Ben Stein's Diary/Hooked
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY HOOKED by Benjamin J. Stein Wednesday About a week ago, my pal B., a suc- cessful small businessman in Dallas, called to ask a favor. "My absolutely best astrologer I've ever...
...She insisted on going into any store that sold short, tight black dresses or skirts...
...Tuesday A callback for the part of the mean- spirited nerd, who manages the hypothetical department store in Hartford, Connecticut...
...I took Tiffany to Beverly Hills...
...That helps...
...Thank you, Joe McCarthy, for your inspiring example...
...The smog was overwhelming...
...Then I read my lines again...
...She had bought an entire suitcase filled with lingerie and skimpy exercise outfits, as well as many costume jewelry rings...
...When I stabbed my boyfriend the first time," she said...
...You start to feel envious (my particular malady) and then you feel like maybe you'll chuck it all and go home and sulk...
...I call it spiritual calisthenics...
...The producers laughed insanely...
...I think there's some connection here," I said...
...Well, it's not nice to intentionally mess up the house...
...We drove through Bel-Air and she stared at the huge mansions for a time...
...If you don't stop that," I said, "I will be forced to spank you, even though I don't want to...
...As you do, you think that when you first came to Los Angeles, long ago, and met many of the folks who work here, they were just executives...
...I don't like it much myself," I said...
...But Tiffany's has a unique meaning...
...Tiffany," I said, "remember that per26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 fume you liked so much at Tiffany's...
...Tommy will be four in mid-August...
...Far, far better to have one's dreams and sit drunk in a tavern dreaming them than to collide with the real world of publishing...
...That's all very true," I agreed, "and I don't want to be forced to spank you...
...Asked by Symington if everyone was a Communist, if, for example, Symington was a Communist, Tailgunner Joe said, in a whiny monotone that still cracks me up, "That's terribly funny, isn't it...
...Some girls who were walking the streets, if you know what I mean...
...Yes, but a house doesn't hurt when you mess it up and I hurt when you spank me," he said...
...Do you do other things you don't want to do...
...Maybe it was that when she got off the airplane and was waiting to get her pitiful suitcases off the carousel, she asked me to go buy her a bottle of Evian...
...Well, we shall see...
...Yes, I'll be there in a flash...
...It could well go back before Polish immigrants started changing their names to Kay...
...Thank you, gods of the tube...
...Nor is any advertising...
...Still, when I read I did my "That's terribly funny, isn't it...
...Then, after he left, when I was about ten, my mother used to leave us alone while she was out drinking and screwing around...
...Surprise, surprise, I am trying out to play a Big Nerd, only this time a mean-spirited one, who is the manager of a department store in Hartford, Connecticut...
...You park your car...
...No, I think the giveaway was when she said, as we were leaving The Source, "Do you think there's any way I could make a thousand dollars while I'm here...
...For example, when I was waiting to pick him up, he started tossing things around the house...
...Here is what happens when you try out for a part in a major sitcom pilot...
...Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be authors...
...When I was summoned to read, I added the famed line that Joe McCarthy threw at a mocking "Sanctimonious Stu" Symington during the Army-McCarthy Hearings...
...This kid, I suspect, is the illegitimate child of Thomas Jefferson...
...Now I was the one staring straight ahead and hyperventilating...
...How frightened you must have been," That was a little too mean, I guess, and she started to stare fixedly ahead while breathing in a highly abnormal way, sort of hyperventilating...
...We walked around inside Tiffany's for a few minutes...
...She was positively in awe of the fact that a famous store had the same name she did, and could not stop talking about it...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 27...
...Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...I beat out that much better actor...
...I learned this from David Eisenhower, although in a very different form...
...What kind of trouble was that...
...See, Tiffany's has a reputation for beautiful, expensive, classy jewels, and that's why so many girls are named Tiffany...
...Now, behind the desks of power are boys and girls who look as if they should be in a daycare center...
...It's pretty rare, though, to be able to afford one of these...
...From men making all kinds of remarks cutting me down," she said...
...Is that why so many girls are named Kay...
...I shouldn't, but I do...
...The real problems start with the dedication, which is explicitly and precisely what I did not want...
...Oh, thank you, Stanislaysky...
...No publicity of any size is planned...
...The main one I have been doing lately is to forgive everyone who has wronged me, first thing in the morning, preferably before I get out of bed...
...No, I never have," she said...
...You have got to be kidding," she said...
...I don't like it when men are real cutting and sarcastic to me...
...How well I know these halls...
...I studied my sides in the lobby along with the other boys and girls...
...One of my rivals was an actor who played a much bigger role than I did in Ghost-busters II...
...It pays to have watched TV in 1954...
...But she was unnerved about having had to wait for me on Sepulveda Boulevard...
...gig again...
...I start next Monday, and I'm totally ready...
...Sorry...
...Thank you, God...
...His whole world is neutral principles neutrally applied...
...How would you like it if I bought you a big bottle of it and sent it to you in Dallas...
...Then when I sort of went nuts and stabbed all of the furniture in my apartment with a knife and they took me away to the hospital...
...Like clockwork, like answered prayers, the phone rang...
...The part is mine...
...I thought about that for a while...
...This time we were in a hallway at Fox...
...How many different names I have seen on these doors...
...God help me, but I love winning at things...
...I expected him to take a Temporary Restraining Order from his pocket, but instead he put on his bathing suit...
...I'm back at Fox, and I like the halls still, but it's scary...
...When I was in the hospital, I talked to the shrink about that a lot...
...How about being an aerobics instructor...
...Now, he tells me, he has sold a script which may be shooting in a few months...
...Because of Kay Jewelers...
...At my lowly level...
...He thinks that's why I got into trouble and got put into the hospital in the first place...
...This is not a jail, because it has a door, and I can leave any time I want...
...This guy, I am sorry to say, is a real pro...
...I love these guys...
...How did I know...
...Maybe it was because she was obsessed with finding the natural food restaurants of the stars, and could tell me exactly how many calories everything on the menu at The Source had...
...Daddy, it's not nice to spank people...
...As you walk down the hall to try to find the office, you think to yourself, "Hey, these guys might very possibly pay me enough to pay off my mortgage, just for standing.in front of a camera and saying a few lines and being myself...
...Is it a nice store...
...Yes, and thank you, agent...
...Nor is the book in any bookstores besides my neighborhood Malibu Books, where they know me...
...Can it be that I was ever so dumb as to think that there was money and glamour in book writing...
...All of these are indicia of extremely low-class behavior, but none by itself is hooker thinking...
...She insisted on holding them in front of her and saying, "How does this work...
...He may seem smart, but where is his first piano concerto...
...He told me that his distinguished grandfather, when angry at people, would write their names down on a piece of paper and throw it in the trash...
...I was thinking these thoughts and making a long list of people at the publishing house to forgive when suddenly, mirabile visu, the little light on the phone flashed...
...How do you get one of these...
...It's not just that the jacket is exactly what I did not want, nor that the photo of the author is likewise what I did not want...
...Well, if you don't want to, then why do you do it...
...Can it be that I was delirious with glee at selling my first novel, lo these fifteen years ago...
...Thank you, Barry Diller...
...That's why there are so few girls named K-Mart, or Fed-Co...
...I still seem to be up against that guy from GB II...
...They said it was from your father being sarcastic...
...Heiresses go to the water fountain...
...I drove back to my little condo with 'Dixie...
...I see you're in jail, and richly deserved," I said...
...Or you can be a junk bond salesman and make ten million a year, and that helps...
...She's really done wonders for me, and I'd appreciate it if you would show her around Los Angeles...
...The only problem was that Tiffany, who was twenty-three and quite attractive, had, in addition to her no doubt phenomenal astrological forecasting abilities, the textbook hooker mentality...
...Oh, happy day...
...No, I think the name Kay probably goes back farther than Kay Jewelers," I said...
...I have been talking to him for years...
...We walked down the fabled Rodeo Drive...
...I talked to the head of HBO, waved to Larry Gordon, and visited with Peter Chernin, who is now a major honcho at Fox after having left the unfeeling publishing house now torturing me by abandoning my latest book...
...There are about two dozen authors who get treated well...
...He's a fine actor, and I "like his work...
...A stone miracle...
...After Tommy left (I gave him fif- ty bucks and told him to have a good time while I watched cartoons), I lay in bed and hoped I would get the part...
...There are some bad girls there," she said...
...That's why I like to cut men...
...Maybe it was because she started hair-spraying her hair in my car before we'd left the airport parking lot...
...I'm sorry you had to be anywhere near them," I said...
...I hope it's true...
...You drive, with Tkixie in the back seat, to the headquarters of the production company, located in a large office building in Beverly Hills...
...Now that I think of it, of course you could taste it...
...How many times I have passed down them with my tin cup in hand, begging for a deal for a script, for a treatment, for anything to keep the wolf at bay...
...She liked that and it kept her happy for quite a long time...
...I went in and read for the part...
...Now they are principals of a vastly successful independent production company...
...In a new shopping arcade, which boasts a pasta hangout owned by Meshulam Riklis, who (I suspect) taught Michael Milken about bonds, there is a certain jewelry store...
...Monday And still more, thank you...
...she asked...
...Anyway, I was up against the guy from GB II, who kept walking around the hall reading silently and making various body gestures...
...You mean you've never heard of Tiffany's...
...It takes a lot of work this morning, because I have just gotten the "finished copy" of my latest novel...
...Like pushups or jumping jacks, only with the spirit...
...It gets worse...
...Later that night, I called B. He swore he had known nothing about her life outside the charts...
...iffany's last stop was at the Sher-I man Oaks Galleria, which she had been dying to see ever since she saw it on a soap opera...
...This is starting to worry me...
...At my pool, there is a little playhouse with a big wide door and little windows with wooden dowels resembling bars...
...He ran inside and stuck his little head through the bars...
...Now that I remember it, she was wearing a beeper," he recalled, "but I thought that must show what a great astrologer she is...
...No, Daddy," he said...
...I left her off and picked her up at a bus stop across the street some hours later...
...I told her it all worked great, and it did, but her real thrill was across the street...
...I rested and then took the devil boy, my incredibly cute son Tommy, swimming...
...That is, the publisher put in a dedication I did not want, and which he knew I did not want...
...As I made my way back to my car, aguard in front of the executive offices stopped me...
...I got there early and ate lunch at the Fox commissary...
...Thank you, casting people...
...It was my agent telling me that I had a major audition for a continuing part on a sitcom...
...Tramps ask for bottled water...
...Again they loved me...
...B. is the kind of friend who would rush into a burning building to save my dog Trixie, and sn naturally I was delighted to oblige...
...My absolutely best astrologer I've ever had, the one who told me that I was going to leave off being a student and become a master and travel through the cosmos, wants to move to L.A...
...Well," I said, "you can be the producer of a successful sitcom and make fifty thousand a week...
...Thank you, thank you, thank you...
...Friday Ihave this new program in my life...
...There is a store with my name...
...It looked as if you could taste it...
...My father used to talk to me like that," she said, "before he just took off and left...
...Wednesday "V et another callback...
...The rest, like me, are treated so insultingly by their publishers that it's a miracle there are not more murders of publishers by authors...
...She picked out a forty-thousand-dollar emerald she particularly liked, and then smelled Tiffany perfume, which she thought smelled particularly great (and it did...
Vol. 24 • August 1991 • No. 8
