Ben Stein's Diary / Roots
Stein, Benjamin J.
Tuesday I don't like this at all. I awoke this morning with a pain in a rear upper tooth. The pain had been coming on for two weeks, but this morning it really hurt as I gargled Scope and drank my...
...We had never even contemplated a close relationship in court with Joan Rivers Rosenberg and her many friends...
...When I used to work at the Federal Trade Commission, lo these twenty years ago, I occasionally had to eat all by my lonesome self at a place called The Fatted Calf...
...Listen, you'll be surprised at what you can do if you really need the money...
...I'll make it look really old and weird, like the Sistine Chapel...
...You'll see...
...It'll be like Michelangelo, only better, because it'll be with a bubble jet...
...I slept in my chair, awakened occasionally by the swearing of a wrestler behind me...
...Stephen's Green, a lovely but amazingly littered park, and then dinner at the Shelbourne with two famous guys...
...I know this shows: (a) gender condescension...
...Yuck...
...The endodontic surgeon takes a little pencil of SOLID, INCREDIBLY COLD ICE and PRESSES IT AGAINST YOUR TOOTH UNTIL YOU SCREAM...
...Anyway, then off to the National Gallery of Art, and then to dinner with Irishmen...
...God, I hope not...
...Best of all, I get to have company and stand around between takes and talk to everyone...
...Great...
...In New York, my lapsed priest driver had told me that Bewley's was a great favorite of the crowd who were in the Irish chapters of Journey into Self-Obsession...
...London to Washington, D.C., in threeand-a-half hours...
...I missed my Trixie...
...Monday A stroll around Dublin...
...Then down Nassau Street and into Trinity College, Dublin...
...The worst coach food in America is better than what we got on the Concorde...
...Sunday L unch with two old friends at a restaurant on the East Side...
...On the line was L., a middle-aged friend who's an "artist" in Los Angeles...
...Then he takes little flexible drill things and manually plunges them in and out of your mouth like a horrifyingly personal tooth roto-rooter...
...What a picture of America...
...And it's a big bathroom...
...By the way, I think Bill Clinton and Robert Reich should take a walk over to our set...
...Here's how a root canal works...
...I missed my wife...
...Five in the morning," I said...
...Well, estranged wife...
...Then, he takes it away and tells you to count how long until it stops raging in pain...
...My Dad's an ob-gyn, and I make more than he does, working twenty minutes a night...
...They count, even if they're never in Liz Smith...
...After lunch, I drove out to my dentist, far away in the Valley, in a washed-out, depressing area called Reseda...
...S. His nurse, a grim-looking woman, said, "Welcome to the torture chamber," and then gave a fiendish laugh...
...Saturday S urprise...
...I was still on good terms with the Wall Street Journal editorial page...
...In the middle of the night, I was awakened by girlish voices on the street below my window...
...And people say Americans have lost their spirit...
...Plus, the plane was delayed for almost two hours...
...A male attendant smashed his cart into my elbow and then laughed...
...she asked...
...I love that...
...If it's longer than five seconds, bro', you need root canal...
...The flight attendants were almost comically rude...
...The pain had been coming on for two weeks, but this morning it really hurt as I gargled Scope and drank my cold orange juice...
...It was filled with civil servants drinking stealthily at lunch...
...I don't know why...
...You're kidding...
...I wonder if I can sue...
...No, I'm not kidding at all," she said...
...Regular, clean features...
...Hey, how come I don't have any rich friends...
...What's he doing here...
...Hmmm...
...Then I found a seat at a huge square table, actually many smaller tables arranged around a square, and went to find a soda...
...Then I shopped, ate delicious smoked salmon, and hung out at the Concorde Lounge...
...The story of life...
...It's for the Goldbergs...
...Sweet, sweet dreams...
...Listen, I'm so excited...
...You're just afraid...
...The reality was somewhat different...
...They didn't seem that rich...
...But Michelangelo was a unique genius...
...Some of them were rude, too, swaggering up and down, cursing and showing off their muscles...
...All in all, British Air has some work to do on this airplane...
...I walked into the office of Dr...
...When I came back, my script had been moved...
...Bruce looked at me cheerily, took my hand, and went back to talking to Jon Lovitz, an incredibly funny guy from "Saturday Night Live...
...Oh...
...First down Grafton Street a few steps to Bewley's Cafe...
...With heavy heart I took the elevator upstairs...
...Only on the outside," I grunted through my rubber bib...
...Do you guys know each other...
...He steered me over to a man and said, "Ben, this is Bruce Willis...
...I feel sick," I said to the nurse...
...Last night in Dublin I was told my services wouldn't be needed for a few weeks, so I'm headed back home...
...Then to sleep, to dream about when girls paid attention...
...Across the aisle, there's the little boy who played in Lorenzo's Oil, with his Mom...
...The Concorde, as everyone knows, has a small, cramped cabin, which was just fine...
...We moved it," Kathy Bates said with a smile...
...Then, the male flight attendant just dropped my souvenir pen on my lap while I was sleeping, laughed again, and went on his way...
...Then, a walk around St...
...S. cheerily...
...It's serious...
...Then, right behind in business class, there's Dina Merrill...
...I used to be invincible on campus...
...It's amazing how many Russians were milling around the terminal...
...I asked a woman where it was...
...The nurse who had greeted me watched as Dr...
...But it also had a huge, Li'l Abner–type hillbilly in coveralls sitting in front of me...
...I wonder what the stewardesses on Aer Lingus will be like...
...I needed root canal...
...When he's done, you can see the drills he has used laid out neatly on a tray, still dripping with what was recently the living tissue inside your tooth...
...I sagely took a table far from the other patrons, ate my little lunch, and marveled at how well selfobsession travels...
...How come I don't know any famous people...
...I'm on my way to Dublin, Ireland, to be involved in something...
...Her family turned out to be an amazingly interesting actor named Abe Vigoda, so it was all right...
...What about Nixon...
...Anyway, we read our parts, and this movie is obviously going to make about $10 billion, so I'm pretty happy to have my little part...
...Well, it's only nine at night here," she said...
...This looks like root canal," he said gravely...
...While the barber cut, I read an article about Ireland's hundred richest families...
...There was also a screaming little girl across the row...
...The plane ran out of towels, and was so hot that Pigpen in front of me took off his shirt and sat in his undershirt for the last two hours...
...Happy...
...On the plane, though, I sat across from a very polite wrestler named T. He was a blond, extremely muscular fellow from Georgia...
...From invincible to invisible...
...They call it "root canal" for a good reason...
...But, as I smiled at the girls, praying that they would recognize me from Ferris Bueller, I was simply ignored...
...b) beauty discrimination...
...You know, they own practically half of Beverly Hills...
...But Aer Lingus business class was superb...
...I like it a lot...
...They were huge, monstrous-looking men...
...Then times changed and I got to eat at stage two at The Culver Studios a few seats down from Rob Reiner and Bruce Willis...
...At about five a.m., as a pale blue was breaking across the Dublin sky towards the house of parliament, the phone rang...
...I had thought little about Michael Milken...
...Bitches probably," he said angrily, and I decided to drop that subject...
...I heard one kid say to his mother, "Hey, I got Ben Stein's autograph and Gregory Peck' s." "Hold onto Gregory Peck's," I told him...
...I made a rushed reservation to fly to London on Aer Lingus and thence to Washington, D.C., on the Concorde...
...Where there's a will, there's a way...
...Ow," I said through my AIDS-proof bib as the needle went in...
...Now I'm invisible...
...was a former Irish priest who had lots of good suggestions about Ireland and what to see in Dublin...
...I groggily answered it...
...How can her parents afford it...
...Then, off to JFK with my lapsed priest/driver...
...He told me he was trained as an economist, and he quickly found that he could maximize his utility by working as a wrestler instead of an economist...
...And then the morning sky above Shannon...
...I knew nothing about stock market crashes or real estate collapses...
...Boiled, tasteless chicken...
...That made me feel better, until I learned how they test to see if you have a root canal "issue...
...They told me about all of their famous friends from Martha's Vineyard and Manhattan...
...The food service was abysmal...
...Iliked it a lot...
...At lunch, I walked over to a swell old Hollywood restaurant called The Hollywood Canteen and had a spectacular cheeseburger while I watched fish swim in a tank...
...On the other hand, I had never enjoyed the mysteries of Journey into Self-Obsession, had not become a Movie Star, and most of all, had not met little Mister Delicious Perfect, Tommy Angel Face Stein...
...In London, I had to transfer from Terminal One to Terminal Four, a distance of six miles by ancient bus, to get to the International Building...
...It's a lot of money, and it's a challenge...
...She comes from old money, so they say, so she's more sensible...
...I felt rich...
...Plus, they keep coming to me and asking for advice and autographs...
...L. was excited...
...I mentally prosecuted myself, convicted myself, and went on my way past the Book of Kells, the Long Hall, the Green, the Buttery, and still I could not help noticing how many beautiful women there were...
...Shannon has become a major stopover for flights between Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and Moscow...
...Then the dentist, a wonderful guy named John Stewart, whose daughter, Vicki, used to work as a messenger for me long ago, brought me the bad news...
...Despair, I guess...
...It's all actors, and mostly child actors at that...
...More and more salmon...
...You're taking this really well," Dr...
...After the table read, there was an almost unbelievably lavish luncheon...
...True, and I also have to spend about four hours a day in the gym," he added...
...He kept calling me "sir" and told me how much he liked my necktie...
...Not the national debt...
...Pale skin...
...Rob Reiner, the director, spotted me...
...A moment later, he announced that Alan S., a surgeon of endodontic dentistry whom I had last seen seven years ago, would see me immediately...
...The deal is that if they fly business, both can come, but if they fly first, then only one can come...
...I was only 27, and I truly thought my life was over...
...We landed in New York...
...Is anyone left in Russia...
...Girls, I would call them, if I weren't afraid of meeting the Hollywood Women's Action Committee OGPU at three a.m., with Vishinskaya Hill in the lead...
...Then there's, oh, what'shis-name . . . Gregory Peck...
...Great," I said warily...
...I get to stand on a platform next to a beautiful woman in a sarong and talk about rough drafts and smooth drafts...
...The kids are bouncing balls, playing cards, yelling and screaming and having a good time...
...Then there's a fellow who played in Dennis the Menace...
...a commercial that the Japanese would commit hara-kiri in envy...
...The First Class cabin is great today, though...
...Well, you can't be," she said...
...This is life, I suddenly realized...
...Hey, no pain, no gain," said Dr...
...c) implicit, concealed sexual harassment...
...Then over to the Shelbourne for a fabulously good haircut for a mere six pounds, or about ten bucks...
...More salmon...
...Isn't that a lot better than waiting in line at the airport...
...Sure enough, the diners had the same crazed, intense, fearful look I've come to know so well...
...With her, in business class, are a veritable raft of parents of the cereal commercial kids...
...My family is sitting here...
...That's the enemy...
...It runs so smoothly, with so little friction and so much enthusiasm, and produces such a smooth, finished draft of Thursday A "table read" for the movie in which I have a small part, a gem called North...
...On the way back to town, I picked up my messages...
...She was certainly half right, so I allowed the doctor to begin his work...
...What about Peter Flanigan...
...I missed my Devil Boy...
...There, six floors down, were two Irish lasses, talking excitedly, smoking a big fat marijuana cigarette, whose smoke reached up into my open window...
...That's it...
...Aer Lingus was great...
...Now, this is pay dirt...
...I get to stand on a simulated street corner with a saxophonist playing to the moon...
...This is swell...
...This makes much more sense...
...Age...
...Oh, wait a minute...
...I've had root canal...
...I got up very early and packed, then took a taxi to the airport...
...Thursday B ack to America...
...The surgeon drills out your tooth, doing his best to remove all of the living veins, tissue, pulp, and nerve in the three canals...
...Actually, two commercials...
...Girls flocked around me...
...Maybe the craft can't be fixed, but it should be back to the drawing board for the staff...
...But sleep came along to save the moment, as it so often has, and will in the end, as well...
...Much richer than I am, but not billionaires, like the folks I see noshing night after night at Morton's...
...Anyway, they asked me to paint their grandparents' faces on the ceiling of their bathroom...
...I have been coming here for years, and lately the area has started to resemble East Berlin...
...Tuesday A commercial for a beer...
...Friendly stewardesses...
...They don't have first class to Dublin, because, as a stewardess explained, they found that most of the passengers were airline employees riding free...
...I love it a lot...
...A great one from my acting agent telling me that I'm wanted to do two beer commercials next week...
...Ashe did, I thought about how much time and suffering had elapsed since I last saw Dr...
...Sliced salmon, steak, swordfish, salads of many kinds, yum, yum, yum...
...We've got a good endodontic man in the building...
...I just got my biggest commission for a painting ever...
...This is even better than a Las Vegas publicist/columnist turned economist...
...Plus, in my hotel room, there was a surprise platter of desserts that J., a woman who has a mad crush on me, had ordered to greet me in Fun City...
...Lank hair...
...As the anesthetic sunk in, I started to feel nauseated...
...On landing, it got so hot that the crew had to open the catering door so we could breathe...
...The Dublin Airport was jammed with travelers...
...That's what acting's like...
...At the gate was a mob of American wrestlers from the World Wrestling Federation...
...Then there are three kids who were just in a cereal commercial...
...Everyone at the counter was animated, cheery, un-sulking...
...I'm in the First Class cabin of the one p.m...
...Dublin has an amazing number of beautiful women, and there are a dense core of them in Trinity College...
...What time is it in Dublin...
...They told me hilarious stories about law...
...she asked...
...I'll take the endodontic surgery any time if I can get to do a commercial afterwards...
...To them I was just another middle-aged tourist with a hat and a raincoat...
...A sappy but touching movie called Forever Young...
...I can't tell you what it is right now...
...Anyway, as I thought about this, and about how root canal surgery is really a lot better than being in a deposition, doing legal research, or being on ninety percent of dates, Dr...
...I asked...
...I hope I get to come back soon...
...A female attendant wouldn't speak to me or give me dessert after I caught her snitching my souvenir Concorde briefcase and asked for it back...
...I'm the star...
...There was no Customs in Dublin, just'a cab ride through dense traffic to my hotel, The Westbury, a moment of contemplation, and then eight hours of sleep...
...This is a bit of America that still works...
...I guess I don't know them," I said...
...I'm lonely too much of the time...
...Yeah...
...I think it's going to be hard to paint on the ceiling, and have it be really memorable, but I figure if Michelangelo could do it, I can do it...
...An economist turned wrestler...
...I don't think that the genius of Michelangelo was to make the angels look old and weird," I said...
...S. said, "You know, it's really funny, but I just saw you in Honeymoon in Vegas, and I was thinking that I'd like to see you again, and I guess just my thinking about you brought you in here...
...They're practically royalty," she said...
...S. When I last saw him, I was living with my wife...
...So you don't think I can do it...
...Anyway, the dentist, his hygienist, and the X-ray technician all took turns at my tooth...
...flight from Los Angeles to New York...
...S. said...
...This is the way it's supposed to be...
...Oh, happy, happy day...
...I felt really sad to leave Ireland, as I headed over the River Liffey, up McConnell Street, past the Gresham and the Abbey Theatre...
...I imagined the glamorous fellow travelers, more cultured than Alger Hiss, the movie stars, the plutocrats...
...I strolled back to my hotel and then looked out the window at the revelers on Grafton Street...
...By a great stroke of luck, my limo driver (well, what did you think, dahling...
...What about Bob Tyrrell...
...Still, I love them all...
...On the other hand, you have to travel," I said...
...I called my wife from the lounge, and then got back on for my flight from Shannon to Dublin, all of twenty minutes...
...I arrived at The Culver Studios and wandered over to the stage where we're reading...
...It was a cafeteria-style hamburger place on 12th Street...
...S. shot a huge needle into my upper jaw, moved it around, and laid in the turbocaine right against the jawbone...
...I'll see if he can see you...
Vol. 26 • July 1993 • No. 7
