Ben Stein's Diary/Risky Business
Stein, Benjamin J.
Risky Business by Benjamin J. Stein Tuesday G uess what? I'm back in Baltimore. It's late at night and I'm here at the Stouffer Hotel, looking out at the harbor and a building that has a huge sign...
...Little knick-knacks that designers think of but that working stiffs don't...
...He especially did not want us getting into the Mexican peso mess with U.S...
...I'm a lawyer, I know how horrible lawsuits are...
...But it's really true...
...The meal was unremarkable except that Michael Eisner, the head of Disney, was sitting a table away...
...His main point was that we were supposed to have free markets in money, but instead, we had a huge and lavishly well-funded International Monetary Fund that was always interfering in money affairs, spending taxpayer money to prop up currencies...
...We were navigating our way through the lobby to hear a speech by a man who is no one's idea of a nerd, George Pratt Shultz...
...This is it, my Contract With Tommy...
...But Tommy refuses to come eat because he has to play swords with Daddy just a little longer...
...I was really burned that the airline did not offer to take me home, but maybe that's "policy...
...They wanted more champagne...
...My eyes were bloodshot...
...And anyway, the government gets the interest when the money isn't being used, so it's the same thing...
...Amen, sister...
...I went to the bathroom for water...
...Money really does buy all those things they say it does in the movies...
...Oh, thank you, God...
...They laughed, made jokes, were genuinely friendly, seemed fully alive—all of this at a time when I'm usually very fast asleep...
...I was terrified...
...Then I'm on probation for a year...
...Graham's granddaughter...
...As she did, she told me she had just moved to L.A...
...I tried to watch a movie, but I could not focus on it in any way...
...I went over to the radiation ward of St...
...Heartstopping, stone urban dread scared...
...Maybe you should have X-rays...
...When I pick up Mr...
...But why don't you just talk to me for a while...
...So I'm working two jobs to take care of her and I'm going to school too...
...I met her years ago when she was a student at the National Cathedral School...
...Buffett owns a large chunk of the company Mrs...
...Little Johnnie Cochran...
...The D.A...
...Wednesday I got picked up at 5:15 a.m...
...I wanted to get home and get to bed...
...Shultz, to a hilariously funny famous economist named Zvi Griliches, who specializes in measuring the value of a nation's technology base, and to an executive of the IMF who's also a great pal of my father...
...One block from the Stouffer, from out of an alley, came four very strong, very dangerous looking young men whose faces were hard to make out in the dark...
...Somehow, the discipline of programming turned Rocco's life around...
...All of the old brainos sitting around eating, the hat and coat room with its bulletin board of obituaries...
...Aren't you lucky," a flight attendant said...
...To let him beat me till I like it...
...I felt as if I were going to throw up...
...I called the manager of Channel 2 and offered to make it up to them by doing some free TV spots and personal appearances in Baltimore...
...How the few words of Caesar make us jump through hoops...
...He's just too lazy to do it...
...There's nothing that's too much for me to do for my mother...
...Of course, I can't sleep when I have to get up early in the morning, so I just lay in bed listening to Mozart...
...One of them made a loud retching sound, and they walked on...
...B ack to my room...
...I was scared...
...A woman who does more hard work in a day than I do in a year, and never had any of the advantages I take totally for granted, and she's doing me favors...
...Everyone was mad at everyone, and Channel 2 was totally innocent (as was I, but that got lost in the shuffle...
...Bean, asked me to touch my nose, to let him hit my knees, to count backward by sevens from one hundred, to tell him the last ten presidents, to memorize a list of names and then say them back to him...
...Anyway, I talked to Mrs...
...That money always winds up in the hands of currency traders anyway," said Dr...
...Little Mr...
...I could not recall for the life of me who she was...
...He has a brand new baby...
...Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu and Hollywood...
...As I sat there, a youngish woman came on board...
...Anyway, I dared not sleep, because the first flight attendant told me that it was dangerous for people with head injuries to sleep...
...Write," I said...
...It's all there, life without the necessity of intermediation...
...I looked out at my beloved Baltimore Harbor and still could not sleep...
...I did great on everything except that short term memory thing...
...They had a glass of champagne before they even sat down, and you know whatthe first thing they said after they hit you was...
...I just want you to know that I think I'm dying," I told her...
...I was having trouble breathing...
...We order some herbal tea from room service, take aspirin to thin our blood, and maybe have some potato chips to feed us on our journey to the other side...
...That's it...
...But Mommy has been arrested and put in jail for bank robbery...
...It wouldn't matter if I picked him up at school ten days in a row...
...I think he's the only friend I have ever had who shoots heroin, or used to long ago...
...Now I know what field my son should go into...
...He's seven and he still doesn't tie his shoelaces...
...It's all too worrisome and heartrending...
...I sort of wondered why people were given something that obviously affects their coordination while they are putting heavy items in racks over other people's heads...
...by a man from W.B...
...I hate to tell you this," I always say...
...I see you everywhere," Eisner said...
...Graham said, "but she's very talented...
...They looked at me as if appraising whether it would be worthwhile to rob and murder me...
...I asked the man from the IMF how much money the government would get back if the U.S...
...Then I listened to Hair...
...Not much...
...Those two women were total ditzes," she said...
...Then another nap, and then I was released...
...No," I said, "it's too late for that now...
...It's very rare to get a patient like you who's not in an HMO...
...Also, Mrs...
...Tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow) at—yuck-4 a.m., which is really 1 a.m...
...I rose late, and then headed off to the Cosmos Club with my parents...
...Twenty-five years ago, my wife and I rented her son's Capitol Hill house for a summer...
...Then they passed me...
...I'm proud of how I sing...
...The ornate lobby...
...Then, by an amazing chance, he met someone who also liked to get high and play guitar but who was also into a totally new thing called "software" about fifteen years ago...
...He became a changed man...
...Andy Maths, the account guy, appeared bright and cheery in the lobby...
...I'm still forgetting things right and left and even forgetting directions to places...
...Two lawyers across the cabin relayed to me their offer to take the case...
...But stay the hell away from Hollywood...
...I got a great lawyer...
...I gave her a big tip, but as I think of it now, later in the day, I wish I had given her a hundred dollars...
...He tends to have very little homework, but he does it quickly and with the absolute minimum of care...
...Wow," I said to the doctor...
...In fact, Mrs...
...I'm so sorry," the formerly laughing woman said...
...In fact, I like being here...
...The woman who had looked at me started putting a few things in the rack above us...
...I'd like to forget Clark Clifford...
...No," I said...
...I was in a trance, as if I had been given anesthesia...
...Most of the time I'm slowly going out of business...
...Father...
...she asked...
...Usually it's furnished in every corner...
...Here's this woman who does not know me, who never laid eyes on me, singing to cheer me up at three in the morning in a Stouffer Hotel in the Baltimore Harbor...
...Tears rolled down my cheek...
...Then sometimes we play with his "flower stalks," little plastic sword like things with plastic frills on the end...
...I looked awful...
...I would not have a prayer of getting roles if any of them were up against me...
...You'll have to wait here on the jetway for all of the other passengers to get off so I can take a report," she said...
...The dogs are barking in the background, and Elena is making Tommy a steak in the kitchen...
...No jail time...
...The American Spectator April 1995 53 The visit took about a half hour...
...t was a long flight...
...Just behind me were two of the women from the Admirals' Club...
...Now she's in the U.K., apparently planning to be an opera singer...
...I had to get up early again the next morning...
...Then more appear-ances...
...Money can get you off...
...I still felt horrible...
...Zion...
...Stay at Harvard...
...But never Trixie...
...The woman looked at me pleasantly...
...I finally remembered who she was...
...Never took welfare...
...The hotel had a singing contest and I won...
...Every time I turn on the TV, there you are...
...Katharine Graham, the High Pooh-Bah of the Washington Post, appeared and I talked to her...
...You're getting to be like Tim Allen...
...You just think that because you live in Hollywood, where everyone's very cool and trendy," my father said...
...An exercise buff who told me about her plans to get married...
...Michael Eisner is not going to do anything for me...
...I sniffled in my chair for a while and then I finished my tea...
...0 54 The American Spectator April 1995...
...And it usually has good quality furniture, very often with floral design...
...She had two jobs, three jobs...
...The rich and powerful expect favors from us little guys...
...The polite, quiet conversa52 The American Spectator April 1995 tion...
...What's going to happen to him...
...I had to leave the lunch soon thereafter to pick up Tommy at school...
...I looked in the mirror...
...He looked me over and then carefully peered into my eyes, into my nose, hit my knees, asked questions...
...I drove myself home...
...I could not think who she was...
...Thursday A visit to a neurologist to see how my concussion is doing...
...But I was just floating...
...Now, here comes the scary part...
...That one where I had been drinking with a few guys while we were jamming on the guitars, and then I was going home on a rainy street and I crashed into one car, and that car hit another car, and that one burst into flames and the guy inside was killed...
...I don't want to forget how my wife looked when she walked down the aisle in 1968...
...So if I do die, please tell my son and my wife that I thought about them until I passed over...
...It turned out they were just making a joke...
...He is probably the heaviest drug user I have ever met...
...I could not focus on her face...
...Not much," he said...
...Where is she really...
...I put away some newspapers and sat down...
...She told me I had taken her to dinner some time before and that I had known her in Silver Spring many years before...
...In fact, they sort of tickle...
...Then I could not find my car...
...I'm going to Baltimore City College...
...Now, bear in mind, he lives about forty miles from the Stouffer...
...he asks...
...A head injury...
...No more happy moments watching my angel boy cast a line for fish...
...My court case is over," he said...
...He stopped getting high, and threw himself into starting a small software company with his new pal...
...Not really," the doctor said...
...She greeted me by name...
...The woman who said she knew me came up to talk to me...
...They might not ever get up...
...They were all drinking something, and laughing loudly...
...Professor Shultz gave a great speech about international trade and currency matters...
...There was simply fantastic roast beef...
...I needed exercise, so I hiked up a few blocks from the hotel to what I recalled as the Gayety Burlesque house of my youth...
...I told this to my father and my mother...
...That's today," Eisner said...
...This world is fullof kind people...
...Again, I could not sleep...
...taxpayer money...
...Then I fell asleep and dreamed I didn't have to get up...
...The doctor, a walking, talking ad for L.L...
...It's late at night and I'm here at the Stouffer Hotel, looking out at the harbor and a building that has a huge sign for Domino Sugar...
...That's amazing," I said...
...Monday A visit to my doctor, a fine fellow named Bill...
...I am so lucky...
...When I got there, I lay down and thought about how life is...
...It's been a quarter of a century, and that's still the best house I've ever lived in...
...Graham controls the whole company...
...Neurology...
...The folks at WMAR Morning News were quite lively...
...Again, the streets were empty...
...And I want to choose...
...It's bitterly cold, so I'm staying in my room tonight...
...Next thing I knew, my insurance company was paying off the family of the guy I killed...
...After a few hours, I went back to my room and slept...
...A few minutes later, a few firemen appeared...
...That kind woman told me about caring for her mother...
...But then he comes bounding into my room, a smile as big as the Rose Bowl on his face, and says, "Daddy, throw pillows at me...
...She could not stop talking...
...Are you here to write or act or what...
...Maybe he would make me like Tim Allen...
...I finally got something to eat, but I did not feel as if I could eat without throwing up...
...A straight line from taxpayers to currency speculators...
...I do a few spots," I said...
...Suddenly, wham...
...No more days on Lake Pend'Oreille for me...
...He'd still say, "Where's Mommy...
...The sign is red neon, with letters that are tilted forward in what must, in 1955, have been the height of moderne...
...My head was swimming...
...Crandall of American Airlines about that...
...Then I came upon what used to be The Gayety...
...When I got to the airport in L.A., a woman from American Airlines was waiting for me...
...Always worked...
...After the speech, there was a fine reception in a little room nearby...
...my time, I have to get up and go on a round of TV shows and personal appearances to promote WMAR, Newschannel 2. This is how we worked out the contretemps between Channel 2 and the CBS television network...
...I dropped my attaché case on your head...
...I would do anything for my mother," she said...
...What the hell was that...
...Litigator...
...A rule for everything, and always in his favor...
...I really should have...
...And now, she's old...
...I often refuse to do it, and he cons someone else into doing it...
...Good-bye, I thought...
...In a soft but amazingly melodious voice, she sang a hymn I did not know...
...Shultz...
...I hate to be the one to break it to you...
...You get to ride up front...
...But they said they could do nothing except take me to the nearest hospital...
...I sing in the choir...
...Michael Eisner asked...
...Stay at Washburn...
...He had to get up at 3 a.m...
...Some day soon it will only be a memory, like twice-a-day mail delivery during Christmas...
...He comes from a wealthy Los Angeles family...
...Maybe," I said...
...But we duel with them...
...He and his friend started their company, brought it public, and Rocco became a millionaire...
...Stay at the University of Illinois...
...I felt something incredibly heavy and pointed strike my head twice...
...I have to wear a radio transmitter bracelet at home each evening that tells the police where I am...
...The laughing face, the brilliant blue eyes, the panting child's breath, the cries of "Daddy, daddy, daddy...
...A proud grandma...
...I remember a lot of fine things and happy moments...
...And, tomorrow I get to exercise options that are going to get me enough money to buy a yacht...
...What Do We Do When We're Dying...
...I would love to hear you sing," I said...
...Ha-ha...
...I'd like to forget Lloyd Cutler...
...What slimes these Clinton lawyers are...
...My mother raised me all by herself...
...Then they moved me up to one of the many empty seats in first class...
...Then he said, "You've got a concussion...
...I was not ready to die...
...It doesn't count if it hits me in the privates...
...I worry about anyone this lazy...
...I felt really horrible...
...To the 7–Eleven, to the McDonald's, to home and then for him to do his homework...
...I really feel bad that middle-class people like me think so condescendingly about people like her if we think of them at all...
...Graham owns even more of...
...It's a hard ambition," Mrs...
...The joke is, except for having to get up so early, I don't even mind being here...
...Then we talk to the plump black woman from room service who brought me the food...
...A long way from the wigwams at Santa Cruz, huh...
...That's the way rich people are...
...Graham about our mutual friend, Warren Buffett (actually, I've never met him, but I admire him a lot...
...He was pals with the judge...
...Then they were telling the judge in the criminal case they forgave me...
...A.M.E...
...Well, let's hope," I said...
...He suggested that we liquidate the IMF and combine any useful functions it had with the World Bank...
...Maybe he would make me a star...
...Anyway, I packed my belongings, headed for the airport, dropped off my little Buick, took the bus to the terminal, checked in, took another bus to the midfield terminal and then went to the Admirals' Club...
...It could all change tomorrow...
...It's a different world...
...It doesn't count if it hits me below the waist...
...The flight attendants brought me a bag of ice to put on my head...
...I don't want to lose my memory...
...This conclave looks to me as if Central Casting had put out an open call for men and women to play Giant nerds, and bring your own costume...
...Another attendant came over...
...I don't want to forget Tommy's smile when I got him a fishing rod...
...The doctor had told me this was standard in head injuries, but I don't like it...
...I revived a moment later...
...I killed him...
...It doesn't count if it hits me on my head...
...She wanted my advice about acting in Hollywood...
...I left after a few minutes of amazement, and headed back to my hotel...
...Rocco today told me about another facet of his life...
...I feel sick...
...Would you like for me to call 911...
...What intense, cold, breathless, tingling fear...
...He was eating with a lawyer I know, Sandy Litvack, who used to work with my estranged wife at Donovan, Leisure long ago...
...One of them looked at me and then laughed some more...
...Tim Allen is the biggest star in Hollywood...
...I'll have to ask Mr...
...I would like to forget Joan Rivers, Sam Ervin, Jimmy Carter, and Bernard Nussbaum...
...Now I am the one being fished up out of earth and onto dry, breathless land...
...Yes, he did occasionally drink and once in a great while he got high, but overall, he thrived...
...I waited for a long time, and then a tiny but lively nurse X-rayed my head...
...But the by-play with Michael Eisner had gotten me going...
...He stands at the end of the bed, and I throw pillows at him and he ducks or hits them back at me, all the while making up his rules...
...I can't even start to tell you how dirty they were...
...That's it...
...I am so glad they're not in Hollywood...
...Later I talked to Mrs...
...I'd like that...
...The short sellers just get another chance to short the currency when the taxpayers prop it up...
...The captains and the kings don't do things for people like me...
...I tell him to do it more neatly time after time, and he just whines and whines...
...There should be a documentary about the Cosmos Club someday...
...How will anyone that lazy ever get along in this world...
...That's it...
...I felt horrible...
...I don't want to forget who my friends are...
...That's my life...
...But people here are very strange," she said...
...I don't want someone with slippery fingers and a taste for champagne choosing when I'll forget and when I'll remember...
...Then I take him off on our rounds...
...I stammered...
...There's something about a wealthy person's house...
...The American Spectator April 1995 51 This is it...
...I mean, these economists are super nerdy-looking...
...Please, Nana, because this time I'm going to beat Daddy and make him like it...
...Anyway, just as a matter of principle, I try not to sue unless it's a matter of life or death...
...My mother explained it to me a long time ago, and it's right on target...
...About a quarter-hour later, she reappeared and offered to get me paramedics to check me out...
...Responsible guy...
...In my wildest dreams, I would not have thought that advertising people work so hard...
...He knows how...
...I'll wait in the terminal...
...Saturday A call from my friend Rocco...
...She comes to church every Sunday and listens to me sing...
...They don't hurt when you get hit with them...
...dropped out of the IMF...
...Doner, the ad agency for WMAR...
...from "Jersey" and how much she loved L.A...
...Then, instantly, I blacked out...
...It's hard to believe anyone could be so lazy...
...Rocco was a student of mine in Santa Cruz long ago...
...My face was green...
...I make him do it again and he looks as if he had been beaten...
...She never stopped working...
...So, here I am...
...Baltimore has come to symbolize friendly, helpful America in my little brain...
...On my way back to the parking lot, I could not, for the life of me, find my parking stub...
...He was a black guy who was trying to be a screenwriter while he worked as a waiter...
...I boarded the plane and found my seat in lowly Business Class...
...Friday A meeting with a producer and a writer at Disney...
...So I remembered some words of wisdom from a long-ago meeting of Journey Into Self-Obsession: When someone is angry at you, think about what you can do for him...
...It made a lot of sense to me...
...The bill was about $275 (I don't remember exactly...
...His family disowned him and he spent his time playing his guitar, cadging money from people like me and getting high...
...But he did not complain at all, and seemed to be really happy to be working on the job...
...One minute you're listening to George Shultz and having roast beef with Katharine Graham, the next minuteyou're getting walloped on the head by an attaché case belonging to a woman who was obviously very happy until she hit me...
...In my life, even though I have often written for men's magazines, I never had a clue there were magazines and videos this dirty...
...The essence of life...
...Sunday A fateful day...
...The young guys spared me, but I have done it to myself with all of those roast beef dinners and all of that fudge...
...Yesterday the case was wrapped up...
...I did not want to go to the hospital...
...The woman who had dropped her case said over and over how sorry she was...
...charged me with manslaughter...
...As usual, my fellow Admirals were drinking madly...
...My mother was hanging onto my father's trench coat belt as if to a lifeline thrown from a boat to a sinking passenger...
...Stewardesses flocked around to see if I was all right...
...They had a swaggering, confident walk...
...The streets were deserted...
...I want to see if I have a bad concussion or just a smaller concussion...
...So were a bank of phone answerers taking calls...
...I just hope that every once in a while someone like you comes along, and I guess it's just my lucky day...
...In hotel management...
...But what fear...
...Yes, but how much for a one-term shot at lowering the budget...
...He smiles and comes charging at me, and suddenly there's a flash in my brain and in my soul, and I realize it's all there...
...Now the place sells mostly very, very dirty magazines and videotapes...
...We had lunch at the executive dining room, the "Rotunda," so to speak, at the top of the Disney executive offices...
...The only chair I could find was next to four middle-aged or older women who seemed to be in very, very high spirits...
...Perfect at school, he comes shuffling out to the parking lot, tosses his knapsack at me, and says, "Where's Mommy...
...About twenty-five billion, more or less," he said...
...Friday 1 'm in Washington, D.C., at the annu- al meeting of the American Economic Association at a hotel that used to be called the Sheraton Park, and now is called something else...
...We also talked about Mrs...
...I'm not going to stand here...
...John's Hospital...
...Hmm...
Vol. 28 • April 1995 • No. 4
