Ben Stein's Diary/The Road to Surfdom
Stein, Benjamin J.
Tuesday 1 t's a beautiful day. The sun is dazzling. The sky is a perfect light blue. The waves are crashing on the beach below my house in Trancas, so it's time to go out to get some yoghurt. Or...
...Right," I said...
...Skateboarding makes an absolutely horrible noise, but today I decided to shine it on...
...He'll have your throat out...
...It would surely be safe there, another twenty miles past Trancas, even if all of Los Angeles exploded...
...Through the loudspeaker in his car, the solo driver sang, in a good voice, "And more, much more than this, I did it my way...
...Then I thought that if talk would do, so much the better...
...Ain't nothing good about being homeless," he said...
...Do you know what year you were born...
...I was struggling and struggling and Tommy, in his little blue and white suit with its shorts, came over and said, "I'll help you, Daddy...
...Because," I said, "that's who was President when you were born...
...I can get with it," he said, throwing in a little slug of street jive...
...No," she answered...
...Now, who was President before Reagan...
...Wednesday Off to pick up my son at his preschool...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...Tough life, kid...
...Pat Lalama, on KCBS, reported breathlessly from Long Beach that a gang of black men had just pulled two white men off their motorcycles, beaten them, and shot them both in the head...
...She was 28, she said...
...The sheriffs said they would be right over...
...I can understand the fury of those rioters," T. said...
...In Thousand Oaks, which police and firemen of the white persuasion like to call home...
...Tommy worked with his clippers and smaller branches...
...Let's try to figure it out...
...Are you just stupid, or what...
...Like a rebellion, ongoing all of the time...
...She wore a thin T-shirt and satin shorts, and had her hair in a ponytail...
...The only thing is," said the woman, still outside, "that I was sort of, well, working when he picked me up...
...On the radio, there was talk of sixty out-of-control fires...
...After about nine at night, Mulholland and Outpost, where Alex lives, might as well be on the moon...
...I decided I would stay the night...
...I was just trying to make my rent,"she said...
...She was shivering...
...His extra strength was exactly what I needed...
...A call from my pal A. "Where should we move...
...Warehouse roofs...
...I called 911 and said a crazy person was threatening me with his attack dog...
...Lunch at Malibu La Scala with T., who is the husband of F., a genuine legend in Hollywood...
...Mayor Bradley said there was an excuse and started to blame it all on the police again...
...A man tried to rape me," she said...
...Mommy on her computer in her home office overlooking the pool...
...One actually took her left hand and escorted her as if she were his date...
...It's twenty-five feet long, and he uses it to tie up his Nana (a.k.a...
...What's the matter with you...
...But you and F. must make more thanfive million a year, at least," I said, messing up my syntax in my excitement...
...Canada...
...Then he smiled broadly and gave a thumbs-up to the other two, who also smiled and gave a thumbs-up...
...The wife is the bustling, teary, but always chin-up modern day Li'l Orphan Annie that audiences love...
...Into my car with Trixie for the long haul back to the beach...
...Generally speaking," said Samuel Johnson, "work is the surest and safest cure for any unsound mental condition...
...He picked me up at Hollywood and Western and brought me up here to, you know...
...At home, with Trixie next to me on the bed, I watched the looting and the fires...
...I resisted the temptation to give her one of the two mink coats that I bought Alex long ago and which she now will not wear...
...I have a gun in my apartment, 44 The American Spectator July 1992 and I started to load it...
...Oregon...
...Enclosed is my check or money order made payable to Liberty Fund...
...My dog'11 have you and your dog down before you know it...
...We decided that we should go to dinner at the Point Hueneme Naval Air Station...
...Still, as I told her, she was not allowed to be raped, as far as the law said...
...got in my car and drove over to the home of my fugitive wife...
...I asked...
...Fine...
...Okay, I thought...
...Okay," she said...
...Utah...
...A few hard drinkers applauded...
...Please allow approximately 4 weeks for delivery...
...But why do the law-abiding people have to be the ones to move...
...France...
...What has Chief Gates told them...
...Oh, what a scene...
...They gave out a gorgeous blue-white flash as they popped...
...She was washing clothes at midnight...
...Inside, I ordered a chocolate non-fat...
...Please send me a copy of your current catalogue...
...the man said, apropos of nothing that I could tell...
...Very far from Hollywood and Western...
...Don't call me stupid," I said...
...He cried because he had lost it...
...I may have that a little off, but you get the point, right...
...Daddy looking on from the deck...
...I could change at any minute...
...Maybe this is how it will be from now on...
...Arizona...
...Warehouses...
...Jane went off to the Zuma Ranch Market, which is run by Koreans...
...There were two men in one and one man in another...
...Name Address City State Zip Mail to: LIBERTY FUND, INC...
...A call from my pal D. "Where should we move...
...That's very impressive," I said...
...I'll show you who's crazy," the man said...
...On TV, it looks as if every building in South Central Los Angeles is on fire...
...But it's fragile," T. said...
...Peace-out," I said, wagging my left index and middle fingers in a sort of se-cret V-for-victory sign that I saw on a hip TV show recently...
...Plus, you don't like my Rottweiler...
...I want to show those people that those of us who have a few dollars still care...
...I turned on the radio, and heard about rioting in South Central Los Angeles...
...At Tommy's house, which I bought as a bachelor sixteen years ago, Elena—Alex's live-in housekeeper, who makes breakfast in bed for everyone but me—let me in warily...
...Blacks kicking him in the head...
...he asked...
...We're out of vanilla, too," the girl said...
...I settled for a small dish of ice cream, and as I ate, in walked Darah, a lovely 14-year-old child...
...They totally are scared about losing their standard of living...
...I went to the front door...
...I think that's the bottom line here...
...By 'working,' do you mean 'hooking...
...Then, off to buy him a chocolate-chip cookie...
...Hardcover $30.00 0-86597-100-5...
...I guess so," she said...
...Then reports of fires...
...Saturday 1 t's all over, now, baby blue...
...I can't recall how it went, but his delivery was pretty good...
...At 4:00 a.m., I was awakened by the smell of acrid smoke coming through my bedroom window...
...The station then replays the most irrelevant statement of all time by George Bush...
...At one in the morning, there was a furious barking from the dogs...
...Maybe you'd like to just apologize and say you had a bad day before the police get here," I said...
...fell asleep...
...Then she got out and entered things in her computer while she looked out at the pool and shouted occasional encouragement at Tommy...
...On the Ventura Freeway, the pace of the cars picked up by visible degrees...
...Next to our table, two couples were necking violently as they watched the TV...
...Tommy splashing like young Hyperion in his pool...
...Stealing his wallet...
...The shopkeeper was crying, she said...
...never, ever blame the people setting the fires...
...It's an authentic country road, once you get past the shopping center and the loathsome condos...
...His sister had been shot in a robbery a year before...
...I figure that with the residuals, the acting wages, and his deal, the two of them are good for about six to eight million per annum...
...We have sheriffs in West Hollywood...
...On the radio, a helicopter pilot says that Martin Luther King would be turning over in his grave if he could see what was happening on Martin Luther King Boulevard...
...In the street light, she looked amazingly like Joan Didion...
...So, that's what this is all about...
...She sat on my stoop and I stood with her...
...Furniture stores lit like torches...
...And I plan to do something about it...
...Sorry...
...I think so, too," he said...
...In the meantime, I contemplated my options...
...Lunch with a few friends from Journey into Self-Obsession, my self-help group...
...Department M211 7440 North Shadeland Avenue Indianapolis, IN 46250 The American Spectator July 1992 47 Hill's Rats by Terry Eastland safe...
...424 + xlii pages, index...
...Bueller, Bueller," she said when she saw me...
...Hubby is head of a wildly successful production company...
...The most vivid were buildings with electrical transformers exploding...
...They rescue him from the crude caricature that prevails in history textbooks, and restore his place among America's most influential liberal thinkers...
...The LAPD had retreated, leaving the streets to the hoodlums...
...A whole 46 The American Spectator July 1992 bunch of his pals are coming over to swim with him, and the mothers are all going to walk over to Mulholland and watch the fires...
...I went to my apartment...
...The President called out the National Guard and the Marines...
...Media helicopters were circling overhead describing what was happening...
...Tell me something, Darah," I said...
...The kindness of strangers...
...I think the last thing we need at this point is to have someone bring up race as an issue," Bree Walker, a very confused woman, said...
...What...
...I went to call 911 again...
...Meaningless platitudes when what we need is the 82nd Airborne...
...Appliance stores fully engulfed...
...In the enlisted men's club, called The Point or something just as cute, we watched the biggest-screen TV I have ever seen, with several enlisted men and their wholesome, rural Pennsylvania–type families...
...I got to a branch, under the hot sun, that was so thick that I couldn't cut it...
...Wonderful come out and stay with me...
...The owner forgot to order yogurt...
...He was upset because he'd lost his precious rope...
...England...
...I'd be high and dry if I did...
...Okay...
...I met a woman business owner on Pacific Coast Highway in front of Zooma(sic) Sushi...
...Thursday S tunning news all morning about fires, fires, and more fires...
...Paperback $7.50 0-86597-101-3 FREEDOM AND THE LAW Expanded Third Edition By Bruno Leoni "Bruno Leoni weaves together the teachings of economics, political science, and law with a profound grasp of the institutions that a society of ordered liberty requires...
...He held the shears and squeezed them together as I did...
...On TV, scary-looking blacks and Hispanics interrupt their looting to throw punches at newsmen...
...Would you like for me to call the police...
...Do you know who was President when you were born...
...I'm not going to apologize," he said angrily...
...She looked at me cagily...
...She was from Ohio, down on her luck...
...Gangs torching palm trees, newsstands, grocery stores, anything that would burn...
...Denmark...
...As I stood in the lobby, studying my mail, such a pitiful lot as it was, an older man whom I knew stood at the lobby door holding his Rottweiler on a leash...
...Just trying to make my way in the world with the economy as bad as it is...
...What has happened to them...
...dollars...
...I turned down Malibu Canyon Road...
...The blades went slowly but surely through the wood, and the huge, two-inch thick branch fell onto the stone steps with a satisfying, solid thud...
...As far as he's concerned, everyone will always love him and Daddy will always be there to buy him treats...
...GET US OUT OF HERE AND BACK TO THOUSAND OAKS...
...In fact, just thinking that snipers might be out there in our own city sort of contradicts the whole idea of what a city or a nation is supposed to be...
...Going through his pockets...
...The shopping center was deserted...
...Off to the southeast, the sky over Los Angeles, fifty miles away, was flickering with flames, and columns of smoke rose against the stars...
...Not guilty, except for a hung jury on one count...
...A call from my pal, Steve...
...Right," she said...
...Instead, I gave her an ancient pink Brooks Brothers shirt from my days at the Alpha Delta Phi house at Columbia...
...Friday Ah, but then there is Hollywood...
...I bought pruning shears to trim back some awesome, scary branches that were interfering with my walkway to my pathetic hedge...
...The dispatcher said a police car would be right over...
...There are meadows and oak trees and glowing cliffs...
...Revealing his overall development, this collection shows he was uniquely sensitive to the relations between liberty, property, tradition, and progress, as well as to the need for a hardheaded realism to counter the "schemes" of those who feel more intensely than they think...
...The dog was straining at his leash looking vicious and scary...
...I had in mind something like the Decameron...
...Back at the KCBS "anchor desk," an anchorwoman named Bree Walker scolded Pat Lalama...
...This is an astounding state of affairs: We can count on government to help out Kuwait, but we can't count on government to maintain law in our nation...
...He has perfect little Aryan features and a ready, confident smile...
...You wrote an article about the Shoreham Towers, and now you're the god of the building, and I've lived here for twenty-four years and nobody even knows who I am...
...Another young woman, a well-to-do 15-year-old who has been waging a war against her weight for about a lifetime while receiving roughly $2,000 in psychiatric care per week, said that the riots made her feel bad about herself "They like jam me up inside and make me feel fat...
...Elena, the ancient Mexican housekeeper) and his Mommy, pretending that he's holding them for ransom...
...Or for me...
...I asked...
...Any old way, Tommy and I went to the hardware store this morning...
...No way," Alex said...
...Do you know him...
...Yes, you have to," I said...
...This is the way nations come to an end...
...A man clubbed to the ground...
...All right," I said, "how about some vanilla yogurt...
...A teacher and I found it on top of his cubby...
...A Not Guilty verdict was my guess...
...I thought it must be a brush fire nearby...
...Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...While I rested at Tommy's house, The American Spectator July 1992 45 which I still own, there was a report on the television on the Rodney King case...
...Come to think of it, these guys are criminals, and nobody's enforcing the law...
...She wassmoking a cigarette and crying at the same time...
...He had been dragged from his car and shot thirty times...
...She thought for a really long time, and then said, "Johnny Carson...
...On the TV above the sushi bar there were endless, nonstop portraits of new fires...
...As we headed back to the car, two LAPD black-and-whites cruised by...
...Mayor Bradley still supinely, pathetically insisting that things are almost under control...
...We genteel folks would all sit out here and tell stories while the plague raged in the city...
...And Nana and Mommy will always be available to be tied up...
...The main sushi chef said that he was glad the police were acquitted...
...At Scallywag's Yogurt, in the Zuma Plaza, there is the usual knot of young people enjoying the parking lot by skateboarding on it...
...We went in past the Pepper-dine students and sat down to eat...
...Liquor store fronts...
...Darah asked...
...Are you crazy...
...He brought it to preschool to show his colleagues...
...What's your problem...
...Come to think of it, no one did that for my father...
...I have to get ready for Tommy's swim party...
...She thought for a long time, pursing her mouth, making faces, and finally said, "Reagan...
...There, huddled against the night air, was a pitiful-looking woman...
...Amazingly, this has happened twice before...
...No police anywhere...
...Hmmm, I thought...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...She was out of town...
...Furious...
...Now, who's President right now...
...Why not...
...Nineteen seventy-eight," she said proudly...
...Hmmm...
...A black homeless man offered to wash my car windows...
...He looked intently at me...
...A cousin in Koreatown, near downtown, had been shot...
...Robert Hessen, Hoover Institution, Stanford University Chiefly remembered as one of the founding fathers of sociology, William Graham Sumner was also a strong classical liberal...
...You're upset because I wrote an article about this building...
...I started to walk towards him, so that he might speak to me if he wished...
...Come to think of it, maybe that's not really what should be called calm...
...Okay...
...The man started to tell a joke about going to jail...
...Friday I drove over to my condo with Trixie in tow...
...He's light blond, pale, with long blond eyelashes, and deep-blue eyes...
...Good night...
...On the way, I stopped at a shopping center to get money from a cash machine...
...I wonder if any of them ever walked into a pastry shop the way Tommy does and knew that everyone there would love him...
...The reason I can see and actually feel their fear is that F. and I have a good life, but it's fragile...
...Everyone else was scared, jazzed, peering, trying to be calm...
...Mayor Bradley came on the radio and said his usual idiocies: blame the jury system...
...The streets are calm again, even though buildings are still smoldering and snipers are still shooting...
...The pretty waitresses oohed and ahhed over him...
...I'm going to invest ten thousand dollars each in a Korean store and then in a black store...
...blame the cops...
...You should be on Johnny Carson," I said, offering him a dollar...
...Big huge fires...
...The last days of Pompeii...
...I called the lunatic on the house phone...
...Liquor stores were being looted...
...Two officers, a gringo and a Hispanic, led the woman into their cruiser with genuine tenderness...
...The police came...
...And who was before Bush...
...ON LIBERTY, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS: THE ESSENTIAL ESSAYS OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER NEW By William Graham Sumner Edited by Robert C. Bannister "Students and scholars of American political thought should welcome the publication of Sumner's finest writings...
...One was dead at the scene...
...Plus, I can understand where the fear of those guys in South Central, and the aircraft engineers who have been laid off, comes from...
...Everyone in the cars was straining forward...
...called Mommy and insisted that she and Young Mr...
...The two cars, the boat in the driveway...
...B ack in Malibu, a call from Alex...
...I wonder if any of them had fathers who bought cookies for them and then met Mommy for swimming...
...Why can't the gangsters move...
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...I almost bought a really big lot in Bel Air for twenty-two million and built a big house there...
...I asked...
...Yes, we have a plantation in South Carolina and a big house in Pacific Palisades, but that could change...
...Next year it could be three million, and I would be just where those laid-off engineers are...
...I saw it coming a mile away...
...he asked...
...The police behaving with insane restraint...
...God, it's deserted up here...
...Why not...
...It wasn't...
...Bush," she answered...
...If you don't get out of my way right now," the man said, "my Rottweiler'll tear your throat out...
...A verdict in the Rodney King case out in faraway Thousand Oaks...
...Why...
...I feel like I'm not pretty and my face is broken out and I hate all my clothes, just because of these people in South Central Los Angeles...
...Or something...
...Or yogurt...
...Bad, bad fires...
...Not really," I answered...
...An old man from the synagogue, a man who had a folding box business in South Central Los Angeles for twenty years, had gone down there to tell his employees to go home and be Modern editions of classic works for today's readers...
...Mommy came home and went swimming with Tommy...
...Where's Gary Cooper...
...Scary...
...Where should we move...
...Where...
...A man in a helicopter said there was no excuse for looting and beating unarmed motorists...
...No buses, no stores, no traffic...
...My pal Jane came over...
...You happen to be a very rude and arrogant person...
...Somewhere south of the Harbor and Santa Monica Freeways, gangs of blacks were dragging white and Asian people from cars and beating them...
...I'm so sorry," said the girl behind the counter, "but we're out of chocolate yogurt...
...One woman said she knew from the riots that in her past life she must have been a rebel with Spartacus...
...I do it, and then he wouldn't pay me, and he told me he'd kill me, and I jumped out of the car and ran to your house...
...It was as if she were one of their sisters...
Vol. 25 • July 1992 • No. 7
