The Southern California Spectator/Anomalies
Stein, Benjamin J.
THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SPECTATOR ANOMALIES by Benjamin J. Stein Anomalies that could be ironed out. Inconsistencies that could be made consistent. Because my own life is a wild jack-in-the-box of...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 49...
...What writer in his cotton sweater and Porsche could ever think of something so funny—and yet so perfectly real and true to life...
...In every sitcom ever written, things turn out all right in the end...
...How about a simple rule that makes it a felony to make noise in a way that escapes beyond your immediate vicinity...
...n a completely different, but conceptually related problem, what about noise...
...Any sense at all...
...Let's put it on the showroom floor and see who slams its doors...
...However, they are intelligent men and women, and they have a keen sense of social justice and outrage about any tilt against perfect law in every circumstance...
...Can we stop it...
...Why not...
...Most of the income of prime time TV comes from situation comedies, and the writers of those shows are on strike...
...Ergo, no sitcoms for the new fall season...
...I also might shoot him...
...omists write the situation comedies...
...I don't do it, of course, but my neighbors do it to me all the time...
...When I worked before and after that time as an economist and analyst of corporate deals, I encountered some of the funniest men and women on earth...
...Here in California, as in most of the nation, we face severe drought...
...Does this make even a little bit of sense...
...Then the gardener of the next door neighbor does the same thing...
...No, far from it...
...It is simply unheard of for an Angeleno at middle-class status or above to cut his own grass or trim his own hedge...
...What if they were "inked" by the same lawyers who write corporate by-laws indemnifying corporate officers for theft from their own stockholders with money taken from those same stockholders...
...Just a standard securities "disclosure" form is one of the funniest written documents man can create...
...Dumbesillah...
...But the same man in a con-vertible can ride by with enough decibel power over his stereo to blow me out of my chair, and he is immune, scot-free to do it to the next person on the road...
...But, and this is a big but, I can turn up my new, super-powerful stereo so loud that it shakes the walls of houses half a mile away...
...Now here is an opportunity to straighten out some inconsistencies...
...What if lawyers and economists wrote the sitcoms...
...Take the writers' strike now going on here in Los Angeles, for example...
...That is, why not have the comedy writers argue cases and the lawyers and econBen Stein lives in Hollywood His latest book, Hollywood Nights: The Diary of a Mad Screenwritei has just been published by Bantam...
...Very likely, they would turn out so that they more closely approximated the agony and the pain of real life, which is really so frightening that it simply has to be funny...
...Because my own life is a wild jack-in-the-box of confusion and surprises that I spring on myself to scare myself in the middle of the night, I dwell upon how I might be able to make things right outside my own life, in the world I cannot control...
...Frankly, neither the handling of litigation nor the writing of sitcoms can get much worse...
...My family, and every civilized family I know, are prisoners in our own homes...
...Or what if sitcoms were written by the same economists who predicted that cutting taxes would lower the federal deficit...
...I am assaulted by their noise more or less constantly and endlessly...
...In the end, tens of thousands of gallons of water are used to move one leaf a few doors down...
...Unlike most parts of America, where teenage children or husbands do yard work, in Los Angeles it is all done by hired gardeners...
...No one can say the same about litigation...
...At least while the strike is on, and America's video throat is parched, let's try it...
...Here's my idea: in order to avoid depriving America of the situation comedies we need to keep ourselves free, how about lawyers and economists switching with the writers until the strike gets resolved...
...Even now, in the wildest moments of drought, they attach high pressure nozzles to garden hoses and turn on fire-company strength streams of water to move a leaf one foot from the client's lawn to the next door neighbor's lawn...
...We have to lock ourselves in behind closed windows and the hum of air-conditioning no matter how beautiful the day outside...
...The gardeners accomplish this trick not by raking...
...But you would never know it from life in Los Angeles...
...A man could be arrested for walking into my house and banging on my head...
...The gardeners, usually perfectly polite and amiable people, have as one of their tasks the movement of leaves and dead twigs from their client's lawn, driveway, or sidewalk...
...But what if comedy writers handled the cases...
...This level of waste is simply incredible and horrifying in a drought year...
...Possibly every sort of litigation would be resolved within a half hour, and it would all turn out with that special "golden moment" at the end that brings a tear of recognition that humans are basically good after all...
...I have been both a lawyer and a situation comedy writer...
...Conceivably, they could get a lot better...
...Imagine, for example, a sitcom written by divorce lawyers...
...I suspect that if a North Dakota farmer saw what our gardeners do with water here in Los Angeles, he would take out a shotgun...
...When I practiced law at the Federal Trade Commission fifteen years ago, every day was a riot of biting, memorable humor by my colleagues against each other and against the world...
...Why not treat noise the way we would treat noxious smoke...
...On the other hand, the very funniest people I have ever met in terms of wit and irony and articulation have been lawyers and economists...
...I as a human being am not allowed just to walk into my next door neighbor's house, or the house across the canyon, and start playing my ghetto blaster or bang on the walls of his house...
...Of course...
...Look at it this way...
...What I notice is this: with a few exceptions, situation comedy writers are not particularly funny people...
...Do our elected representatives make any move to stop it...
...Any day's TV news shows farmers balefully kicking their dry dead topsoil as their crops and herds wither and die in the background...
Vol. 21 • August 1988 • No. 8
