Ben Stein's Diary /Ring, Ring, Ring
Stein, Benjamin J.
Wednesday W hen the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then I'll get lots of commercials, and my voice will be one of the stars ... Guess what? I'm in New York, to do a...
...Where are those bells that Q. talked about...
...It'll be all about a national bell ringing and chanting...
...CI...
...Hmmm," I said...
...When did people start looking like freaks...
...My part is only about ten percent of the total, maybe less, but it was still a stone solid thrill...
...Maybe I would soon be up there with him...
...It's supposed to stimulate my brain while I ride my bicycle," she said...
...He asks you for ketchup and you ask him if he wouldn't rather have nuclear bomb sauce...
...I'm to be on "Sonya Live" to talk about Clinton's tax plan and his attacks on the rich...
...The other participant in pants, Martin Mayer, who doesn't even know me, waded in to insist that I was in fact rich, no matter what I said...
...All night long I could not sleep, thinking about my carelessness...
...Good point, I said, and ordered the fish for dinner...
...I just like the work...
...that it made me proud, as the inventor of the formula, to see it flourishing in real life...
...The image of the cash machine and its sadistic message danced before my eyes...
...I can recall the smell of a girlfriend's hair from twenty years ago, but I can't remember a check big enough to put me into tilt from three days ago...
...Then he guided me to a seat in the bar where a young man with flinty eyes was waiting...
...I stopped at a huge grocery store to buy dog biscuits...
...Unable to know my real net worth except perhaps down to a fine screen of twenty million, as in four billion, three hundred and twenty million, for example...
...Well, a second one," she said...
...Driving up to the cash machine at my bank, I ran into M., a middleaged woman with a fair amount of mileage, recently dolled up with about a million dollars' worth of plastic surgery...
...Neuro-electronic brain stimulators all around, my people...
...No," I said...
...I never go anywhere without an accountant, and preferably two, because I like to know how much everything is going to cost me...
...Obviously, a disgraceful mistake by Great Western Bank...
...Q. left with his accountant, a former Air Force F-15 pilot who had decided to work with numbers instead of missiles...
...And the villain is . . . for the millionth time running . . . the businessman...
...But still, this scared me...
...The numbers come dancing off the page at me...
...I think I will have to live in a shoe from now on...
...It's real simple, folks...
...I see...
...At home I called the automated Great Western info line...
...You know...
...I flew back to Los Angeles next to a feminist from Vassar who was going to spend a year in Australia studying marine biology on the Great Barrier Reef...
...Well, I have to go now...
...Wednesday U p at the crack of dawn for the familiar trek over to CNN...
...Actually, it smells about like it did in the stinking, ptooey, Republican days...
...In the lobby, I spotted Q., with his trademark silver cigarette holder...
...As I leafed through the yearbook, I noticed that the people in my father's school some sixty-five years ago looked pretty much the way they did in 1962, when I got out of school...
...The beauty of this part is not just that it's for Coca-Cola, a big, 'successful company, but that I am the co-star, the foil really, for Dana Carvey, about the funniest man now living, and a major idol of mine...
...Anyway, I looked at my parents, pointed out that there was dust under the TV, and then left...
...Back came my card, and the cruelest words I have ever seen on a screen: THE AMOUNT YOU REQUESTED EXCEEDS YOUR AVAILABLE BALANCE Whaaat...
...My parents were their usual witty selves...
...It's really appalling that someone can forget as much as I have...
...This offer came up at the very last minute, sort of out of the blue, and here I am, flown over in lavish style, on American, with my own TV screen at my seat—where I watched a bewildering movie about crazy people in Palm Springs—and now ensconced in my room at the Parker Meridien, awaiting my limo...
...God hears all prayers...
...Htnmm...
...By then, a car was blocking my car near the cash machine...
...We talked for a while, in that dream state of semi-acting, semi–being real that is a talk show, and then I was off, still sputtering that the rich are not enemies of the state just for being rich...
...They buy a lot of it, and they buy it by the can...
...Friday ack in Hollywood, getting ready B for a beer commercial...
...So good at his interview for Windsor [a private school that costs an arm and a leg...
...What an original array of suspects...
...Hmrurn...
...I'm in New York, to do a Coca-Cola "industrial," which is a short film to be shown in-house to Coca-Cola drivers and salesmen as a way of introducing them to their company's new ads, products, and promotions...
...Then Carvey showed up, looking a lot like the guy in Wayne's World and incredibly young...
...Hmmm...
...I guess it was after we lost the war...
...This is my accountant, Roger," Q. said...
...After several takes Dana said to me, "Ben, you on a day rate or an hourly rate...
...Daily," I said...
...And what were those chants again...
...He was tiny, but he obviously could blow that licorice stick, and he was in with the big kids...
...Oh, good," I said...
...Fantastic," I said, "and very poetically put...
...As I was eating my lunch, a salad and a pasta of some kind, there was a phone call for me...
...another cop, with a sex addiction "problem...
...Why were they so much more disciplined than others...
...Or maybe it was against East Asia...
...Wednesday (cont...
...Yes...
...Hi," I called out from my car...
...Turns out he'd been touched by his first-grade teacher, too...
...No," I answered...
...I should have given her Robert Reich's phone number...
...she demanded...
...That sounds farfetched, but it's a fact...
...My father was showing me his copy of the 1928 Highland Park High School Yearbook...
...What are you talking about...
...Maybe we should buy him a turtle terrarium...
...He just seemed like a diligent guy...
...The River Inn was its usual adorable self...
...I mean, how do you know these things are going to make so much money...
...They sing to me...
...Plus, he was animated, lively, totally the Perot of the campaign trail...
...Luckily, little squirrel that I am, I have many other accounts on which to draw...
...That's not so good...
...What do you think...
...What...
...My father and mother both had colds, and were sniffling, but otherwise normal...
...This guy started out slicing pastrami thirty years ago, and now he is worth billions, personally owns one of America's largest corporations, and moves entire markets with a wave of his hand...
...When did people purposefully try to look horrible, with baseball hats turned backwards, pins through noses and lips, grungeHollywood dress, and scary dredlocks...
...I met my pal Jane for pizza and she started to explain to me why Tommy is so active...
...I was on cloud nine just sitting behind the set hearing Dana Carvey do his thing...
...And what accounts for that...
...He now looked like Ross Perot, and not only did he look every bit like Ross Perot, skin, hair, ears, nose, eyes, but he sounded, walked, and gestured like Perot...
...I know this man from Morton's, only to say hello, but he invited me to talk to him about life, and so here I am...
...I can see them in three dimensions where other people can see them in two or maybe just in one...
...Whammm...
...That's my neuro-electronic brain stimulator...
...For a guy who just a few days ago had enough in that account to buy a new car...
...Do you have ESP...
...I spend a lot of time thinking about my father...
...Tuesday 0 ver to the Beverly Regent, which is also known as the Beverly Wilshire, for a drink with Q., one of America's billionaires, a legend in finance, a man who can do no wrong...
...Plus," he added, "I was very lucky...
...I was in junior high in Detroit, but I was in the high school band...
...He asks you for a hot dog, and you ask him if he'd rather have scorpion burgers...
...Others of them are talking to blonde girls...
...Well," he said, "I found the Nichiren Shoshun Association about twenty years ago, and now I chant for what I want, and I usually get it...
...But I'm not in it for the money...
...I arrived at the set in no time at all, had my make-up put on by a professional from "Saturday Night Live," and stood around joshing with the writers and producers, a totally likable bunch from Chicago...
...Chanting, and also ringing bells...
...Women were being murdered and left—nude, of course—with many stab wounds...
...I drove off in a cloud of dust...
...Damn...
...Can I come over and discuss some of my ideas about the economy...
...Two brains revving uncontrollably...
...Many of them are smoking cigarettes...
...I'm the poorest person I know here in Los Angeles," I pleaded...
...Even more amazing, his cold-based funk had vanished, and he was right on the beam...
...Is that your Walkman...
...They could call in Evita, whose brain is always revving uncontrollably, and they could really fix the economy once and for all...
...It was my agent, telling me she had another commercial for me to read...
...The child is going to grow up to want war...
...I have a really good speech mapped out...
...M. asked...
...Or maybe Oceania...
...Sad but true...
...But it's overcharged and it's making my brain rev uncontrollably...
...For a guy who can only figure his wealth down to the nearest twenty million...
...He shook my hand so hard I thought my eyeballs would pop...
...And what a pleasure to step off the plane and smell the liberated air of Hillary Rodham Clinton City...
...I insisted again that I was the poorest person I knew, and then gave my little talk about how attacking the rich was just a shorthand way of attacking people who were especially well-educated, hard-working, and good at saving...
...Down to how fine a screen would you know your net worth...
...Or perhaps an embezzlement by a painter...
...The war against Eurasia...
...There are a lot of rich-looking Arabs here...
...Then he disappeared into make-up forabout an hour, and when he returned, it was as if he'd undergone not only a complete visual re-do, but a complete personality make-over...
...Maybe some financial statement reading tossed in...
...Tommy was such a good boy today," she said...
...Choices: a crazed heiress with a major sinus problem...
...or a wealthy white male businessman running for the Senate...
...Who dunnit...
...Of course, they were and are smart...
...I was in the right place at the right time...
...Why do we love to sell to teens...
...In politeness, and out of genuine curiosity, I asked him to what he attributed his amazing success...
...True, it was mostly to pay off a line of credit, but to have just forgotten...
...My father had been hard at work on the stacks of magazines, and the apartment actually looked neat...
...That's me, that was me...
...They were disciplined...
...My parents have a great life now...
...Also my mother...
...D own to Washington on the Delta Shuttle...
...You would have to be a billionaire to understand...
...I'll be doing a commercial...
...No," she said cheerily...
...He did his time, and life goes on...
...He's already got a turtle terrarium," I said...
...Let bygones be bygones...
...Ben," he said, "I can read financial statements...
...What are you doing later...
...Who chanted and rang bells...
...Endless talk about public policy, a great restaurant nearby (The River View at the Watergate), and...
...Wonderful," I said...
...Our director, a focused fellow named Matthew, ran us through our paces for a few rehearsals, and then we shot it...
...No such luck...
...On my way home, I got a call from my erstwhile and future bride...
...I find it.exciting...
...He seemed truly burdened to be there...
...Plus, entree to various newspapers from which I have been banned for criticizing Michael Robert Milken and pointing out that he had been a major cause of the S&L debacle...
...Then I felt a certain pang...
...I'm beginning to wonder about whether he has a secret neuro-electronic brain stimulator .. . I was awakened from this reverie and brought down the hall...
...Twenty million dollars...
...I was twelve...
...He didn't seem that much smarter than I am...
...seemingly nonstop requests to be on talk shows...
...That's a Burmese custom, and I find that if I ring enough bells before I do a deal, usually the deal goes well...
...a cop with his own troubles (he was "touched" by his first-grade teacher, which, as anyone knows, will make you a murderer every time...
...Thursday 6 ook at that little fellow L there," my father said...
...I've decided to put him out of my life, though...
...Anyway, as I waited, I glanced atthe New York Times and the Wall Street Journal...
...A man named "Stormy" put on my mike, and we were on our way...
...We talked for a long time about a specific deal I had wondered about, and then he asked me about myself...
...Everyone's the same...
...I had spent the money without even remembering...
...Or a huge swindle at the bank in which I was an innocent pawn...
...The car ahead of me was moving...
...She had a tangle of wires running out of her head, down her back, across her forehead, down to a little box...
...Alex asked...
...I'm not rich...
...I keep thinking about that movie—Touches of Red...
...The bells are instead of school," I said...
...I put my card in, pressed all of the numbers, asked the machine for a lousy two hundred...
...But what made them disciplined...
...Five million dollars...
...It was so beautifully p.c...
...He had a cold, and was really suffering...
...Q. looked thoughtful and said, "Down to about twenty million...
...I got into my waiting Town Car, headed off to 21st Street, read my little heart out, feeling like the Edith Piaf of voice-overs, and then headed off into the sunset...
...Then let's do this real quick and get out of here," he said, and we did just that...
...I play (surprise, surprise) a boring teacher, talking about soft-drink science, and get shooed off the stage by Ross, talking about the real basics of how to sell...
...I can understand the nuclear bomb, but why the bells...
...Damn my eyes, but on both op-ed pages there are pieces by my indefatigable father, he who cannot stop his fingers from typing...
...A woman called in from San Francisco to tell me I was a selfish pig, and that she lived comfortably on $13,000 a year, that people who couldn't do that were swine, and that there was nothing to this "politics of envy" charge...
...On my way home...
...That sounds just about right...
...a mobster with a long record of violence...
...The main thing about being underwater for a long period," she explained, "is that there's no sexism or gender discrimination underwater...
...They went from basically nothing to a great deal, and I try to think how they did it...
...Anyway, I'm here and now there's the phone for my limo, and so it's off to the stage at 385 Third Avenue...
...I started for home with visions of Q.'s billions...
...Ben," Sonya said, or words to this effect, "as a member of the rich, how do you feel about these plans...
...A million dollars...
...Were you a math genius in high school...
...I think it has to do with a sense of self, but I'm not sure...
...A nuclear bomb or else some bells...
...That little guy with the clarinet...
...I had a vague feeling of foreboding as I pulled up to the cash machine...
...It's not the money anymore, and maybe it never was...
...Let me ask you this...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
