Ben Stein's Diary / Help!
Stein, Benjamin J.
A meeting of my self-help group, Journey Into Self-Obsession. A young man across the room from me, Bill G., has a story to tell. "A guy I used to do drugs with, a guy named Warren, wanted to go down...
...It was lovely...
...How would you know that...
...His wife, the author of the commercial, hadmade brownies for me...
...She drank several swallows of her gin-andtonic and said, "In ten years, it'll be back to where it was...
...Dinner with my producer host and then with the liaison from the Denver tourism board...
...See...
...I can tell...
...You can't imagine how much money we made on our house on the beach when we sold in 1990...
...What's the point...
...Come out here and bring Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz with you...
...I tried to be a freelance novelist," he said...
...Dachau is a central fact of the century, maybe of man's existence on the planet...
...So Warren is bleeding all over the car and moaning, and there's Brotman Hospital right near the MGM lot, only the streets are all triangular and weird in Culver City, and Sammy's totally lost, and then he sees a whole block filled with police cars with their sirens going and their lights flashing, and he pulls over to a guy in a Highway Patrol outfit, and says he's got a guy who's shot in the car, and it turns out that it's just a location...
...I have a great idea for you," I said...
...No, it's true," Dotty said...
...She told me she was a marketing executive from E-Systems, whatever that is...
...People can just watch TV, I guess...
...But, wow, people there in Europe do some bad things...
...You can't win if you're not at the table.' Joan Didion said that...
...Republicans are always talking about how great private enterprise is, but I notice that the ones who talk about it the most are the ones with foundation money paying the mortgage...
...It might be only eight years," she said...
...I hope you don't have a big mortgage...
...It had a warm, cheery vibe...
...I started to sniffle softly into my ice water...
...He paused over his soup and asked me what it was like being a writer...
...If there were major brainos in conservative thought hustling and pitching and writing all day, pretty soon they'd make an impression...
...Well, then, your day wasn't a total loss...
...Maybe a team of Turks and Brazilians and Dutch could ride around the county in armored cars and give us a little law and order...
...A Daniel come to judgment...
...Why don't you use poison...
...I'll give you genius...
...Or somewhere far from crack dealers...
...At the end of our Journey session, some of us said a prayer for Warren, and then we talked about the way things are in Los Angeles...
...I have an attack of rats," I said truthfully...
...I fell asleep and dreamed that I saw Dwight Eisenhower in plus-fours and Richard Nixon as a young man sitting at a desk studying some document about building highways...
...In these last couple of months, start planning a conference on great achievements in American culture by minority women...
...No money for reading anymore...
...She had just returned from a trip to Germany, Switzerland, and Italy to visit her beau, an aging rock star...
...I meant to get your thoughts on what I should do after I leave government," he said...
...We shall overcome...
...He toyed with his thick ponytail, and then he started to cry...
...I just know it," she said...
...I stayed in a famous hotel called the Brown Palace, a triangular building in downtown Denver...
...A guy I used to do drugs with, a guy named Warren, wanted to go down to Culver City, near what used to be MGM, to buy some crack...
...It's like this whole city's playing a Street Fighter or a Ninja video game, and without any warning, we've just switched to the next higher level, where it's a lot more violent, and a lot more unforgiving, and things happen faster...
...I also read about how a TV big shot in more southerly Malibu, about twenty miles from here, had been attacked in his home by four transients who beat him and left him for dead...
...It's true...
...They leave their wretched droppings all over the house...
...I hope this is one of your jokes," I said...
...I could sit on a chair and read a magazine while I waited for a meeting or ducked in out of the rain...
...I'm the only actor in the spot...
...On the way back to my house, I stopped at the grocery store in Trancas...
...They're shooting a movie, the guy's an extra, and he doesn't have a clue about anything...
...Tommy asked me what was new at the beach...
...Thursday H ere I am on the set, playing a teacher talking about Denver...
...Tuesday B ack in town at the Shoreham Towers, I was walking Miss Trixie when I came upon Dotty, my partly disabled friend...
...We know they like that food...
...Well, I guess such aplomb and tact is what gets her the big dollar...
...Colorado is the only state in the union which now has as part of its state law that you can't have a cause of action if you're fired because of 'sexual orientation.' It's really not fair, because Denver voted against the measure by two to one, and all the other places in the state except for Aspen are the ones who passed it, only we get all the blame...
...On our way back to Munich, we saw a whole bunch of beautiful horse farms and wildflowers, and that cheered me right up again...
...To Idaho, or maybe Montana...
...Michael asked...
...After that, it all went to hell...
...I felt safe there with Eisenhower's ghost...
...That's when I bought," I said, looking pitiful...
...I wonder how I apply to the Security Council for some help...
...Friday Lunch at Talesai with my pal Michael, a moderately high official of the Bush Administration who's going to lose his job...
...rat trap, it springs shut, and they aren't caught...
...See, that's what I keep saying...
...Because I don't know what the rats want to eat...
...I tried putting out various kinds of poison, and that didn't work...
...Libraries are a low priority," the friendly woman said...
...It's a great job," I said, "but it's a little lonely, and you often feel as if everyone has friends except you...
...It's fun...
...I pity the people who bought then...
...Well, we've already had a few convention cancellations, but we've also gained a few conventions from fundamentalist groups, so maybe it all evens out...
...I told you...
...Dotty, it's shameful that you didn't know about this until a few days ago...
...At the checkout counter, I read about rumors that the U.S...
...I tried to make up plots by smoking a lot of cigarettes and trying to make up novel ways to kill people...
...was about to send in troops to keep the peace in Somalia...
...I picked Tommy and Mammy up at the airport...
...That's a good thought," I said...
...She's 30, but a beautiful, blonde, sunny-looking 30...
...We're getting totally hammered by the gays and lesbians because of this new ballot measure," the convention official said...
...Just another little outpost of civilization lost as the game ratchets up and gets meaner and more unforgiving...
...I doubt if we can count on Bill Clinton...
...Women agents, women magazine editors, women who love me, women who hate me, women relatives, women bill collectors...
...Why not try what the rats eat out of the traps...
...On the return flight on Continental—a very much underrated airline—I sat next to a lovely middle-aged blonde woman...
...The point is that when the lord highexecutioner strolls down the hall to ask for your desk, you can then say, 'Well, fine, but I'm going straight to Maureen Dowd with the story about how the Hillary Clinton administration stopped funding of an international conference about the achievements of multicultural women.' That should keep you on the job a few months longer, at least...
...Hmmm," I said...
...Why don't you kill them, Daddy...
...Snow was falling lightly on the airport as our plane touched down...
...Inside, there were few shoppers...
...We ate in a small restaurant with a nautical motif...
...Michael chewed thoughtfully, but was obviously not buying...
...We're so glad we got out," she said...
...She lives in Denver...
...My calls are almost all from women...
...room's full of shooting cases, and the nurses won't even look up, and when he finally gets someone to get Warren, Warren is dead...
...The show had a startling number of clips of my little acting jobs, and the host and hostess were kind—except when the hostess hefted my book about Michael Milken and said, "Financial fraud...
...It's no longer open, though, and the librarian who came by told me the county had closed the Point Dume library for good...
...Have you ever heard of it...
...It sounds really bo-ring...
...I loved Munich, but did you know that during World War II, the Germans killed a lot of Jews...
...Wednesday A trip to Denver, Colorado, to perform in a TV commercial for City of Denver tourism...
...Come to the private sector...
...If the real estate bust ever ended, half of the city would just move out...
...After several hard hours of work, I was released to my room...
...How I love that boy...
...She patted my hand...
...It's pretty amazing...
...They've built a little schoolroom set, and I'm pretending I don't know anything about Denver and telling whopping lies about there being no decent restaurants or places to stay in Denver...
...Exactly," Dotty agreed...
...That sounds serious...
...Come to Hollywood," I said...
...Come to the table...
...I didn't let that Dachau place get me down, though...
...Meanwhile, Warren's stopped making any noise, and Brotman is only a few feet away, and the emergency Benjamin J. Stein, author most recently of A License to Steal: The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation (Simon & Schuster), is is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...It had good books on tape for the long drive intc town...
...They take the bait right out of th...
...When you get away from New York and Washington and L.A., people out there in America are incredibly kind and sweet...
...It's amazing to me how many women call me...
...I guess all the men are out at some big fraternity of successful men that I didn't get to join because I used to work for Nixon...
...I was in Hollywood for a while," Michael said...
...She and her hubby used to live in Los Angeles...
...Maybe I should become a consultant...
...God, I hope that if I ever have children, they won't be as dumb as I am...
...As far as I can tell, we no longer have a mayor or county government, at least none that does anything to protect us...
...Is that why Jews don't like Germans...
...It's decorated in 1950s modem, with a lot of glass brick and square, almost Bauhaus chairs and sofas...
...Monday you want genius...
...There's this place outside Munich called `Dachau,' and it's this horrible-looking place where they used to take Jews and work them to death and do horrible experiments on them, and it's really creepy...
...It was surrounded by Mexican day laborers looking for work, as usual...
...How are conservatives ever going to have any influence on the media if they don't come out here where mass culture lives and breathes...
...It's just one small classroom with a few hundred books, some magazines, books on tape, and librarians who know every customer's name...
...I went back to my room and returned some calls...
...I don't know what rats want with their poison...
...It used to be Dwight Eisenhower's summer White House, and I could easily imagine Mamie Doud strolling down the hall in a full skirt and white gloves while Dwight practiced with a putter in the hall...
...I would do that for hours, and I came up with some pretty good ways, but I decided that it probably wasn't for me, anyway...
...It's a hard grind for the liberals, too...
...I changed clothes and came roaring back to the same studio, a TV station actually, to appear on a talk show called "Good Afternoon Colorado...
...I loved Munich," she said as she walked her dog, Lysistrata, and made little cooing noises...
...A young producer met me at the gate...
...It was a hard grind...
...Bill G., who can't be more than 25, looked sorrowfully around the dark ex-classroom we use for our meeting...
...We sat at a corner table where no one could hear us as we talked and ate our Pad Thai and chicken with cashews...
...Ten years...
...She looked at me with acute pity...
...Maybe we in Los Angeles could appeal to the United Nations for an international peace-keeping force...
...So his friend Sammy was driving him, and they went to the corner where the crack dealers hang out, and Warren says he wants a rock, and the dealer says, !Okay, that's fifteen,' and Warren hesitates a minute and says, `Hey, it's always ten,' and starts to reach for his wallet, and 'BOOM,' the dealer takes out a pistol and shoots him in the chest...
...I know," she said...
...It's supposed to be a hard grind," I said...
...I'll miss that library...
...Because they're so damned clever," I said...
...Dorothy looked genuinely sad, and didn't give me her patented sneer, as she often does...
...There's a whole nation that isn't mean, somewhere east of Palm Springs and west of Passaic and Alexandria...
...Afterward, I walked up the stairs to the tiny Point Dume, Malibu library...
Vol. 26 • February 1993 • No. 2
