Ben Stein's Diary/Antipathies
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY ANTIPATHIES by Benjamin J. Stein Monday Iislike Wild Kingdom here in Malibu this week. First a scary invasion of ants into every portal of my home. Huge phalanxes of the brown,...
...I play an emergency room physician who examines Meryl Streep and finds that she has an extremely odd medical condition...
...Frankly, I'd trust them before I'd trust him...
...Anyway, Zemeckis has a nice bungalow, and we actors are all lined up to read our little parts...
...Raging...
...After a few minutes, I started to think in my little brain about quite a few subjects...
...The first one even made me cry with nostalgia...
...How wonderful it must be to be truly rich, I thought, and able to say anything you want, no matter how offensive and obviously untrue.think it's time for you to change your water," she said without any preamble...
...This is what you call political correctness...
...As I left, I knew my chances were slim...
...Like what...
...This will be my fifth call-back...
...They don't seem to bother her, but they're killing me...
...We are having a bad recession," I said...
...Well, I noticed that every year when I come here, you Americans are more depressed...
...A modestly plump dowager sitting across from me said she was about to go on a six-week painting tour of Europe...
...I threw water on them, wiped them away, and finally sprayed Raid on them...
...This isn't a law I'm talking about," F said...
...I feel like Lucille Ball...
...Just as we were talking, the phone rang...
...It's as if a giant truck were rolling towards your house and you couldn't say a 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 word about it...
...How come I'm not rich...
...Maybe man wasn't supposed to live anywhere...
...I'll need all of your prayers to God to help me avoid the temptation...
...And anyway, I've been here through a far worse recession in 1975, and people were happy, and even in the one in 1981 people seemed cheerful...
...My happiest days were when I was really thin...
...Another long beat...
...Then there are the fleas on 'Dixie...
...By law you can still say almost anything...
...People like me more when I'm thin...
...A long beat to let it sink in...
...Fleas...
...Change your water, change your life...
...That's right," she said...
...At a price I can afford...
...What, pray, are we not allowed to say...
...At least I think she's a woman...
...Can I find a cabin somewhere far away from everyone, where I can have total peace and quiet but also be available for parts in movies...
...Huge phalanxes of the brown, insistent creatures poured through every window-crack, every doorway, up through my carefully whitewashed floors, torturing me, crawling on my papers, books, English muffins, dog biscuits, and even my beloved diet cream soda...
...An ugly, snarling, yellow dog...
...I sort of think they're playing games with me, but who knows...
...I have to rehearse anyway...
...Ants...
...But this one filled the bill...
...A plumber repairing a faucet (cost: $500 for one evening's work) found a nest of what he called black widows...
...But you all know it's true, and yet you can't do anything...
...Well, it has some impurities...
...Maybe I have a chance...
...I was wanted for a call-back in the endless struggle to get the part of Meryl Streep's doctor in a movie...
...Asking God to help you avoid eating chocolate...
...Not that bad from the statistics," he said, with the cool aplomb of the rich discussing the not-rich...
...I was kept awake by the sounds of a major fight between my next-door neighbors, an Israeli of undetermined occupation and his girlfriend, of undetermined everything...
...How can I sue the producer...
...I THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 33 me and said, "I have to show you my baby...
...That's me, here in the north end of Malibu...
...I thought of you as more civilized than you apparently are...
...Spiders...
...You'd feel depressed...
...Benjy vs...
...It's choking you, especially on the subject of race...
...How come I'm not the writer of this show...
...Chocolate...
...I've seen them all and like them...
...I was eager to get rid of him so that I could rehearse my few lines...
...E left with a cheery wave...
...Medium-sized transparent ones...
...It was P., my agent...
...In public discourse, the question of the behavior of blacks simply cannot be mentioned...
...You really have to leave," I said...
...She grabbed Tuesday A n audition at Universal, on the back lot, in a bungalow belonging to a very, very successful producer-director named Bob Zemeckis...
...People who talk endlessly about taking care of themselves and standing up for themselves are like people who wear silver jewelry or long braids: at some secret, satanic rite they have already taken a vow never, under any circumstances, to give a damn about anyone else...
...In your case, you Americans have become one of the most repressed, suppressed people on earth regarding what you can and can-not say, and this is depressing you, I believe...
...She had a lean and hungry look, a sort of Malibu Cassius, only a woman...
...Now, I love dogs, and I had never seen a really ugly large dog until that moment...
...How come I'm reading for a small part and not the producer of this show...
...How can I sue the ants...
...As a psychiatrist and a foreigner," he said, "I see things that you may not get to see or understand...
...Change my water...
...Anyway, then there are spiders attacking my house...
...An Iron Law: those who complain the most about not taking enough care of themselves are taking far too much care already...
...I asked...
...Give Poopie some smushies," said the psychologist...
...But white people can talk about it only in very private settings...
...What have I done to waste my one and only life this way...
...Huge black ones Benjamin J Stein is a writer and actor living in Malibu, California...
...I sat there and read and re-read my part while waiting to see him...
...Crystal Geyser has absolutely no impurities, and it's far cheaper...
...The Ants," about a Brazilian planter whose hacienda is attacked by billions, trillions, zillions of ants...
...The Ants...
...I keep envisioning the short story, "Leiningen vs...
...They threw things, yelled and screamed, and generally tormented me with their craziness...
...Hnunm...
...There's no energy around this town the way there once was...
...I read my part with a stutter, as written in the script, but could tell I didn't stutter very well...
...People get depressed when they are blocked in some basic way...
...Small red ones...
...This is shockingly offensive talk," I said...
...Give Poopie some nice wet smushies...
...While I was washing Trixie, my neighbor, F., a brain surgeon from France who is an heir and does not work unless you can call sailing his boat and getting a tan "work," appeared at my door...
...I guess man was never supposed to live here on these ancestral ant mounds...
...And you all know what's on every corner in Brussels...
...What would that be...
...Well, exactly," my French neighbor said...
...This is almost treason," I said...
...I left and went to buy a Three Musketeers bar...
...How can I sue the building...
...In the meeting we all talked solemnly about ourselves and how much attention we had to pay to ourselves and how we had to be good to ourselves and protect ourselves and ask God to protect ourselves and ask everyone else to be interested in ourselves...
...Maybe a small town in Canada...
...Well," I said, "I have to go now...
...Maybe man wasn't supposed to live in Southern California at all...
...Just as I got to sleep, I was awakened by a knock on the door...
...I finally got called and read my part...
...Is there anywhere on earth that I would ever fit in...
...Yes," F. said, not leaving, "and then there's the matter of how the whole `women's movement' is now run entirely by lesbians, and tough, sick ones at that, but no one dares to even mention it in the press...
...She dragged me over to an ancient BMW and pointed at her hideous dog...
...I drove over to my condo and tried to take a nap...
...Maybe long ago in some remote village in Poland...
...It was W., my beautiful but infuriating red-haired neighbor with multiple sclerosis...
...You drink Evian, right...
...I'mlate for my meeting of the pro-nuclear power plant club...
...This is really distressing talk...
...Right," I said...
...A lot of that time we'll be in Brussels," she said in a somber voice...
...Wahhh...
...Because, as they see it, a lot of blacks are making everyone scared, robbing people, killing people, intimidating people, swaggering around, making loud noises from their cars, making white people feel as if their country had been taken over by an alien force...
...I started mentally to go through my part when F. settled himself in my living room and started to talk...
...As I hear it and see it, just as a tourist," he went on, "white middle-class and upper-middle-class people in America are furious at a great many blacks...
...When they are unable to do something or say something that's on their minds...
...They keep coming, and they are still swarming in a few crannies...
...You won that Persian Gulf thing hands down, and you watched Communism fall to pieces, and that means you basically won the Cold War, but you people are still depressed, down in the dumps, blue...
...Of course, so were my unhappiest days, but I tend to remember only the happy ones...
...Bob became rich and famous from his Back to the Future movies...
...with four little white spots on their stomachs...
...A canine Eleanor Smeal, sort of...
...I like me more, too...
...I am much less overweight than I used to be, but I thought it would be nice to be thin...
...No, I think it's something else...
...I think you had better leave...
...Wednesday A meeting of a twelve-step group that owes its allegiance and its existence to overweight people...
...We have some real serious problems here in Malibu...
...That's depressing as well...
...How can I sue them...
...In fact, I think I can say for sure that since I've been drinking my Crystal Geyser, I feel a lot better and those white spots on my brain have shrunk...
...The bites get worse every day...
...Right," W. said...
...As I was walking into the meeting, I ran into a woman psychologist who was recently divorced...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
