Ben Stein's Diary/ The Pink Fish
Stein, Benjamin J.
Friday t's much too early in the morning, / maybe 6 a.m., and I'm wandering around downtown near City Hall, looking for the crew parking for North, the new Rob Reiner movie I'm to play a small...
...That must have been before my time...
...What can it be like for them to look at themselves in the mirror and see how great they look, what exemplars of man's evolutionary progress they are—and then to turn up at the audition and see two dozen just like them...
...We rehearsed a few times...
...I was scared...
...But it's true," I said...
...I probably shouldn't say more, except that my client is Dr...
...He said it, was probably an accident as Collins was getting ambushed by some other Irish faction...
...And I, Tiresias, have seen it all before, and sometimes see them wind up working for Sally the Madame, sometimes see them married to heads of studios living in palaces on St...
...They look horrible...
...Far from it...
...Lunchtime...
...We went down one hall and another, past still more gloriously happy barristers, and then into the conference room...
...It has to go right along the eyelid...
...Still, she does have a mad crush on me, and that counts for something...
...We've got to get out of here," she said...
...I wanted to see if the other fish would eat him," Little Caligula said...
...I'm not kidding," he said...
...I noticed that to my left was a large glass display case in which were two humans under hot lights, for long periods...
...I found my trailer and was brought a huge plate of bacon and toast, then many glasses of orange juice...
...I was supposed to testify today...
...Then the bottom fell out of the real estate market...
...When the barrister left for an hour, a solicitor, a tall, lean fellow with a similarly happy look, kept me company...
...After lunch, C. told me she couldn't be seen with me on the street...
...In the Washington Post, even, if there were ads for apartments, the ads would have a heading like 'rentals—colored' or `rentals—white.' Even for jobs, there would be headings like 'situations wanted—colored' and 'situations wanted—white.' That was just the way things were...
...I know I am...
...If you've never had them, be happy...
...It reminded me of something...
...In the evening, when the human engine waits, throbbing and hungering for smoked salmon, I ventured out my door, past the Bruxelles Bar, and down Grafton Street to find my nightly fix of -the pink fish...
...Maybe it's because they get paid between three and five thousand quid per day," he said...
...Tuesday G uess where I am...
...Friday T here is an hour you sometimes hit in West Hollywood that is perfect...
...I demanded, staring at Tommy...
...It makes me crazy...
...How horrible," I said...
...He took out one of his goldfish and cut it in half with a carving knife and threw it back into the aquarium is what he did," Mommy said...
...It always reminds me of "the violet hour" that T. S. Eliot talks about...
...On Grafton Street...
...I'm here to testify in a trial involving a big Drexel player with interests in Ireland...
...She's one of the stars of "Seinfeld," and she's as friendly as can be...
...No," C. said...
...I thought you might know that...
...Friday A n eventful day...
...Bang...
...I had to memorize about ten lines, but I did it, and Rob Reiner said he was happy, and that was that...
...De Valera and I walked for miles down past Trinity College to his train station...
...He seemed to have great affection for Collins, whom he had never met, of course, but who some say was a rival of his grandfather...
...That's what I like about C. She's not only realistic and practical, but she also has great manners...
...We did the scene a few times...
...Then, when I get the tickets with seconds to spare, have a cab driver refuse to take me the quarter mile to the AA terminal unless I give him twenty bucks (which I did...
...We could drive by and look, but could not own or rent there as a matter of law...
...Look up at the ceiling," the makeup man said...
...We give the leftovers to the homeless," a cook said to me...
...Then, have it arranged that I left my tickets to Los Angeles on the seat I moved from when I cravenly hid from the card players instead of murdering them the way they deserved...
...In Dublin, looking at the almost lewd statue of Molly Malone near the entrance to Trinity College...
...Then, when I get to the plane and slump into my seat, have me sit next to a former major player at Drexel who immediately starts to berate me about how I "ruined Michael's life...
...So I went to a bank that loaned to salespeople in my firm just on our signature, and I borrowed twenty-five thousand...
...While I considered what to do, he added, "Daddy, I really missed you while you were in Ireland...
...We talked about whether Jurassic Park would be a hit...
...It was horrible...
...I know about fears about money...
...She's a nice girl, but as she walked into Tiffany (I was buying a tiny present for my agent), she was hyperventilating...
...I love Dublin...
...The bad things are that, late at night, people get drunk and urinate against walls, that the waiters are almost unbelievably slow, and that Dublin is the most expensive city I've, ever been in...
...It's a sort of miracle, and to hear Bill Clinton tell it, it never happened at all, and things in this country steadily got worse...
...I steered her inside and we took a seat...
...That's a lot to know...
...It was awful...
...Can you imagine what it means to a Southern girl to sell her pearls...
...Friday t's much too early in the morning, / maybe 6 a.m., and I'm wandering around downtown near City Hall, looking for the crew parking for North, the new Rob Reiner movie I'm to play a small part in...
...My chest was heaving so much I had to have lidocaine rubbed into my chest muscles so they would lie still enough for me to have an EKG...
...Tables had been set on the grassy lawn of City Hall...
...I figured I would be rich soon...
...It's horrible...
...I can always tell when girls have mad crushes on me, and if one tells me I look like Louis B. Mayer, it's a super crush...
...You're kidding," I gasped...
...Julia couldn't get over it...
...The food was astoundingly good...
...They're a happy bunch here in Ireland, which is altogether a much happier country than you might have suspected...
...I'm gonna make it...
...I asked...
...Pretty soon I owed eighty thousand...
...As C. and I hurtled along Rodeo, she did a tale unfold...
...On their feet are Reeboks and Nikes...
...In their Celtic heads, they are already subjects of America, clients of Hollywood, colonized in their spirits, even if they speak with such a thick Irish accent that I can barely understand them...
...Much better...
...People in Ireland just look damned happy...
...I told her that I had grown up not far away in Silver Spring, but that when I was a young guy, Spring Valley, like much of Washington's Northwest area, was restricted against Jews...
...But that was your own little goldfish pet," I said...
...You're Louis B. Mayer," she said...
...I saw to my horror that they had Aer Lingus playing cards...
...I hate this...
...The answer to so many of life's little problems...
...How would I possibly, conceivably know that...
...They're not good...
...The boys are wearing T-shirts with pictures of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson on them...
...Many is the time I've greeted the songbirds in Malibu contemplating how many lifetimes it would take for my house to regain its value, or rather its cost, a very different number...
...They keep coming...
...That is an outrage...
...Next, when the airplane lands in NewYork, have the cargo doors jammed shut so that I can't get my luggage to transfer to the American Airlines flight to Los Angeles...
...Pierre Road, sometimes see them marry policemen, sometimes see them go back to Mobile...
...America has reached them and gotten their number...
...Just gone...
...We walked along the battery of Trinity College past bar after bar, all lit up, all filled with florid, madly drinking young people, choking with cigarette smoke, but amazingly happy-looking...
...In fact, I actually took the stand in an amazingly austere courtroom with a stunningly beautiful red-headed court stenographer...
...One night I was so scared I had heart palpitations...
...I'm sorry...
...They love it when we shoot downtown...
...The ones we had sold went into foreclosure...
...Never mind...
...Only this is the blue-eyed hour...
...I hit it today on my way todo a voice-over for a new potato chip that tastes like Caesar salad...
...In fact it's great until .. . "You'll never guess what Little Perfect did this morning," Mommy said...
...What a world...
...The kids want to know how Jurassic Park was, whether it was really scary, when it is arriving in Dublin...
...I wanted furniture...
...Then I borrowed another twenty-five...
...Your friend...
...I took my book back to the smoking section and hid there from the horrible noise...
...The girls are wearing T-shirts with photos of Madonna and Marilyn Monroe...
...What was that...
...They are in Volkswagen Cabriolets or Toyota Tercels or Mercedes sedans, and they look perfect...
...You're a known troublemaker," she said...
...I had dinner at the lovely St...
...De Valera...
...Now I can't go into Tiffany ever again...
...You are under arrest," I said...
...And then, and then . . . there at the gate is Mommy and Mr...
...I wanted pearls...
...Planning on success here is like planning on winning the lottery...
...I wanted a house...
...Rob Reiner and other honchos sat at my little table...
...To wake up thinking you area miracle of God's love, and to find that you are a commodity like tungsten by three in the afternoon...
...I'll never get a decent job if people think I know you...
...Rob Reiner said yes, and someone else, whose name I forget, said no...
...In fact, I am not at all sure I have ever seen people who looked quite as happy anywhere in my life...
...I can't go to Tiffany," she said, "because of what happened back in Montgomery...
...I know," he said...
...So there I was, owing all of that money and no way to repay it...
...I appeared there with my huge burden of SEC filings, met my side's barrister, an amiable fellow named Pat (of course), and headed down to an underground conference room...
...CI...
...We were almost at the Carnegie deli...
...Third, get into the seat across the aisle from him with your incredibly homely wife...
...In fact, between hands, shuffle them ten times...
...She told me she grew up in Spring Valley, an extremely lovely neighborhood in Washington, D.C...
...It happens when you drive along Sunset or Santa Monica Boulevard and are next to one, then two, then a dozen cars with beautiful young girls with blue eyes, headed towards auditions or go-sees or photo-shoots...
...I met her today at Tiffany in Beverly Hills, right next to Rik Riklis's fine trattoria, Piazza Rodeo...
...In fact, I play the curator of the Smithsonian...
...Neat, organized, with happy men and women ready to take on the challenge and excitement of the day...
...They want to know what Matthew Broderick was like to work with, when DenniA the Menace is coming out, if it's true that Sharon Stone is gay...
...I would rather that people on my flight were urinating against the bulkhead wall than shuffling cards...
...I ordered a sandwich and she ordered a salad, the sure sign of a nervous person who doesn't feel that she deserves to be fed...
...That'slike five thousand dollars a day...
...My host was Dr...
...You know everything...
...I had been a lawyer," she said...
...Right away...
...But I'm lost and I can't find the crew parking lot where I'm to transfer to a bus to get to my trailer...
...There are hundreds of these people just in the few blocks where I'm lost...
...Enough for a king...
...Monopoly rent...
...D. talked to me endlessly about the killing of Michael Collins, an event that still makes• certain Irish people see red and get very angry...
...Debt is misery...
...What did you do...
...Finally, I found the crew parking area...
...But wait...
...How can this be happening...
...I looked imploringly at the couple...
...Maybe more...
...First, and this is crucial, put him in the forward cabin of a transatlantic Aer Lingus flight, with no one next to him, with him having a great book, his Walkman, great stereo tapes, and a plate of smoked salmon...
...She's a lively, attractive black-eyed brunette girl of almost startling height...
...Amazing how America has changed in just a few decades...
...There are black men, white men, Latinos, young men, old men, some women...
...But then I thought, maybe I'll make it all back in Hollywood...
...Second, wait until he has eaten some salmon, listened to The Marriage of Figaro, and is falling asleep...
...Eamon De Valera, the grandson of himself, and a walking font of great stories about Ireland...
...Wednesday ast night my clients told me that L I should appear at the courthouse, called The Four Courts, at 10 and be ready to testify at 11...
...I've been in a lot of courts, and I've never seen people look as happy as they do here...
...Delicious Perfect looking like cherubs from on high, and everything is all right...
...Fourth, take out a deck of cards and start to shuffle them as loudly as you can while you play gin rummy...
...Live humans kept under glass—and begging for the job...
...I got here this morning, slept most of the day, and now I'm taking my exercise by walking over to Trinity College, then down O'Connell Street to the Gresham Hotel where part of "The Dead," a famous story by, ummmh, ummmh, James Joyce, took place...
...I pulled in, and suddenly I was in a different world...
...You what...
...He and his colleague talked about legalizing prostitution, about Irish history, about the times of the Troubles...
...The deals on the books didn't close...
...Back I went to my grand hotel room to watch CNN and then local TV talking endlessly about legalizing prostitution...
...We ordered...
...You are at Sunset in front of The Source vegetarian restaurant, and you see one of them next to you putting on eyeliner or maybe reading a script or maybe eating a carrot, or maybe just listening to some inner siren call of fame and riches...
...I have to put this under your eyes...
...That's what I decided to do...
...No," he said, as he applied some matte makeup...
...She was virtually speechless about it...
...Then makeup, where I sat next to a woman actor named Julia Louis-Dreyfus...
...I gave up...
...She was becoming agitated as she spoke...
...We walked (en route) through the massive, domed lobby, past knots of bewigged, berobed barristers talking cheerfully...
...This was in the 1950s and up to the early 1960s...
...Oh, where are those nice people who were playing gin rummy when I need them...
...After Julia left, I asked my makeup man, who was also from the east, if he remembered how newspaper want ads used to break down categories by "white" and "colored...
...Fish, steak-ka-bob, salad, nuclear waste (just kidding), pudding, vegetables...
...As you walk along towards the Liffey, you see The All-American Bar, Captain America's Restaurant, Starvin Marvin's Burgers and Shakes, Burger King, McDonald's, and Planet Malibu...
...Hollywood, Imperial City, has thrown its silken, fiber-optic, lush chains around them and the slaves themselves turn the key in the lock and swallow it...
...Entirely too much of what I remember turns out to be before other people's time...
...Then I was in real estate, and I was selling development land, leasing office space, doing great...
...The phone didn't ring except with people wanting to sell, and there were no buyers...
...Splotchy skin, hair in tufts, growing sadly, clothes matted with dirt and grime...
...I told Scotty, the fine fellow who sells me bracelets and earrings, that I would come back...
...I did as told, but I thought that some day I'd like to do a TV show about all the social progress of the last forty years...
...Oh, you perfect ham...
...Her eyes were like saucers with black rims around them, like raccoon eyes...
...Did you learn that from watching the stunning violence of Jurassic Park [which he had watched while sitting on my lap for three solid hours...
...They were the stand-ins for the stars, who are going to play the parts of the comatose parents...
...I had to sell my Tiffany pearls and my Tiffany silver," she said...
...It's all very complicated, but the Irish feel it in their bones...
...We're not through yet...
...The good things about Ireland are that it's always cool and never too hot, unlike glorious L.A., that there are always about ten thousand beautiful girls on Grafton Street, that smoked salmon seems to fly off the walls and land on my plate, and that no one brags about money...
...I met her on the tram going around the lot at Sony-Columbia, and she told me she thought I looked like the young Louis B. Mayer...
...I can only compare walking with Eamon De Valera's grandson by Trinity College with what it might have been like to walk with George Washington's grandson (I guess he didn't really have one) along thebanks of the Potomac near Georgetown in 1832...
...House around 2033, when Daddy is where Michael Collins is...
...They usually come at about 5 a.m., along with the newspaper, and they don't feel like fun...
...She's come here to be changed, to be made into something on the cover of a magazine, something that will make her mother finally yield in the inter-generational struggle, something that will make her immortal...
...It was a 'speeriment...
...I really felt sorry for her...
...Really sorry...
...They know that man is a social animal...
...After dinner, Dr...
...I would rather be back in smoking—but sans shuffling noise—than in healthy no-smoking with shuffling...
...It was a strange sensation to be in a conference room with a man wearing a wig, talking about SEC filings, but I soon got used to it...
...Just bite your lip a little while you feel my pain, and there's a slot for you in the White...
...Hard to believe, but it's true...
...She's Jewish, and had never heard of such a thing...
...I asked...
...Stephen's Green Club, which used to be the house of someone who leased it to Walter Scott, and that was long before anyone had ever heard of Ferris Bueller...
...That might have something to do with it...
...I ate my corned beef and felt sympathy for C. "I had to sell my pearls and my silver just to pay the interest," she said...
...No, Daddy, I did it because that's what fishermen in Idaho do to catch fish," Tommy said...
...Why is everyone here so happy...
...What I can find is an almost unbelievable number of homeless people lying on the sidewalks, still asleep sometimes, others just awakening and stirring...
...Saturday H ere's how to make Ben Stein insane...
...The noise is like stripping off your fingernails one by one...
...Every girl with a perfect nose and graceful eyebrows and a slender waist carries the field marshal's baton in her L'Oreal makeup kit...
...That meant—as a stewardess confirmed—that the couple had actually been encouraged to torture me by playing cards...
...America is calling these young Europeans...
...I waited in that tiny room for several more hours, only to learn that I was not to be called at all...
...But Hollywood is far more dicey than real estate," I said...
...I watched the kids frolic under the polar light of the longest day of the year...
...Monday L unch with my pal C., an Alabaman who happens to find herself here in Los Angeles working part-time as an assistant to a director...
...They keep showing up at the appointed hour and pass by me as they apply their makeup...
...But the other side objected to their inability to study the documents from the SEC, so the judge dismissed me for two weeks...
...That's right...
...Then I had tokeep borrowing to pay the interest...
...It was an accident," he said...
...Other witnesses had taken longer than expected...
...studied the script in my trailer fora / couple of hours, then had more bacon, and then went over to City Hall, which had been rented as a set and rigged up to replicate the Smithsonian's fanciful Hall of Achievement...
...Another time, they had to come and put me in an ambulance and give me a barium X-ray because my intestines had seizures...
Vol. 26 • September 1993 • No. 9
