The Nation's Pulse/Taking Stock
Stein, Benjamin J.
THE NATIONS'S PULSE TAKING STOCK by Benjamin J. Stein Sunday D inner at the Beverly-Wilshire. It's a huge fund-raising thing for The Fund for Animals, a charity run by some Hollywood types who...
...No, it's great," I said...
...Her face was splotchy and scarred, although she was an attractive woman...
...ack at my condo in West Holly-I1) wood, the Shoreham Rock 'n' Roll Towers, I met a woman who was having a nervous breakdown...
...Like in Havana, that guy, that guy who was running it before Castro, before anyone ever heard of Castro, what was his name...
...I told her about being a White House speechwriter for Nixon and Ford...
...Does he have a viral thing or a bacterial thing...
...The class went through warand lost many of its best...
...None at all...
...I talked to the casting woman...
...You learn these things in the casino business...
...Flu is viral...
...Just look at this house...
...Batista...
...Really amazing...
...That how we feel about ourselves is closely connected with how we behave...
...And if we do good things for people, we tend to feel really good and sleep better and all of that stuff...
...It's bacterial...
...And Lansky never keeps anything for himself he's not supposed to have...
...I pray constantly...
...Why...
...Plus," added Rachel, "it's part of my training just to be alive and energetic...
...That's one good thing about Communism: when it's over, the people are so grateful," Back to Malibu for dinner with my .U* new best friend, whom I'll call Hyman Moth...
...In fact (and it's an important fact), the audition was in the upstairs of a cottage, and we "actors" waited outside on a bench on an extremely narrow balcony...
...Isn't that even more amazing...
...Williams College is startlingly beautiful in any event, but this group fit the serene confidence of the place perfectly...
...There are no strings attached...
...She was referring to me...
...My money's no good...
...It's the most amazing thing, but when you do bad things, you tend to feel bad...
...She just got divorced from her husband, an admittedly gay man from Argentina who paid her to marry him so that he could become a citizen, and then almost immediately became a male callboy...
...The house now belonged to Williams...
...Then he looked nostalgic and then sad...
...Isn't that amazing...
...Now there's nothing that divides us any longer...
...A man could attack me anywhere...
...It happens...
...Well, I'm not entirely an actor," I said...
...Medicine is business...
...Out at sea, the lights of the tankers merged with the midnight stars...
...Next to us was a table with Sid Caesar and, right near that group, Milton Berle, looking very feisty...
...She paused for a moment...
...What a jive concept: to be an actor, seeking and getting rejection five times a day from total strangers...
...But also an honorable guy...
...Rachel is from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and until recently was named Rachel Horowitz...
...The people who write them truly believe in what they're doing, and they feel as if they're in a fraternity of guys at a certain level of competence, devotion, reliability, and intelligence...
...Last June, my father's class at Williams College, the Class of 1935, had its fifty-fifth reunion and convocation, in the midst of many other fiveyear-multiple convocations...
...I don't doubt it at all," I said...
...He'll love them...
...And when you do good things, you tend to feel good...
...You could count on him to count the money straight and never keep anything for himself that he wasn't supposed to have...
...I asked...
...She started to pick dog hair off my suit jacket...
...Tonight at dinner he was telling about his longtime friend "Meyer Lansburgh," or Lansky, as his wife corrected him...
...Losers Anonymous...
...But I feel pretty lucky just to be here at all...
...But even he trusted the board of directors and didn't argue...
...The doctor has a Benjamin J. Stein is a writer and actor living in Malibu, California...
...The doctor looked at me even more angrily...
...It's taught by a man recently out of San Quentin, where he served fifteen years for armed robbery, manslaughter, and rape...
...No looking me in the eyes even once, no handshake...
...How about "white-smock crime...
...Monday T ommy, my unbelievably cute three- I and-a-half-year-old handsome devil batboy son, has a terrible cough...
...Their faces were all friendliness and relaxation...
...I'm not kidding...
...It moved me tremendously...
...Then he was in the liquor business, and then—what do you know, folks?—he got to be in the casino business...
...Halsted and Halston are extremely popular names to change to in Hollywood and New York...
...Now the doctor switched to supercilious contempt...
...The people there don't have an attitude problem the way people here do...
...But he was always figuring the angles...
...It's a sight that would have made Hippocrates vomit...
...A typically sexist male comment," Cissie sneered...
...She told me about her life...
...Is it viral or bacterial...
...If your picks go down, it's my problem...
...We're all united before the only real dividing line that means anything, and we're still on the right side of it...
...Off to lunch with my small businessOff pal Lenny...
...I just don't buy...
...Right...
...Like, if we do mean, awful things to people, we tend to feel really bad about ourselves...
...Very warm and furry, too...
...You're right there...
...D here in Trancas, Malibu, looking at the lights of the tankers at midnight far out to sea, I remembered a trip to Williamstown, Massachusetts...
...He could easily pick up another flu...
...He owned a few casinos in Vegas back in the 1950s and 1960s, and he even owned major points in some casinos in Havana ". . before Castro wrecked everything...
...But I think it might not be nice for me to take your money for my ideas on stocks, which usually are the kiss of death anyway...
...I told him how great he was and how much I loved him in Mr...
...I was moved to envy, in fact...
...Both women were slightly sweaty and out of breath, presumably from an earlier visit to their kick-boxing class...
...He's also all stuffed up," I said...
...Child-strength something...
...Or, for receptionists who call you by your first name even if they never met you, pink-collar crime...
...She's totally and completely broke and living in New York, and flew out here with the last money she has in the world, and she doesn't get any respect...
...His latest product is a lotion that can be applied at the be-ginning of a flight from JFK and have the user looking like he has gotten a suntan by the time the plane lands at LAX...
...This is a desert here in Los Angeles, and it's getting worse, and all great faith is born in a desert of some kind...
...How do they get that way...
...What was I doing there...
...It had a large lawn and a tent, under which the Williams grads of the Class of 1935 ate hamburgers and drank soda and looked happy...
...He's a man in his late eighties...
...But the high point for me was running into Jimmy Stewart when I went looking for the men's room...
...Martin's Press...
...One evening, my father's class had a picnic at a nearby mansion, where a minor Rockefeller had once lived...
...Maybe he should have an antibiotic then...
...I know you find out a lot about stocks and companies...
...Your money's great...
...It's really, a hobby for me...
...It is eloquent but understandable...
...As a matter of fact, Lassie was sitting at our table, too...
...It's about economists at the Treasury Department or speechwriters at the White House or something I know about, so I got a call...
...His nurse, an almost unbelievably beautiful Danish woman, kept ask-ing Hy if he needed anything and bringing him mysterious pills...
...Get him something at a drug store...
...After dinner, we talked about stocks, and I listened to Hy's many hits and misses...
...There were about seven hundred people there...
...Her owner and trainer, Bob Weatherwax, kept feeding her snacks, and she was as well behaved as you would expect...
...Was I free for lunch...
...They do their aerobics on the battlements of a castle in Transylvania...
...The bedside manner of an Iraqi Republican Guard...
...A fascinating iron law of human interaction: The critic who criticizes onfirst impression is usually mirroring the criticism he is leveling against himself...
...Well, then, maybe we'll sell a few short...
...Not any...
...All right," he said...
...You live in Beverly Hills," I said...
...At least, that's what I think it said...
...Economist," I said...
...He could try to rape me and God knows what else...
...Well," Hyman Moth said, "think about it...
...It's a huge fund-raising thing for The Fund for Animals, a charity run by some Hollywood types who really love animals...
...She's a preacher's daughter from Tupelo, who, by a strange series of events, has wound up as an agent here in Los Angeles...
...I believe in taking away people's property and giving it to my wife, ha-ha-ha...
...Household names...
...I suggested...
...Cissie repeated...
...A typical Ben Stein comment already," Rachel chimed in...
...A woman in her early thirties, also studying sides, looked at me...
...she asked...
...I'm a very energetic girl already...
...In many ways, the best dinner date I've had in months...
...Can you believe this guy is still having to get screened by the casting directors before he can see the producers...
...Lunch on Hy's flagstone patio overlooking the sand and the sea...
...I think I see...
...Here's what I suggest," he said...
...He gulped and said that he was looking for his wife and had I seen her anywhere...
...Why do you need to know kickboxing...
...I was east on business, so I went up and watched...
...I demurely picked up my lines, or "sides," as we call them, and stood in the smoggy sunshine to read them...
...Even all little faith...
...The woman looked at me sadly and nodded...
...To see the engraved names of the Williams men lost in war, from the Revolution through Vietnam, staring down at me in Thompson Memorial Chapel still makes me want to cry forever...
...I sat at a table with my pal Al Burton, who produces the new "Lassie...
...Or, for surfers who cut you off on Pacific Coast Highway, no-collar crime...
...He's sick all of the time...
...What's the difference...
...We're through with competition...
...She was lying on my feet for a good part of the evening...
...Gretchen Wyler is the CEO, and, to tell the truth, she's done amazing work...
...He was the kind of guy that a board of directors trusts with a decision about who's going to get the points in a casino...
...Are you that smart Communist guy that Hy's been talking about...
...They're signed...
...The other actors were gone...
...Some of us were divided by being rich or poor, by being Jewish or Gentile, by being good athletes or not, by being famous or not...
...I asked them as we ate our sushi...
...Give him some of this," he said, producing a bottle of cough syrup from somewhere under his tunic...
...They were of a piece with intelligent but unpretentious architecture, the rolling, plain, but powerful grassy lawns, and the blue sky, with its fleecy clouds above the pines and maples...
...I could tell you what famous neighbors he has, only then you'd guess who he is...
...It promises everything and guarantees nothing...
...You never know," Cissie said...
...Why...
...There's too much talk about white-collar crime, I thought...
...she asked...
...Then he turned on his heel and walked away...
...What if someone wants to debate or argue about the decision of the board of directors...
...From somewhere else he produced a bottle of pills...
...He's fine," the doctor said, "butkeep him out of pre-school for a few days...
...The first woman looked slightly chastised and tried to be nice to me...
...Like I said, what's the difference...
...If you really believe that God's goingto help you, then you have to believe that what you're asking for is acceptable in God's eyes, and if those are the only kinds of things you pray for, you start to change your thinking, and become a happier woman...
...He lives in a house above Broad Beach that's not really that impressive...
...I mostly write about ethics in finance and a few other issues...
...The wives looked happy and relaxed too...
...When I was through talking, I went back out to the balcony...
...A startlingly beautiful woman named Macy Scoggins, who was also sitting on the bench, looked at us...
...Many of them are not perfectly healthy...
...At his age...
...I thought you always had to see casting people," I said innocently...
...I love Romania," Lenny said...
...In a class taught by a convicted rapist or in your house in Beverly Hills...
...It's all my money, see...
...What do you say...
...He used to be in the folding-box business...
...Even the bench was gone...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1991 23...
...But the Class of 1935 looked happy and relaxed, much like old comrades...
...Because a man might attack me at any time...
...She reminded me that she was the caller who first put me into "The Wonder Years," at the precise wish of the producers of the show...
...Smart as a whip," Hyman Moth recalled...
...Lenny has just gotten back from shooting a series of exercise videos in Romania...
...The pile of scripts was gone...
...It's hard for me to believe I say these things with a straight face, but I do, and I believe them with all my heart...
...I used to go out with a doctor a long time ago...
...Ever since I started my kick-boxing, I'm a thousand times more energetic than I was when I was twenty...
...No one knows but you and me...
...Or for plumbers who keep you waiting and never show up, how about blue-collar crime...
...But then there wouldn't be any more debate...
...And, also, I could get attacked, too...
...They're like old-time reporters, only they believe in something...
...People get attacked all the time in Los Angeles...
...Cissie is in her mid-thirties, and very attractive except for an angry outthrusting of her chin as she speaks...
...Really fabulous...
...Amoxicillin," he snapped...
...Hyman Moth loves my articles in Barron's...
...I'm not sure he can swallow pills that big...
...I think so, too," I agreed...
...His new novel Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, has just been published by St...
...I'm a pit boss at Nero's Violin...
...I think that the people of England gave the Duke of Marlborough a bigger house after the Battle of Blenheim, but, still, it's a nice house...
...Always, but then he made sure he shared what he had figured out...
...Not Communist...
...And always thinking about the angles...
...Well, in that case, people would get shot...
...Batista, also a very honorable guy...
...Gosh, Hy, thanks, but I really can't do it...
...He sent me a fan letter over a year ago, and we've become pals...
...Then it's well on the way," I said...
...I can leave: one hundred and three dollars, including the medicine, which was marked up by a factor that would have made Harry Winston jealous...
...Just for example, a few days ago she arranged for a pound in north San Diego County to get a big chunk of money to care for the dogs and cats of young Americans serving in the Persian Gulf...
...I have enough money...
...D inner at Zooma Sushi with "Ra- chel Halston," a middle-aged TV executive at a very big studio in town, which was recently taken over by Japanese people...
...It winks at your friends but does not arouse your enemies...
...In San Quentin, he had learned kick-boxing, and now he was teaching it in Hollywood, mostly to women studio executives...
...suite with walls of posters and photos of his movie star and athlete patients (parents of patients, I guess...
...But that's the whole point," my father said...
...She's been an actress and a dancer all of her life...
...Twenty thousand shares, thirty thousand shares, fifty thousand shares...
...Wednesday A summons from Hyman Moth...
...I tried to be sympathetic to her, and she was practically in tears by the time she left...
...On my way out, I passed by a man who looked like the young Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets, watching a game show...
...Now, here's my idea...
...I won't lose any sleep over it if I lose a half a million dollars in one day...
...He cast a scary look in my direction...
...The ideal speech makes a point sharply and memorably, but never so sharply as to offend anyone...
...They're like college frat brothers who also have been through a war...
...This woman, Cissie Monroe, from Charleston, South Carolina, works in developing syndicated TV series, as does Rachel...
...It made me sad that she had changed her name...
...I'm not going to tell you his real name, but you would know it...
...And he trusted Lansky...
...They can make fun of each other and criticize each other, but they can all take it and smile, and then go to the Press Club and have a drink and work all night...
...Moth's son Ron, an accountant in a major firm, ate his lamb chop and seemed to be on another planet until the dessert was served...
...I don't usually go short, but you seem to have an incredible knack about that . ." "I don't ever sell short," I said...
...Now the doctor looked as if he might kill me with his scalpel...
...Not exactly," I said...
...And when he does, it could be really violent...
...They're chewable," he said...
...Then he said, "I hear you're an economist...
...As always, I was amazed by how tough the people in the room looked...
...It made me want to cry...
...You don't put up any money at all...
...That was a long time ago...
...Moth looked genuinely bewildered...
...I know that sometime you might find out when a company is going to do well, and then you might want to buy some shares and make some real money, and you don't have enough money 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1991 to buy enough shares to make it worthwhile...
...At your age...
...There's a lot of crime out there...
...On the sidewalk next to my car someone had written, "L.A...
...I think that probably you'd like to make more money," he continued...
...he asked...
...It also made me sad that she could not think of a more original change...
...I truly wonder if there is anyone who was born with either of those names...
...The doctor looked at me with pure hatred...
...Isabella Rossellini was a few tables away, looking awfully well...
...I said I thought it was, in some very complicated way, but that I would look into it further...
...His immune system might be compromised," he said mockingly...
...I considered the worried, angry faces I see here in Malibu, in Beverly Hills, at the Shoreham Towers, and then thought of those faces, of my father and Richard Helms and the others all looking so much at peace after all they have been through...
...I buy some stock...
...I've been a regular on two series, 'Dynasty' and `The Colbys,' " she said, "and I'm out here waiting to see this casting woman, waiting to get screened...
...Maybe his immune system is compromised...
...The graduates looked prosperous, happy, well dressed...
...If they say the points go to someone else, that's who gets them...
...Off the books...
...He might recover from his bacterial bronchitis, and still be weak from it, and catch a viral thing...
...Anyway, Rachel had brought with her an executive woman from another, much smaller studio...
...Where do you think you're in the most danger...
...Am I right...
...She's been on Xanax for a good long time now, and she's also been smoking a ton of marijuana, and she feels bad...
...I'm concerned that he has some kind of lingering virus," I said...
...I felt pretty sad, standing there on an empty balcony in Studio City, a helluva long way from home...
...Hy ignored that...
...You work in a studio with a guard and a fence...
...Imagine being an actor that long and still getting screened by casting people before you see the producers...
...Hence, a trip to his pediatrician, who has an office in a building in Beverly Hills...
...The girls in the videos do their sexy stuff in skintight black outfits with capes, and sometimes with fangs...
...I thought he had a bacterial thing," I said...
...Smith Goes to Washington...
...If they tell him the points are going to THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1991 21 Benny Siegel and some boys from Detroit, that's who the points go to...
...I really only find out if a company is likely to go down...
...Well, one studies the allocation of scarce goods and one wants to take away people's property and give it to the state," I said, hoping this would intimidate him...
...I do love your war stories about Milken and the guys at the casinos, but I really don't think I could take any money from you...
...In my little car, I felt positively giddy with delight that I had not accepted Hy's money...
...He had thirty points in most of the waterfront casinos, and if he said he would take thirty points, that's all he took...
...Still, her words stung...
...But if the stock goes up, we split the profit...
...The bill, due and payable before...
...Tuesday Off to another audition at a casting Off company in the Valley, right near CBS, to try out for a part in a new sitcom to be called "U-Boat...
...Do you know if crime is counted in the GNP...
...I'm flattered, but I really can't take any money from you...
...I've become a magnet for such women...
...The class went to school in the worst part of the worst depression of all time...
...Yeah...
...Total elapsed time by my watch: three minutes...
...The doctor rushed into the examining room, looked at Tommy, asked me a few questions, and pronounced that the devil boy had bronchitis...
...Didn't you know that...
...Ben," Hyman Moth said after he finished his tuna fish, "I don't think you make enough money...
...What are these...
...Where is someone going to attack you...
...The greater the wish, the greater the taboo," I said...
...Hey, what's this confidentiality crap...
...The lunch was chopped melon and tuna fish salad, served by an enormous black woman named, of all things, Aphrodite...
...Not everyone in the class is rich...
...I've started to pray," she said...
...They taste like bubble gum...
...Dracusize," he calls them...
...Hy asked sadly...
...They tell me of their sad lives and their losses and gains in the emotional stock market...
...Most of all, they looked as if they were at peace with themselves...
...He would like for me to come down to his palazzo on Broad Beach to talk to me "man to man" about something very important for my future...
...The casting woman liked it, and seemed grateful to see me...
...You tell me five or six companies that you think are due to go up...
Vol. 24 • May 1991 • No. 5
