Ben Stein's Diary /Boy in the Hood
Stein, Benjamin J.
A beautiful day in Sunny Southern California. I wrote about bonds in the morning, and then strolled out the door of the mighty Shoreham Towers to lunch. As I walked out, I saw some of my favorite...
...Like he was able to tell them things about the Book of Revelations and the Book of Daniel that showed them exactly where they fit in, and he was able to explain prophecies that even the great rabbis and priests couldn't explain...
...As is my habit, I started to ask her all about herself...
...Then there's a photo of my mother and my father on the deck of their house in Silver Spring, back in 1958, I would guess, and my mother looks so young and pretty, and I can still recall vividly how the Sligo Creek Park breeze would come up over the deck at night, bearing fireflies and the beguiling smell of decaying leaves...
...It's about the five years with David," she said, "and just what he was all about...
...Yes...
...That means I don't get anything., Can't you just make it six...
...That's good thinking, Bill...
...You think he did that...
...They knew the truth...
...Yes, although I don't really practice except to write about securities law," I said cheerfully...
...Just so you don't have to peddle flesh anymore...
...Clearly not enough, because she soon filled the meter, turned, and walked past me as if I were the beggarly failure that I am...
...What's the truth...
...I mean, I assume you're joking...
...These are angry people...
...Strong women can save each other...
...I strolled down Shoreham Drive, past a little swimming pool where a buxom woman was-sunbathing, pasi a furniture store, and then past an almost unbelievably gorgeous woman putting quarters into a parking meter next to her Jaguar convertible...
...Then there was an all-girl version of Sleeping Beauty, in which one five-year-old slapped a sleeping woman comrade to awaken her...
...They weren't going to let someone who told people he was Jesus live...
...That doesn't mean he doesn't like you...
...I demanded...
...Later, as I read the cruel Wall Street Journal, which is always telling me how much better off I'd be if I had done this differently or that differently, I got a call...
...Once they showed me something called a slip-n-slide...
...On the other hand, maybe Lani Guinier knows certain prophecies and the meaning of the Sixth Seal...
...What about me...
...David...
...Why not a Nazi sympathizer...
...Larry and his fellow students would look at me, make faces, and explain to me how important it was to be kvegetarian...
...Intense...
...2kh, those were the days...
...I told my manager about him, and my manager talked to him, and my manager said, 'Yeah, go out and work with him if you want to wind up like Sharon Tate.' " "What a scary guy," I said...
...My beautiful neighbor, Allison, who was washing her car across the street...
...You say, Wait...
...Even housewives...
...I wouldn't even consider it...
...He'll go five, but it'll only be for an hour...
...Hey," Lee suddenly said to me, "didn't you say you were a lawyer...
...Sally shrugged...
...I asked...
...You can get an idea of how well I fit in there if you know that out of a total by Benjamin J. Stein campus vote of about 1,500 cast for president in 1972, I was one of three votes for Richard M. Nixon...
...Plus, I'm from the Bible Belt, and all of this stuff was new to me...
...He looks so happy and so young...
...Great, huh...
...She used to be an actress, and she has an almost perfect voice...
...What difference does a hundred make...
...They all greeted me, and I felt I had friends, a rare feeling for me in Los Angeles...
...That's also of some considerable value...
...The truth is that The Fifth Seal says that the chosen of the lamb shall ascend to heaven in a fiery inferno," she said with an intense look in her eyes...
...Pretty soon I feel as if I'm in the typhoid ward in a hospital in Bangladesh getting suggestions on my story from a famous Deshi guru who happens to think that the only true fount of wisdom is the old episodes of "Gunsmoke...
...As I walked out, I saw some of my favorite people...
...How would that be...
...All subsidized by the taxpayers of the state of California...
...Are you crazy...
...A stunningly beautiful Italian girl who has come here with her Mom from Milan to model...
...It's a very short five-year-old's version of Little Red Riding Hood...
...I can hardly remember any people I knew seeming to be crazy then...
...Still, if we get this going, it'll mean . . . I don't know...
...Ira Magaziner...
...A slip-n-slide, a vestige of the days when the vandals were truly taking the crowbars to Western civilization, was an artificial waterway laid out on the top floor of the B-dorm of College V. It would be filled with water and mineral oil...
...Maybe an accountant...
...Kids on a beach playing dangerous games: Friday T here's a reason why they call it "development hell...
...she asks the girl...
...Well, it was just a thought," Sally said with a girlish laugh (which told me something about the authenticity of girlish laughs...
...Just stop doing it...
...Fourteen hundred and ninety-seven went for George McGovern, who turned out to be even nuttier than any of us had thought...
...He was always calling me from Waco to ask me to come with him and we'd have a band...
...Why did you turn us over to these people...
...Well, anyway, what a loon he turned out to be...
...As she frowned, she saw me looking through her photos of her girls, most of them long obsolete and all with phony names...
...Well, he was able to speak to women in terms of prophecy," Lee said...
...She listens and then she says, "I'll try...
...You must truly be insane...
...Not at all," she said...
...It made me feel very grand to make the offer, I can tell you that...
...It has to be her first time working for money...
...I'd give you the whole commission," she said hopefully...
...You know," I said after a moment," I really have to go to dinner now with my little boy...
...I wonder why he had so many women after him...
...One day in September, I took a stroll with a girl named Jan and we stopped and sat on a bed of redwood and pine leaves and needles (maybe just needles) and I kissed her...
...So, he's gone out of town and left me with his "head of development," a 30-year-old graduate of Wesleyan with the unlikely name of Esau...
...I said...
...And the next day you're old And the words all as cold As the birds in October Sing over, sing over, Sing Late...
...I'll get paid for it, and then I can spend the money and feel stupid for having spent the money...
...She lives in Santa Monica, and I sometimes sit in her Spartan apartment watching her operate...
...And I promise he won't have his bodyguards there, and if he does, that'll be another five for each of them...
...There are a lot of people walking up and down Hollywood Boulevard who think they're Jesus...
...A woman who has written articles against the Constitution as head of the Civil Rights division...
...One of the mothers leaned over to me...
...The people didn't want to get out of the compound," she said...
...She always calls bugging me because she wants work, and then just because this guy told her she was fat last time, she doesn't want to see him...
...How about you, Ben...
...Sunday A h, but then there's Lani Guinier...
...A woman who explicitly wants to have a race war, who explicitly doesn't believe in the Constitution, who wants to enshrine racial divisions in law, and to put up a litmus test to make sure other blacks are sufficiently racist for her...
...He wants a girl, only she has to be under 21 and she can't be a pro...
...What happened...
...Was I always destined to leave the land of sane people and live among crazy people...
...Become a theatrical agent...
...Some of them have told me that even if they got married, they'd still want to work...
...Or I can lose it speculating...
...I went back to my apartment and looked at some old photos of my father in front of the Federal Reserve Board, maybe in 1937 or 1938...
...Larry was one of my best students when I taught at Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...I haven't sold any story rights in a long time...
...The bottom of the sea is cruel...
...And say it...
...One who's never worked before...
...That's all...
...Maybe you know a girl who'd like to make twenty-five hundred tonight...
...The woman, whom I'll call Lee, agreed...
...Besides, you'd be surprised at how many women would work to earn some extra money...
...Oh, boy...
...Robert Reich...
...I hate her," Sally says when she gets off the phone...
...Thursday D rama class for Tommy Stein...
...Warren Christopher...
...Sally gets off the phone, opens another Michelob, and heaves a sigh...
...The single mom with the four-year-old...
...It's about me...
...A lawyer named John who drives a Rolls-Royce...
...That's something...
...Remember Tad...
...Yeah," she said, "but who's gonna lend us money...
...Indeed, it is," I agreed, "and I'd love to have you come over and swim with me at the pool here...
...Development is what happens when you sell an idea or get a producer interested in an idea, and then have meeting after meeting to get the idea "nailed down...
...I mean, getting all those kids killed...
...I found a poem that my mother had sent me a few days before: Oh, when you're young And the words to your tongue Like the birds to Saint Francis With darting, with dances —Wait, you say, Wait...
...But I never saw Jan again...
...I like her...
...Lee frolicked in the bubbling water and showed off her trim figure in her black one-piece bathing suit...
...What a crazy guy...
...Another call...
...I think the FBI did that...
...She gets a call from a man...
...The students would take their clothes off, slip and slide around in it, eat mushrooms, and then head off to mud baths at Big Sur to watch the sun rise...
...Sally is a real person who lives by her phone night and day arranging "photo shoots" for beautiful girls with wealthy, almost always much older, men...
...Delicious Perfect...
...Didn't you know that...
...The girl is obviously balking...
...Hillary...
...You're kidding, I hope," I said...
...There's still time...
...It's not late...
...Lee asked...
...We have to see something real in this character," he adds, and then he sneezes and wipes his hand with his handkerchief after he's wiped his, nose with it...
...It would be easy, but I'm jealous...
...But, honey," Sally says...
...The teacher, a stern-looking woman with (you guessed it) silver and topaz jewelry, said that Tommy was going to play Little Red Riding Hood and another little boy, Lionel, was going to play the wolf...
...I asked...
...On my way back to the Shoreham Towers, Larry and I reminisced some more...
...My soon-to-be co-star, Alexander Godunov, a famous ballet dancer and actor...
...A lot of women that you'd never suspect it about...
...This afternoon, I'm at a studio in the Valley with my idea for a movie about an investment bank founded by Satan...
...She makes the people I deal with here day after day seem sane...
...I asked...
...Yeah...
...Why don't you tell him you can't do it...
...she asked brightly...
...A new one...
...I met him when he was a guitarist back east, and he really wanted for me to join his band...
...Late...
...Oh, precious Tommy, watching Ren and Stimpy at my knee, what's to become of your America...
...I love making people happy...
...Are you out of your mind...
...I told her that she could bring him over to swim at the mighty Shoreham Towers at her leisure...
...A lovely woman sat down at the table next to us...
...Why not...
...She looked at me as if she were a Dun & Bradstreet optical scanner, computing by appearance how much money I had...
...Well, I sold some story rights to Warner," Lee said, "optioned them, actually, and maybe you'd take a look at the contracts for me...
...You know you hate it...
...David the musician," she said earnestly...
...It feels awfully good to be outside, out on the lot, where I can have a hint of the westerlies that blow over the mountains in the afternoon...
...He likes it and wants it to fly...
...No luck even reaching someone to ask...
...It'll mean something...
...In fact, why don't you tell them all you can't do it, and then not doit anymore...
...You take your fresh, gleaming, personal work of creativity to someone who does this for a living, and the gold turns into sodden work...
...Then he coughs a huge, wracking cough...
...It was a balmy late afternoon, and we all felt pretty darned good to be in the sunshine, if I may say so...
...This is to show that the weaker part does not always have to be played by awoman," she said...
...I'm sorry that he was rude to you and hadn't showered last time...
...Then she calls a girl...
...I want something really original that's never been done before, like what they did in High Noon," he says, and then he coughs again and wipes sweat off his brow...
...I can do that," I said...
...Across the street, I met my pal Larry Wilson for lunch...
...The moral of this story," said the drama teacher, "is that a strong woman does not need a man to save her...
...Why don't you and Wolfie play here in the jacuzzi and in the pool for as long as you want, and I'll just call you next week and we'll get together to go over those contracts...
...We have to know what's motivating the hero," Esau says...
...Yeah," Lee said...
...UC-Santa Cruz, lo these twenty long years ago...
...She told me she was just arrived from Georgia, the single mom of a four-year-old, a fledgling songstress in search of a job and a playmate for her son...
...It sounds strange, but even though I was odd man out at Santa, Cruz, I was happy among those redwoods and in those meadows...
...Yes, yes," she says excitedly...
...How do you know the great rabbis and priests couldn't explain it...
...The point isn't about them," I said...
...Wow," I said...
...You're always telling me how miserable the girls are, how they're on drugs, how they hate their clients . ." "Only some of them hate their work," Sally said...
...It's really hot," she said...
...It was the woman from Georgia...
...He wants a photo shoot...
...Thursday A n amazing evening with my pal Sally the Madam...
...Today, he's in his first play and I'm on my way to watch him...
...Actually, the poem makes me think of life in Los Angeles generally...
...Oh, George Bush, why couldn't you have campaigned halfway decently...
...Well, maybe also after I saw my wife in her wedding dress in Fort Myer Chapel in 1968...
...An hour and a half later, Lee, her incredibly cute son, Wolfie, and I were all sitting in the jacuzzi at the Shoreham Towers...
...Do you think in your wildest dreams that I'd send someone I know to hook for a Saudi prince...
...The one I had met at the restaurant a few days before...
...Scratch a Clintonite, and you find a very angry person...
...He wants a girl at ten at night, but he'll only pay five hundred...
...David told us," Lee said...
...And Wait...
...Just a kiss, and I think that was the happiest moment of my life until I met little Mr...
...Larry, who is now a magician, ate salad with me and reminisced about the guys who repaid me for supporting Nixon by putting a huge swastika near a likeness of RN, and about the lovable rascal of a faculty member who insisted that it was my Jewish money craziness (or something similar)—and not students putting up a Nazi emblem next to the president—that was the problem...
...I taught about the political content of film, and how anti-business it was...
...It can be sarcastic, friendly, mocking, businesslike, all in a moment...
...From Saudi Arabia...
...I wonder who you're making happy," I mused aloud...
...David Koresh...
...Debbi," says Sally in her most honeyed tones, "he really likes you...
...CI...
...What was the story about...
...How did it all change...
...If anyone knows a Jan Looney (real name) from Santa Cruz, please let me know...
...Donna Shalala...
...For anyone...
...Become a lawyer...
...David who...
...A local newscaster named Pat Lalama who always seems to be talking about news that makes a lifeor-death difference to her...
...Tommy played his part beautifully and burped in the middle...
...And anyway, if he wasn't a nutcase, why didn't he let those people out of the compound...
...My goal is to get you to stop, not get someone else to start...
...Hart Crane wrote a beautiful poem that always makes me think of call girls and madams: 0 brilliant kids, Frisk with your dog, And fondle your shells and sticks,Bleached by time and the elements, But there is a line you must not cross, Nor trust spry cordage of your bodies to Caresses too lichen faithful from too wide a breast...
...Sally turned back to her phone and started calling around to try to find a new girl for Prince A. No luck...
...That's Prince A.," she says...
...Why not David Duke...
...It's a fine idea, so the boss of this operation has told me...
...But I love doing it," Sally insists as I watch her swig more beer and shake her red hair...
...Look at those faces...
...You and your son...
...I see," I said...
...Good work, Hillary...
...That's why you have to be drunk to do it at all...
Vol. 26 • August 1993 • No. 8
