Ben Stein's Diary / Bobby Pins Flying In
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Bobby Pins Flying In by Benjamin J. Stein Wednesday /like this. I'm over here in Burbank at the executive commissary at Disney. This is a lovely round room with a lot of famous...
...Maybe I won't include these questions on my students' exam...
...Home" is a lot better than "hip...
...I looked at her face and thought what a kind face it was...
...Of course, they make it really easy for me by loving me and Alex and Tommy, and calling all the time so we can talk about how much we love Nixon...
...I was just about moved to tears as he was expressing his love of kids to me and talking about how many, more kids could find loving homes with this plan...
...Woop-deedoo...
...Yeah...
...Mountaingoat in his red wool cap, with his skis and a big smile in the North Idaho night...
...The crowd is oohing and ahhing, and now there are fireworks and rockets against the snowy night...
...There's Joe Roth, who made one of my faves, The Three Musketeers, with one of my absolute favorite actors, Charlie Sheen, and there's Jeff Katzenberg, and there's David Hoberman, who was once the world's greatest agent and is now a major studio boss, and there's me, sitting with Ricardo Mestres, talking about corporate finance...
...Wednesday N ow, I'm on the set of a commercial for Wendy's in Miami...
...What isher capital gain...
...It was called the Hotel Raleigh...
...I don't know, Leon...
...I've reached the stage of life where I can really relate better to my mother and father than to almost anyone else except Alex and Tommy...
...We found a Nordic ski instructress to take him out on a slope called the Bunny Hole (which looked to me, a major acrophobe, more like the Black Hole...
...Or New York...
...Yarmulkes flying in" came the word from the wardrobe department...
...In what ways is there a conflict of interest here...
...Monday E arthquake...
...The governor then pressures his friend to lend several hundred thousand dollars to a land development company jointly owned by the governor who is in no physical way disadvantaged, without disclosing the true nature of the loan...
...People who aren't guests are playing drum music keeping me awake and it's eleven o'clock at night...
...We tromped into the ski-rental room, waited in line, and fitted Little Jean-Claude Killy with ski boots made of some kind of hard, angular, rigid plastic...
...What a sweet little child...
...They tend not to have a bad attitude, and this one is a jewel...
...The words to the Kaddish brought tears to my eyes...
...Afterwards, I strolled along Bayshore back to my hotel...
...Tommy's in his ski outfit, zooming all over the mountain, on Musical Chairs, The Quad, Chair One, even The Half Pipe...
...This marks my second trip to Miami 56 The American Spectator March 1994 SARKES TARZIAN INC 1111111^1^ WRCB, CHANNEL 3, CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE KTVN, CHANNEL 2, RENO, NEVADA WITS, 923 FM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WGCL, 1370 AM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WAJI, 95.1 FM, FORT WAYNE, INDIANA CENTRAL OFFICE, BOX 62, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47402 TELEPHONE, 812 332 7251 Providing the Best Radio and Television Service in less than a month, after a hiatus of (yes) forty-two years...
...I'm here to do a comedy segment on "Nightline" with my law school mate, Jeff Greenfield...
...Dave has an incredibly great plan for making adoption rights payments part of employee benefits...
...It's evening...
...Each program also includes selections of popular music and reports on current events, politics, the arts, business, and travel...
...I don't like this...
...My little angel, Mister Perfect, was sleeping next to me...
...The sketch is funny, and Jeff is funny, and I'm sort of amazed at how much he's accomplished...
...On the chairlift, there's Little Mr...
...The room is filled with smoke to make it all seem even more strange and outside time, and we're having a lot of fun...
...Here are the exam questions I'm going to give my students: (1) A state attorney general and his wife enter a business deal in which the attorney general puts up no money and gets half interest in a land development company that will need many state government permits to operate...
...4) The governor of a Southern state arranges for a friend to get a large federal grant ostensibly to fund projects for disadvantaged entrepreneurs...
...The governor then takes those interest payments as interest deductions on his federal income tax...
...Tofile...
...Mia Farrow told us during a break about how Frank Sinatra rarely sang around the house, but could sing any song perfectly...
...It's a slum deli now, with slum people inside...
...Instead, my friend Jane drove out from Culver City and gave him various art lessons, which was really, really cute...
...Leon took me around glittering South Beach, which did not look quite as glittering as I had hoped, and in fact looked like a smaller version of Sunset Strip...
...This is insane," I shouted...
...Even I have taken a lesson in Cross Country, and didn't die...
...The most important are the least important," he said...
...Alex and I waited in the lodge and drank hot chocolate and missed him desperately...
...He's fearless...
...It was stunningly hot, like the hottest days of summer...
...It was paradise...
...It's cold...
...Tommy, wants ski lessons, and he wants them now...
...Does Los Angeles count...
...I wandered to my table and found my flashlight...
...Isn't it a law-and-economics matter that the law is simply not being applied to their misconduct around Whitewater...
...Paul Mazursky did some great imitations, and then Kevin Pollak did his, and we were all in a great mood despite the heat...
...He told me the other driver had gotten lost (going to the airport...
...It was impossible to get into...
...Wonderful work if you can get it...
...Tuesday T he van came back this morning and took me and Paul Mazursky and Kevin Pollak (both of whom do screamingly funny imitations) to a vast palace and gardens called Vizcaya...
...I like hotel chains...
...This is living...
...Well, you're the only one who complained," said the desk clerk, the last refuge of those who don't even want to think about giving decent service...
...More bills...
...In the van with me was an amazingly talented fellow named Paul Mazursky...
...It's like a secret festival where everyone's having an extremely good time while the rest of the country goes to hell...
...My dining neighbor, an actress from New York, told about her ancestors' growing up on the plains of Saskatchewan...
...Meanwhile, I wish I were back home...
...It was the hippest renovated hotel in Miami...
...Then, horror of horrors...
...People cruising Ocean Drive, people dancing in doorways, couples, tourists, ocean breezes...
...No—a great day...
...2) The wife of the governor of a state goes to a business partner of her husband and borrows $30,000 from a savings and loan headed by the business partner...
...Most definitely...
...I always feel a pang when I leave...
...She's really great on delivering lines, and has a certain understanding of people at aglance that I admire...
...I don't want to get y hit from behind on the highway, then shot to death by teenage gangsters...
...Is it "excusable fraud" if the governor then blames his accountant for the mistake...
...The money is claimed to be for a personal loan, but was in fact always intended to be used in a joint business operation with the governor and the head of the savings and loan...
...The camera had to be moved from the terrace of the palace to the back of the garden...
...The money is never repaid...
...It worked great...
...Beach...
...This morning I took a taxi over to Coconut Grove...
...Never mind...
...There's a half moon, but it's clear enough so I can see the lights of Sandpoint on the Lake ten miles away...
...Leon took it and now sunsand swims in the day, and drives a limo at night...
...A sulking pretty boy brought my suitcase to a barren room with a stone floor, hardly any furniture, a bed on the floor, and a TV hanging from the ceiling at a crazy angle from the headboard...
...It's on the mainland, facing Biscayne Bay...
...I went back to bed...
...You must be, like used to staying at, like Holiday Inns in small towns or something...
...Alex, Tommy, and I have just had dinner at the Lodge, and now we're watching men and women and children ski down the mountain under bright lights...
...On the portable radio, there was endless talking about collapsed buildings, fallen down freeway overpasses, and fires caused by ruptured natural gas lines...
...I'm a paying guest and I can't sleep...
...I slept in my trailer ,for a while, got made up, had a lavish lunch, and then went to work as the rabbi marrying two lovely young people with some funny lines they had supposedly written themselves...
...Sarah Jessica Parker told hilarious stories about using guns and piloting a boat in a recent movie...
...The script continuity woman gave me one of the yarmulkes she had just passed out at her own wedding...
...Probably that's going to be a big business...
...Oh, wow, " said a woman at the desk...
...This is a lovely round room with a lot of famous people sitting nearby...
...This seems to be my primary fate in life nowadays...
...On the other hand, it's incredibly cold...
...I also wonder if Castro realizes how Cubans want him gone so badly that they put it on their gravestones...
...Then the power abruptly went out...
...It was crammed with happy people of all ages and races, retirees, children, college students, all of them happy and relaxed...
...Tommy's inspired me and not, I hope, for the last time...
...I wish I could show Dave Thomas to the people in Hollywood who think all businessmen are thugs...
...He's my little angel...
...The governor and his wife are both attorneys...
...CI 58 The American Spectator March 1994...
...I mean bitterly cold...
...Looked at through the prism of gratitude, almost every day is a good day...
...6) A governor runs for president on the claim of a superior ethical sense compared with his predecessors...
...I'll be back in that cemetery someday, but for now, I like The Doubletree...
...Back at my hotel, a fraternal organization of sorts was having a huge bongo drum party at the pool, right below my room...
...In the afternoon, I drove Little King Tut back to his Mommy...
...I like that...
...What do we call such a person...
...I guess I'm basically a teacher at heart...
...I asked...
...Bang...
...This, too, is just another day in some guy's life...
...Well...
...Between takes, Mia Farrow told funny stories and spoke proudly about her son who had just graduated from Yale and was going to Georgetown Law School...
...At a certain point, Carla's hair got loose and then the wind blew my yarmulke away, and the P.A...
...But it was still a beautiful day, and I'm happy being alive...
...List the ways in which this proposition is unethical including, but not limited to, the assumption that the attorney general will grant special favors to the partners in the land development deal in order to repay his free half The American Spectator March 1994 57 interest in the company...
...There are also many maps of Cuba on headstones...
...If you do that ever again," I said, "you will not only not get a one-man submarine, but you will also get spanked very hard...
...Sunday W hat a difference a day makes...
...The real South Beach must be somewhere else...
...It turns out that he traded favors for money, cheated on his income tax, and helped to loot a federally insured S&L as well as a federal program for the disadvantaged...
...Monday 0 h, happy day...
...I read the Mourner's Kaddish, in Hebrew, at the gravesite of one of the r_PCIPLP LIMINIEMPED EPLIWP delarOPEMISOMIUMINPLIPPLJEP crard0P c~iau The German-Language Audiomagazine Improve your German and gain fascinating insights into life in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with Schau ins Land...
...I was sleeping in my big bed at the beach when I was jolted awake by fierce rumblings and the sound of the windows, the many floor to ceiling windows, being rumpled and crinkled up as if they were aluminum foil...
...He kept sleeping...
...One of them said, "Look, there's Ben Stein, one of the most important people in Hollywood...
...Even in the magic kingdom of ski slopes, people get hurt...
...I made a bagel with cream cheese...
...He's also an actor, and he plays Mia Farrow's husband...
...I liked skiing, the little bit I did of it...
...Wednesday B rrr, again...
...More bills...
...Maybe they're too easy...
...What keeps occurring to me is this simple question: How come these guys aren't in jail...
...Then we played chess, then checkers, and then he went beddy-bye...
...MOS," which means silent, or "mit out sound," is my favorite, but "bobby pins flying in" is right up there...
...He had been a truck driver for the New York Daily News, working his way up to making over one hundred K per year . . . all the while hiring out non-union friends to drive his truck while he vacationed in Colorado...
...I'm one of the least important people in Hollywood," I answered without false modesty...
...I'll make this really simple," I said...
...He has generously driven down all the way to Miami to spend the day with me...
...File," that's the four-letter word of middle age...
...Is there any circumstance in which lying on a loan application to a federally insured S&L is permitted...
...I wonder if these people are going to want to be removed to Cuba after Castro goes...
...It was blazing hot...
...How about reading...
...Make them stop or I'm calling the police...
...Is there some mistake...
...I'm showing Dave Thomas, the genial and beloved head (and founder) of Wendy's, some transparencies while he sneaks out to get some Wendy's food...
...What if he's shivering somewhere under a pile of snow...
...It was all touching and familial...
...Bobby pins flying in" came the word back from the hair battalion...
...I don't know...
...He appeared after about an hour and a half, making A's with his skis, actually skiing, smiling, tears from the cold running down his little cheeks...
...Tiny mutual fund receipts...
...Then I talked to some 'extras who had been rounded up from a mahjong club, and then I did my scene...
...He's fine...
...That's a great thing to tell yourself when you're in the midst of filing in broiling heat on the day after an earthquake...
...I hope to do much more...
...Painfully hot...
...It was a slum dump...
...I could easily spend much more time with her...
...All of the new part is sprinkled with headstones that say things like "Cesar Camacho—I will never be at peace until Cuba is free...
...It's okay...
...The cassette comes with a word-for-word transcript, complete with a German-English vocabulary section, informative cultural notes, and all song lyrics...
...I love these movie phrases...
...That night, a group of us went to a fish restaurant and had a yummy dinner...
...Life will not always be this sweet...
...I got out of bed and noticed that the power still worked...
...3) A governor of a Southern state arranges for his business partner, who controls a federally insured S&L, to make payments on a personal loan that the governor has taken out...
...Darkness at the break of dawn...
...This idea is so /smart, so humane, so loving that it should get universal acceptance...
...Then hey, presto, the rattling stopped...
...A van came to the Doubletree this morning to take me to the set of Miami, the movie in which I have a small part as a rabbi...
...It's far more middle class, with condos and a magnificently lively shopping center...
...And expensive, too...
...I like her, and want her to be happy...
...If a borrower facilitates a loan to an S&L executive that would have been illegal if the true circumstances of the use of the proceeds had been divulged, does that amount to accessory to fraud or is it fraud in and of itself...
...I strolled along Bayshore Drive to the Mayfair Shopping Center, and then into a vast outdoor shopping plaza...
...What is it called when taxpayers fraudulently take deductions for payments that someone else has made on their behalf which they have not repaid...
...In my lap are a couple of articles about the new Bonnie and Clyde, Bill and Hillary, and their depredations...
...A nap...
...After the taping, I took a taxi through snowy streets to see me old Ma and Pa...
...Tiny bank statements...
...Thursday N ow I'm in the plane heading back to Los Angeles to teach my class in Law and Economics at Pepperdine...
...It was so loud my room vibrated from the noise...
...He has made over a dozen movies, including one of my favorites, Next Stop, Greenwich Village, and another fave, Down and Out in Beverly Hills...
...I ordered some chicken larb, talked to a waitress named Da, and thought again how lucky I was...
...Not at all...
...He didn't bat an eyelash...
...But acceptance of other people is a huge part of getting through the day with Mom and Dad or with anyone else...
...In what different ways does this constitute fraud...
...What if she claims a $1,640 capital gain from the transaction instead of a $15,000 capital gain...
...Box 158067 • Nashville, TN 37215-8067 USA ^ 5 editions (US$69) ^ 11 editions (US$118) ^ Study supplement (US$20) ^ Study supplement (US$44) Extra postage: Canada R3 Mexico, US$4 Tennessee residents add 8.25% sales tax All foreign checks must be in U.S...
...I've made a mental note to eat lots of Wendy's food and to buy some stock...
...Ricardo learns this stuff amazingly fast and then asks me really hard questions...
...I picked up the phone...
...But a word to the wise: The Hotel Raleigh—beware...
...In one of my self-help programs, I learned that I must always say to myself that my day is just a day in some guy's life...
...Amazingly, I only had to make that threat until midnight, and then they stopped...
...Does federal law allow for fraudulent applications for loans to special-purpose federal grant programs if the borrower is governor...
...Still, I stood by my file cabinets like a little soldier and filed...
...I called the desk...
...5) A governor's wife borrows money from a business partner of her husband to buy a house for $8,000...
...Stores were closed, except for my new favorite Thai restaurant...
...The detritus of life...
...Leon was a recent transplant from the New Jersey region...
...All around were the gravestones of departed Jews, some not long dead...
...I'm sorry, Daddy," he said, and all was forgiven if not forgotten...
...We all walked home together, and I fell asleep with the glow of still being alive washing over my face...
...A funereal desk clerk glumly issued me my key...
...He's a rocket...
...I'm in Washington, D.C...
...We had lunch, then walked along scary streets...
...It's kind of a comedy sketch about how poorly predictors do in those year-end roundups "Nightline" does...
...I checked into my new hotel, a "Doubletree," which is a chain, but which is neat, clean, cheerful, with great views, friendly people, and a rate aboutone-third that of the accursed Raleigh...
...None of these things has happened to me...
...Tonight, we're up on Mount Schweitzer again...
...By late evening, though, the place was buzzing...
...Saturday T ommy and I have fled the earthquake zone and flown to Sandpoint, Idaho...
...I felt dizzy with joy that I was still above ground, still having fun, still laughing and playing in the sunshine...
...Then his employer—dying from union costs—offered a lavish early retirement package...
...The lights of the San Fernando Valley were dark...
...Time to go to sleep, and hope that I get back to Malibu someday soon...
...In the morning, Little Mister Nielsen wanted to know why he couldn't watch his favorite cartoons...
...bank Name Address City/State/Zip Outside North America call (615) 383.8534 • Credit card orders may be faxed to (615) 297-3138 ORM R 131 C RI \ RI) IN 11 ( 1\ 11)1 1-800-824-0829 rd The American Spectator March 1994 55 main characters, who has "passed" into eternity...
...A driver appeared after about half an hour...
...You can read, can't you...
...54 The American Spectator March 1994 Saturday A visit from my braino English physician friend Gartho, who lives in Palm...
...In this commercial, which we're shooting indoors while rain pours down big-time outside, I play a nerdy market-research guy...
...The lobby was empty and dark...
...It was where the hottest models stayed...
...Sunday B rrr...
...Study supplements, priced separately, help build listening comprehension with exercises based on selected program segments...
...Anyway, I left singing a happy tune...
...The gardens are green and colorful, and the breeze is blissful, and only for a few hours is the sun really unbearable...
...A mere $50 for one hour changed hands, and soon he was off to the ski lift and the beginning of the slope...
...The room did have a space-age remote control for the TV...
...I went down to the desk clerk...
...The reason I'm even thinking about it is that I just arrived at the Miami International Airport, a modern, lovely building, and my driver is not here to meet me...
...We're at Schweitzer Mountain, right outside Sandpoint, Idaho, on the day after Christmas...
...I don't want to have to take a cab...
...It's a swirling scene of Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu, California...
...I don't want to have to rent a car...
...The moist wind came off the bay onto a park of sand and palm trees and a marina and then across my face...
...While he slept, I filed...
...It was originally a Jewish cemetery, but about twenty years ago, it became largely a Cuban cemetery...
...It's lavish indeed, and I like it a lot...
...Our location today is a vast cemetery...
...I like that...
...Send check or money order to Schau ins Land • Dept...
...but that he, Leon, was ready to show me the city...
...What if he is a former Rhodes scholar...
...About a hundred people asked me to say "Bueller...
...He was a one-man advertisement for the Taft-Hartley law...
...It sat amidst a number of derelict buildings that had been very hot in the 1950s...
...Camera mushing" came the announcement, then, "Fifty flying in," which referred to the size lens...
...That really hurt...
...An agent sitting next to me told me funny stories about growing up in L.A.'s Hancock Park...
...Bills...
...This is luck...
...had to radio to the hair trailer and the wardrobe trailer...
...He squirmed in them, smiled hugely, and stamped on my loafer-shod foot...
...It's an Italianate villa overlooking the Bay of Biscayne, built in 1915 by the chairman of International Harvester...
...The idea is that employers pay maternity benefits, so why not pay the costs of adoption...
...I called my parents to let them know I was all right...
...Friday ekes...
...Cubans and others speaking Spanish a mile a minute, and there's no one here to take me to my hotel so that I can rest preparatory to filming my two scenes in a movie called Miami...
...Around me were Mia Farrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Paul Mazursky, Antonio Banderas, Kevin Pollak, and a few others...
...It made me feel less lonely...
...I passed some comedians I knew...
...Then I looked around the house...
...By early evening, I had the feeling that someone was pulling my leg...
...dollars and drawn on a U.S...
...GX P.O...
...I lay in bed with my eyes closed, and thought, "This is either the big one or the big enough one...
...Discuss the issues raised by the refusal of the federal or state governments to prosecute such a person in terms of public perceptions of law...
...In each monthly, hour-long audiomagazine, you'll hear a variety of accents as host Axel Fitzke and his team of correspondents take you to interesting places and talk to celebrities and ordinary citizens...
...Anyway, I vamped about in the hot sun, talking to a beautiful young actress named Carla, who plays a bride I marry tomorrow...
...I asked him...
...The wind coming off the snowy mountain doesn't make it any less cold either...
...Have you ever lived in a big city...
...A balmy breeze blew through the outdoor cafes, and I had soup and then went to see The Three Musketeers...
...Then we had to shoot some reversals...
...He's full of stories about his pals, especially Federico Fellini, and about shooting Moon Over Parador in Brazil with five thousand extras in a night scene, and he's just generally the life of the party...
...Now, there's a torchlight parade of skiers coming down The Pipe or maybe it's The Quad, zigging and zagging, holding up torches, their orange glow reflecting against the powdery snow...
...My room is a little plain for $200 per night, isn't it ?" "Is obvious that you know little about the style," the unshaven desk clerk said to me with an airy wave of his hand...
...It was nice...
...She later sells it for $23,000...
...The freeways were eerily empty...
...I walked down the street to a delicatessen called "Wolfie's" that had been a huge fave when I was last in the neighborhood, as a six-year-old in 1950...
...I thought about that and realized it didn't mean anything...
...He also wanted to know what he would do all day without the TV...
...We drove over to South Beach, which was still pretty quiet...
...No damage, and I was hungry...
...Wahhh...
...Then he took me to my hotel...
...This guy is something like a saint as far as kids are concerned, and a very impressive guy...
Vol. 27 • March 1994 • No. 3
