Ben Stein's Diary / Eye Street
Stein, Benjamin J.
Eye Street by Benjamin J. Stein Monday D inner at Morton's with my agent pal and his wife. It's jumping here tonight, just like the old Morton's back in the 1980s before the Los Angeles economy...
...Somehow, I drove to Sandpoint from Spokane all right, telling Tommy "Ren and Stimpy" stories all the way, and had dinner, but I was worried as I fell asleep...
...George...
...George...
...Then we drove back down the river to a little camping area with an enclosed swimming space...
...Boats are holes in the water that you pour money into...
...The second show went much better than the first...
...I really felt for Randy Weaver...
...I am inside the inn while there is a roaring fire and it's snowing outside...
...If I win, do I get it all at once...
...I am here guarding Tommy after his first day of school...
...Then there's Barry Diller...
...Commercial development, a dim memory...
...But it has a tiny marina where we tied up and got to eat our lunch...
...I could see flashes...
...Ugggh...
...Well, as my father says, 'If a thing cannot go on forever, it will stop.' " That pretty much put an end to the conversation, as pointing out the truth often does...
...It's called a floater, but it should go away fairly soon or else you'll just get used to it...
...Anyway, we had a nearly perfect ride back to Sandpoint...
...It's not easy being a good father, and I make a lot of mistakes...
...And it 56 The American Spectator November 1995 used to be considered his right not to love his government...
...In fact, now I feel like I am a tiny little cog in a machine that makes a lot of people laugh, and this is a good thing...
...But Tommy was frightened by the deep water...
...Now it is Thought-crime...
...Thank you for making sure that I met another citizen of America the Good when I needed him...
...Bad place to be if you can't see...
...It's not play money...
...We had dinner at Ivano's, an Italian place in Sandpoint that is about as good as any Italian place I've ever been in...
...I asked with a paternal grin...
...No, Benjy," Mommy said...
...She said you could understand all there was to know about Hollywood and stardom if you knew about a famous youth who was a bandit in the mountains of Italy during World War II...
...But you're probably not a vegetarian...
...You cannot buy the kind of investment that makes you rich with contentment...
...And she's got a deal at a big studio on the West Side, and in this deal she not only gets an eight-figure salary, but has a clause that says that when she goes on location, she must have a trailer that has a tanker truck filled with Evian attached to it, because she will only take baths and showers in Evian, can you believe that...
...Perfect and Mommy...
...Still, when I got back I was in a good mood...
...Then I want to give a hundred dollars to my 0 h, well...
...0 The American Spectator November 1995 59...
...I had to turn around and drive back to get it through rush-hour traffic...
...But I am happy to see how delighted he is...
...But the pantyhose are ultra uncomfortable...
...George has been helping me...
...You can have a hundred now...
...Top officials of the FBI and the Justice Department live in high style after condoning the murder of innocent people and instituting a major coverup...
...A friend once said that Harvard people were not necessarily smarter than other Ivy League students...
...Might be some kind of tearing of the retina...
...I am wearing a big chicken suit and processing him on his arrival to heaven...
...No...
...I awakened this morning to see that on C-Span, there was live coverage of the Senate hearing on the siege at Ruby Ridge, which is just a few miles up the road from Sandpoint...
...I love them a lot...
...These people on the set are legends...
...Into the vast parking garage...
...If your friends know they can confide in you, you are rich...
...No, Tommy...
...I will bring in a little mat and lie on it...
...But I keep thinking of how many people I know with far more than that who do not seem to be happy and do not seem to be rich in the sense of being well off at all...
...I dealt him his cards and took mine, and looked at my hand with wide-mouthed amazement...
...Lots of times my vision isn't so good, though...
...Vegetables and grains...
...I got to see my little boy wearing a grin from ear to ear...
...Even a small part of the working-class part of the group...
...They just managed their mental assets better...
...What a mistake...
...But first on the list will be the ophthalmologist Dr...
...Thank you, thank you, thank you...
...Read 'em and weep," I said as I laid down my mighty hand of jacks...
...I did in fact have four jacks...
...Is there blood in your eye...
...I hung around until almost everyone else was gone...
...I drove blissfully for about forty miles, then realized I'd left my briefcase back at the studio...
...Okay, my boy," I said with a fatherly chuckle...
...Mommy and Daddy are afraid a lot...
...The pizza place is right on the river, with a great view...
...He actually said he would be happy to meet me at his office at noon...
...Perfect was there with Mommy and a friend and his parents, one of whom is my wife's law partner...
...This whole area should never have been touched, but once Judge Ito allowed questioning about a witness's thoughts, the floodgates of Thoughtcrime were opened...
...I wore a chicken suit that looked too small, so they stuffed it with a pillow...
...Shooting Mrs...
...Only I want to play for money, Daddy," he said...
...So the only thing he could think of to do was to capture people and take their money...
...I could not find a place to sit...
...This, literally, is Winston Smith coming out of the Ministry of Love's Room 101 and saying, after torture had broken him as a human, that he Loved Big Brother...
...I like being in and among 'em...
...Yes...
...When I think about the deals that are being made in Hollywood right now," the agent at my table said, "it's more like mental disease than business...
...And my prayers were answered...
...I also had to wear huge pantyhose to make it appear that I have chicken legs...
...Off to Spokane to do a commercial...
...If you can honestly say you have nothing to hide, you are really, really rich...
...However, none of the power players here reads the Spectator, so they don't know that I know about them...
...Then we all got on our costumes and did the first show before a live audience...
...I myself don't eat dairy either...
...Planning covers a lot of fear...
...I meanwhile was praying like mad insanity...
...Like that Saturday is the Sabbath...
...At one table there's Sandy Gallin, big-time manager...
...It's supposed to allow him to express his anger at his record label...
...He even did something unselfish, which is pretty much unheard of in his life...
...For one thing, Mr...
...I guess I'm safe (at least until it's time to slaughter and eat me...
...asks my agent pal...
...If you can share any problem with your wife, you're rich...
...I walked around backstage like a man with the knowledge that he would live forever...
...Well, I bet a thousand dollars," he said...
...The government killed his son and his wife in cold blood...
...If you can face your parents and believe you have given back to them even a hint of what they have given you, you're rich...
...I asked him morosely...
...he asked...
...Blood...
...How much do you want to bet...
...When we got home, he played happily with his Nana...
...Certainly," I said, "but this is real money...
...Lasers...
...They have no evidence that the policeman did anything illegal—except that he committed Thoughtcrime...
...Has it been a long time since he's seen you...
...No, I had not made a mistake...
...Then, a week after that," she said, "his lawyers called and said it was back to 'the artist formerly known as Prince.— / t all reminded me of a story I was told long ago by a writer named Eve Babitz...
...Then I grudgingly left for the real world...
...You'd be surprised how many Harvard people there are working as story editors and writers and producers in television...
...He immediately came on the line on a Sunday morning...
...That was really, really great...
...On the advice of counsel, he was taking the Fifth Amendment about whether he lied about denying he had racist thoughts...
...I am on "Married With Children," which is more important than having a couch in my dressing room...
...Tommy andthe other boys jumped in and swam to the logs...
...When I lifted him up to kiss him, hesaid, "Daddy, remember that thing you said people used to say in the 1960s...
...Then you have to save five hundred...
...He misheard me, got an evil smile on his face, and said, "Yes, it's time to slaughter...
...How time flies...
...Hollywood is a mental hospital, a real one," said Isaac Singer, one of the great writers of our era...
...Joked with the writers and producers...
...It's important to know about one's own motivation...
...He was obviously not such a great guy, but he did not do anything but have bad thoughts...
...I build houses, so I'm thirty or forty feet off the ground a lot of the time...
...As if he had been caught reciting some secret code of the devil, he said, "Oh, no, it's not time to slaughter...
...Prince.' So we did all the contracts this way...
...He looked so happy to see me when I came to pick him up that it made my little heart skip a beat...
...As he looked, he talked to me...
...No arguing, happy to do it...
...Daddy," he said, "will you stop working and spend some time with me to help me to build a model airplane...
...Christina Applegate, who plays the daughter...
...How right he was...
...Go ahead," I said...
...How grown up that boy is getting...
...Then four hundred dollars to the Panhandle Animal Shelter, and four hundred to Friends of Animals...
...You mean, 'Off the pig...
...It's a clumping of the vitreous fluid," he said, showing me a huge model of an eyeball...
...Randy Weaver, of all people, has to say in public, on TV, that he loves his government...
...Butthe money goes into your college fund...
...Saturday 0 ff to Sandpoint with Mr...
...I did all right...
...The fellow was ecstatic...
...No cryonic surgery...
...But you might plan a little better next time...
...not killing the mother of his children and a total stranger...
...will possibly get off, and the LAPD is creamed again...
...But where else is it so much fun and so easy to earn a living...
...I said he'd have to eat his dinner first...
...The copy is great...
...Cryonic surgery...
...Incredibly, a senator was making him say that he now loved and trusted his government because a jury in Idaho had let him off on murder charges...
...Don't get overconfident...
...The other guest star is Don Novello, who plays Father Guido Sarducci, and I feel happy to be hooked up with him...
...I was so happy I was like a man on Demerol...
...Can we go to K-Mart right now...
...Then there's Marvin Davis, and Leslie Moonves, the new head of CBS, and he's eating with Jane Seymour, and it's a rocking good time...
...But maybe things are picking up, because the place is booming...
...He even took the Fifth about whether he had planted evidence in the case...
...Mercifully, Alaska Airlines was working right and our trip was fine except for one little thing...
...Today, I love Hollywood...
...I am playing a small part in a raunchy but very, very funny show called "Married With Children...
...But by that standard, there are a lot of rich people in this country...
...I'm sure you do," I said...
...Tommy and his pals Alex and Anton played on the dock...
...That was really a super thrill...
...It will be anecdotes about my travels through America, and the wonderful people I meet, especially in its small towns...
...There's something actually floating in your eyeball...
...Glee...
...The people in Canada are meticulous...
...Better to lie on the floor in heaven than on a couch in hell...
...What kind of work do you do...
...She's been waiting to see it in summer for a long time, and this is her big chance...
...Of course, that is a major achievement...
...Now that's changed, and a lot of us who were on the Lampoon come to Hollywood," Dvora said...
...Dvora, a writer and 23, and Stacie, executive producer and 28, are amazingly successful young women...
...Just getting used to it...
...Senator, get hip...
...It was deserted, but we got a decent meal anyway...
...His Thoughtcrime was to want to live by himself and not near people who were black or Jewish...
...I have this bacteria inside my eye, got it because my mother was bitten by a cat with that bacteria when I was inside her when she was pregnant fifty years ago...
...Bliss...
...When I came on stage in the second show, the audience started to clap and whistle when I said my first few words, as soon as they recognized my voice...
...Nothing for me, of course...
...And what a giant mistake I made letting an eight-year-old boy win over a thousand dollars...
...He was a slender, healthy-looking fellow...
...Forget it," I said...
...I took out my books of statistics and started doing an article about how much money you have to have to be considered rich in today's society...
...I was uncharacteristically nervousbefore going on stage...
...Just going through a few uncomfortable days...
...I asked him, totally startled...
...But I'm also the big winner...
...But he forfeited his rights, you see, because he had committed Thoughtcrime...
...Today, I am doing a commercial for a major auto company in Canada...
...That's only fair...
...His actual crimes—altering a shotgun—weretrivial...
...If you can take off an afternoon to go boating with your pal, you're rich...
...Weaver because her husband went to meetings of the Aryan Nations is just next door to shooting people because they went to Temple Israel...
...He handed him to me, and Tommy, embarrassed by his fear, went to hide in the cabin...
...I have a friend who's doing some work papering a movie deal that Prince is in...
...Down the darkened alleys of Sony/Columbia...
...Might require surgery...
...As I thought these poignant thoughts, Tommy appeared...
...One day when I visited him, I asked him if I could have some "water...
...How are you...
...Then, when they asked if they could go, he would tell them they had to sing their favorite aria as loud as they could...
...What a bad idea they are...
...If you have given back to the community some of what it has given you, you are rich...
...I have figured out that I can do voicework from Spokane, a mere two hours from Sandpoint...
...At the age of about 15, he became the leader of a big bandit gang and had all the money and women and fame he could want...
...Hmm," he said...
...He was referred to me by my pal and outdoors guru, Peter Feierabend, who said Dr...
...It happens in middle age...
...They acted like they were happy to have me on the set...
...This is my new thing...
...On the other hand, I often think this: I have been here almost twenty years, and I have far fewer friends here than I had when I first moved here...
...I can recognize who they are by their cloven Gucci loafers...
...Can I bet a hundred dollars?' he asked...
...They are gods of the tube...
...He even bought a loose-leaf binder, just like I used to have when I was in Montgomery Hills Junior High in 1956...
...We'll see, my boy," I said...
...But it worked out fine...
...Yea...
...A burly, workingman in a truck was also there to meet the doctor...
...You cannot...
...Then we did a run-through...
...Laughed with the voice-over people...
...And the little magician laid down four queens...
...He was on air, he was so happy...
...No, you weep," he said...
...Can I say that to the teacher...
...There's a certain woman star with huge breasts...
...That's what you're seeing...
...I told him my symptoms...
...Sunday I have in mind a book project that I call "America the Good...
...That, she said, was Hollywood...
...Then, with heavy heart, I covered up the Sea Trixie and prepared to go back to L.A...
...Then again, maybe this is just jealousy on my part...
...The whole cast was friendly and encouraging...
...It's jumping here tonight, just like the old Morton's back in the 1980s before the Los Angeles economy slipped into the longest recession it has ever been in...
...The audience as a whole was a little slow, but it was still fine...
...Saturday 0 ur last day in Idaho on this trip...
...He waved us inside and into an examining room, and then examined the cat bacteria man...
...That's nice...
...Yes," he said...
...Some individuals have told me you should have unearned income of about $500,000 per year to be considered rich...
...I started to read about what might be wrong with my eyes and how it got fixed...
...What a world...
...And Prince insisted that at all times that his name came up in the contract, he would be referred to solely as 'the artist formerly known as Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu and Hollywood...
...You have to do and to be...
...You mean no lasers...
...After I stopped crying, I said, "All right...
...Might be a detached retina...
...My dressing room has no couch, but that's no reason to sulk...
...All right," I said...
...About seven hours," I said...
...People who are comfortable with themselves are the richest of all...
...I definitely have the feeling that there is a secret cult of people who make it here...
...Some say about $1.3 million per family member...
...retail, a joke...
...David Faustino, who plays the son...
...I still do not know exactly what he was talking about...
...Financial services...
...Time to eat my tuna, listen to tales about the passing parade, and go on...
...I know, Daddy," he said...
...Friday S howtime...
...He kept shouting, "Bueller, Bueller" at me...
...Instead, they have resorted to portraying a policeman as a racist...
...Now, O.J...
...I have a really good hand, Daddy," he said...
...I could barely see out of my left eye at all for moments, then it would clear up, then get cloudy again...
...After the show, Tommy held on to me and swung from me...
...But a new boat is all smiles and memories of happy days on a meandering river bounded with grassy landings and towering rock...
...The way I would say it is, if your son gives you a huge smile and jumps into your arms when you come to pick him up at school, you're rich...
...This is not supposed to be happening...
...A lot of us are vegetarians...
...If you have friends you can call to share the good things and bad things of life, you're rich...
...A rueful but dignified Randy Weaver was talking about how the government simply killed his wife and son in cold blood because they did not like his thoughts...
...I did so, and Peter swam in and got Tommy...
...Between shows we ate dinner in the Rita Hayworth Cafe...
...I won't spoil it by telling you more details, but it's pretty funny...
...Ed O'Neil, who plays Al...
...He bought school supplies and offered to pay for them out of his ill-gotten booty...
...Bang, Alex and I went there, with me fearing the worst...
...This recession has been going on for six years, and shows no sign of stopping...
...The American Spectator November 1995 SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference 57 friend Alex...
...It's a small logging town...
...He began a one-hour, incredibly detailed examination of my eye with powerful lights, anesthesia of my eye-balls, poking, pressing, and staring, having me look above lights, behind lights, into lights...
...Katie Sagal, who plays Peg...
...Being part of the group...
...So said Emerson, I believe, and he was right...
...George was a great doctor and a great guy...
...I actually was trembling...
...What...
...I looked down at my hand...
...Detached retinas...
...I had four jacks...
...Today we got to the stage late...
...I'll take a hundred dollars now and buy toys," he said...
...Hmmm...
...It looks pretty funny...
...Tuesday A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...
...Tommy was in ecstasy...
...Just these few days, I do not have my nose pressed up against the window...
...Right...
...I am on 54 The American Spectator November 1995 stage 28 of Sony/Columbia...
...Then, in walked Dr...
...Fuhrman gives me the creeps, but this business is also largely about Thoughtcrime...
...Well, they were largely Drexel scam companies, and they're gone...
...Are you Jewish...
...I flipped back to Randy Weaver...
...In short, I am having a great time...
...George pulled up in a van...
...Peter calmly directed me to beach the boat after tilting the engine out of the water...
...How did I get myself into this...
...Weaver was an innocent man...
...It's only a hop, skip, and a jump from punishing people for their religion or the religion of their parents...
...He went on in this way as he looked at me intently...
...When I do write that book, this story is The American Spectator November 1995 55 going to be there, right next to the ones of David Braun, the beekeeper who rescued me in the waters off Hope two years ago, and the unnamed man in Priest River who stopped to help me and Tommy on a snowy afternoon, and the UPS man who brought back Ginger the dog when she had run away...
...I am so alone here that it's a joke...
...It's nothing to be worried about...
...I'll give him a hundred dollars now, and he can have the rest later...
...And not even a few uncomfortable days...
...He has little reason to love the government...
...He refused to swim back out to the Sea Trixie so we could get him...
...All because Thoughtcrime by a witness is allowed as a defense when the defendant is charged with having cut his wife's head off...
...I cried because I had no shoes until I met the man who had no feet...
...Because in no time at all, I was on the lake with Alex and Peter Feierabend and Alex Feierabend and Tommy, zooming along in the Sea Trixie, saying many thankful prayers to God...
...Monday I am back in Los Angeles, downstairs at my estranged wife's house...
...Scary...
...Now all he wants to do is play...
...On the other hand, I know many people who have trouble paying their bills who are really well off...
...We believe a lot of the same things...
...Then out onto the streets of L.A., and back to my empty apartment...
...There was a heavy, floating cloud in my eye...
...It used to be that you could go to graduate school, be a management consultant, an `I-banker,' or go to law school...
...I am also reminded of a man I knew who suddenly became head of a small studio...
...Bet whatever you want...
...Simpson case...
...The Bundys' dog, Buck, has died...
...Then we went over to K-Mart...
...I really am in shock about this...
...How could I ever get out of this...
...You have to give it to him right now...
...Then on CNN, there was Mark Fuhrman under examination by a defense lawyer in the O.J...
...Just another couple of hours...
...He even bought Mommy a stuffed bear...
...You want to hear about Hollywood...
...Defense demolished...
...Others say about $5 million per family...
...How will he ever, ever learn to work and discipline himself if he can win this kind of money just by being lucky for a few seconds...
...Two lovely young women from Harvard who work for the show, Stacie Lipp and Dvora Inwood, took me to their table...
...His teacher said, "He looks so happy...
...It's near Naples, a hamlet I've passed through many a time...
...It can't go on forever," said the lawyer...
...I called Dr...
...What do you have...
...It's not bad to feel fear," I told him...
...Pain...
...My son wanted to play cards with me...
...Can I bet a thousand dollars...
...My left eye was exploding...
...I'm Seventh Day Adventist," he said...
...Then a few days ago, he got his lawyers to call and demand that the contracts all be redone, and he wanted to be referred to only as 'the Beaver.' " "Fantastic," I said...
...Well, doing all right," he said...
...I can do better than that," said his wife, who is a lawyer in the show business field...
...Once again, a kind man and a merciful Providence have gotten me through...
...I don't like it at all...
...I'm the sucker in the game...
...During our meal he won another $150, all of which goes into his college fund...
...Paradise...
...His uncle Greg had taught him to play poker while he was in Puerto Rico a few weeks ago...
...But I warn you that this will not happen again...
...How much do you want to bet, my boy...
...We took the Sea Trixie down the Pend'Oreille River to eat at Aardvark's Pizza in Priest River...
...Oh, well...
...Wow...
...Maddening...
...Ted and Amanda, who play the next-door neighbors...
...Yes and yes and yes...
...We did a table reading...
...he asked...
...He did not want to leave the set...
...They are all heroes of mine...
...Wednesday A 11 roads lead to Sandpoint, or at least North Idaho...
...When they had their mouths open, he would shoot them in the mouth...
...It was a hint, as if Ineeded one, that people who became really successful here have made some kind of pact with the devil...
...Enough of that...
...The defense, probably the most expensive in history, has been unable to put together even a remotely credible picture of O.J...
...Belonging...
...George, graduate of Loma Linda University, longtime practitioner in Southern California, recently moved to Sandpoint, Idaho...
...I tried to tell them over and over again how well they had done, but they were touchingly modest about their achievements...
...Then you can divide the rest among charities...
...They told me about how coming to Hollywood to work in sitcom-land is now an established post-Harvard path...
...I asked...
...Fluids...
...I didn't want to leave either...
...Housing gone...
...My eyes are very, very important to me...
...I schmoozed with the other actors...
...Then, back to Sandpoint...
Vol. 28 • November 1995 • No. 11
