-powered rocket across the Snake River Canyon.

But they were brash showoffs all, figures seemingly intent on making us feel small by being larger than life.

None of them captured the spirit of sedentary America by becoming the master of stationary adventure.

And certainly none faced a foe worse than death itself - complete and utter tedium - and bested it in a game of chicken.

So please join me in raising a glass of Diet Coke to David Blaine, an everyday hero for our everyday age.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.