Ben Stein's Diary: Deaths in the Family
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein Deaths in the Family Thursday Here I am in Idaho again. I have flown up here by myself, without Little Perfect. I decided he was missing too much school,...
...I have no curtains," she said...
...I work on the show...
...I know it surprises me, and I am at the very bottom rung of the Hollywood ladder...
...He got in a lot of undeserved trouble for his campaign fundraising for Nixon in 1972...
...I love that walk more than any other exercise on earth—through Sandpoint by night in the snow...
...It means you're not so far from home after all...
...He was my host, so to speak, and he had been a fine one...
...My books would comeout—after I had bled with them for a year or more —and then they would get a few good reviews and the publisher would just abandon them...
...Well, it's short term...
...She's working at an all night convenience store and gas station in town from 11 p.m...
...If he hadn't been imaginatively cost conscious, I would not have had an Edgewater inn to stay at as my Idaho home...
...No promotion or very little...
...She told me her name was Kimber Sisson and that we once had the same agent for commercials, the mighty Marcia Hurwitz...
...That book got super reviews, the kinds of reviews authors dream about...
...It also has windows facing a major office building with the remnants of Carolco, a failed studio...
...My job is to tell my opinions about the case...
...There might be," I said...
...My dinner companion, Sid, was amazed at the whole spectacle...
...Is that possible...
...It might startle them to see just how hard a normal American has to toil for a buck...
...The only problem is that the mother gets the money...
...Every traveler in America knows what it means to get off a flight and have a friendly, helpful face at the rental car counter...
...Back at the hotel, we had hot chocolate and Sunny Delite...
...Now she is happily engaged...
...In a word, I was really surprised that this lovely woman was thrusting her number at me...
...We sat in the sun happily contemplating our meal, when along came A., who is a successful Hollywood producer/executive...
...He had forgotten his gloves so I gave him mine and off into the snow we went...
...A week after I bought it, Cindy Crawford called to tell me she'd give me a quarter of a million more than I paid for it if I'd sell it to her...
...lit...
...She was a widow for more than twenty years, but always cheerful, always stunningly well informed, always up on everything, never down, never angry...
...Because when he asked me what my father's occupation was, I told him, 'Actor and lawyer and writer and plus, he gets money from reading about the stock market and he bought me Berkshire-Hathaway.' So he told me he also had Berkshire-Hathaway...
...Too horrible even to imagine...
...My favorite correspondent by far is Ray Wisher, from Florida...
...It's a nice place...
...It's hard to run a small business in North Idaho...
...Without any subsidy, without any tricks, she works like a demon, is always there for her son, and has no patience with people who think the world owes them a living...
...We were on the bubble...
...We put them on, and our ratings doubled...
...At the wake, I ran into lovely Lorna, the former barmaid at the Edgewater...
...I went to my laptop and signed on for e-mail...
...Turns out this guy has nine kids—and he was 19 when he got gunned down...
...They are both still lovely, still reminding me of when they were teenagers working for me...
...I asked him...
...I said I was sorry, and he told this story...
...Good point," I thought...
...She was the mother of my pal Al, and I will miss hearing about her...
...It might educate them to see what a woman who lives without a single cliché can accomplish...
...Alaska is a cross between a group of children playing at running an airline and a real airline...
...Still, how sad for the family...
...The kind of people you dream about as your neighbors...
...I was so happy to see him that I ran down the gangplank and hugged him...
...There's Les Moonves, the head of programming at CBS...
...But the publisher really did not push it aggressively, and then got very angry when I complained...
...In case you wonder why this country is going to have a Republican majority for a good long time, now you know...
...What if there are peeping Toms at Carolco...
...Have you been to Fiesole...
...They also sell food and ammunition and gloves...
...I am not in a position to give out acting jobs...
...That's what I say...
...Happier than just about any other woman I have ever seen...
...I usually lose money by being in the stock market," I told him...
...So they finally get the body out to the cemetery, and there's no money to pay the gravediggers...
...Out of nowhere, a bunch of gang bangers appear and start shooting at the nephew...
...The father was an eccentric but likable fellow...
...Forget peeping Toms," she added...
...I just can't get a man to marry me...
...That's not the bad part...
...She was very friendly and insisted on giving me her phone number...
...I now have a new one who is a star though...
...He even apologized, out of earshot, tomy side's lawyer for his previous mean remarks...
...She's been through a lot, and dated many famous men...
...The streets were deserted except for a group of teenagers in the snow in their T-shirts...
...Daniella and Julie used to work for me long ago as gofers, dog-sitters, and messenger/file clerks...
...Of course, I was never a wildly successful writer...
...You often tend to forget that out there in America, if you are not a lawyer or a doctor, you really have to work hard for small pay most of the time...
...Not this time...
...He gets a special dispensation...
...I was on a late shift last night when a friend of mine who's black appeared on the ward, looking very sad and tired...
...Friday Aspeech in the noon hour to the Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce about why I love the townso much...
...Some people complained that he was cheap with his running of the hotel...
...By doing so, she also chose it for her family...
...As I think of it, I guess I am not going to marry Kimber...
...I would never have thought a story about cutting government spending could be interesting, but it is...
...She goes crazy on crack for like six days, and keeps putting off the funeral...
...It was all a bum rap, but it was a terrible experience...
...The office is the home shop of a major big time national law firm...
...In fact, I have written about seventeen or eighteen books, either under my own name (maybe 15) or under someone else's name (about three...
...Former star of a new version of "Sea Hunt...
...You might think that's a glamorous life, but it isn't...
...I get that at Avis, so I keep coming back...
...Lorna won $16 with the lottery ticket I bought her...
...What job would be worth taking me away from the true joy of being with my son and picking him up after school...
...An amazing guy—from near poverty to the plutocracy and thirty years of public service—that's a mensch, and as I read his book I feel kind of impressed that I know him...
...I am not a tough guy shtarker, the type of gangster whom Hollywood women like...
...Joan Didion, my idea of a genius, once said that writing a book was like swimming underwater for a year, or something similar...
...We thought we might be picked up and we might he canceled...
...Now, here I am in a vast conference room getting questioned by a very smart, not particularly friendly man who works for the other side...
...Former star of many national commercials...
...We talked about stocks for a long time, and as I looked around me at the grown up faces at the studio, I thought, "Now why do I want to be working in a job that takes me out of my house day by day...
...No, of course not, Dotty...
...The nephew's girlfriend's brother had asked the decedent, age 19, to go for a walk...
...minutes...
...I feel as if congressmen and senators could get to see my e-mail and sense the rage and frustration of the ordinary citizen at the shameful, PC, head in the sand, rip off the innocent and protect the guilty way we live, those guys and dolls on Capitol Hill might be pretty surprised...
...It takes so much concentration to write a book that you absent yourself in large measure from real life...
...You have to have a lot of controversy or a lot of sex, and that's how it works...
...So they start to have the funeral, and his 'fiancée' gets up and says she's carrying his baby, plus she already had another by him and how she's going to miss him...
...I guess I don't want to he on TV then," I said...
...Most of them just do what they feel like and what they're getting paid to do and make up a reason for it anyway...
...I know it," he said with a modest laugh...
...The bad part is that I have so many deals going, so much happening, and so many people jerking me around and lying to me that I can't stand it any longer...
...She's sort of what makes the country work, when it's working...
...He is also a good raconteur...
...I sat next to a stockbroker," he said...
...Julie in particular used to pick up Martha, the ancient dowager weimaraner, and twirl her around and around...
...He asked me a very broad, open-ended kind of question, and now he's acting as if he were sleeping because he asked a big question and got a big answer...
...He's a male emergency room nurse in a hospital in inner city Chicago...
...So instead of writing about someone else's life, I live my life and my son's with him...
...I really like Ron...
...I got lost trying to find the parking garage, but I finally did so...
...Thursday Acall from my pal Sally Burton, one of the most astute analysts of human nature and group characteristics I have ever met...
...They were being incredibly brave...
...So there's a big pot of money for a funeral...
...I knew his son, James, because the boy had often rented jet boats to Tommy BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...to 7 a.m...
...If you have to be frugal to keep your place open, God love you...
...Then five more girls stand up and say they have his baby...
...I'm not a very good investor, but maybe you'll be better, my boy...
...11 Mountain town in the snow...
...I paraphrase from his latest of this early morn...
...I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm just not that likable...
...He's amazingly modest, and that is really rare in Hollywood...
...Daddy," he said, "I want to fly by myself all the time from now on...
...He had slid across into oncoming traffic and crashed into a huge tractor trailer from Canada hauling cattle...
...I found that true...
...50 February 1996 • The American Spectator "What if there are snipers...
...Al is the most determinedly optimistic man I have ever met...
...After dinner, I looked up my new probable fiancée, Kimber, on Nexis...
...I just bought a house near here...
...We continued with our deposition for about four hours...
...The reason is simple: I am not rich...
...She hoofed all around the Midwest...
...I felt terrible for his mother Jaquita, still attractive and stylish...
...But it showed up after a mere 40-minute delay, which is right on the button for Alaska...
...Then I took her with me to buy lottery tickets at Sand-point's casino, a gas station that sells lottery tickets with extreme attention to the customer...
...It's really simple...
...You can make a lot of money in a short time...
...She must think I am someone else...
...Why don't you try being likable...
...That's a very short deposition, by the way...
...She was a genuine vaudevillian...
...I will miss just knowing that someone that bright and sunny is gone...
...Former girlfriend of someone named Grieco, who was a TV star...
...I decided when Tommy was about five that he was so incredibly cute that I would live this time of his life with him instead of with a book...
...She was stunningly beautiful up close...
...No ads or very few...
...I don't know what to do...
...Thursday Apother lunch outdoors, this time at the cafe at Raleigh Studios...
...Now he's written One of the President's Men, a delightful, lucid, fast-paced book about his career and times...
...The depo is at an office in downtown L.A...
...Nineteen, and nine kids, all paid for by the taxpayers...
...Then, along with my pal Peter and his son, Alex, off to Spokane to pick up Little Perfect...
...I often have the fantasy that a Hollywood producer or writer could spend a month with someone like my hero, beloved Susan P. of Alabama...
...As I listened to a Spokane radio station, I heard a stunning story...
...He was always friendly in the tiny lobby...
...Maybe she was even ahead of Al...
...For as long as I have been here in L.A., I have thought of Al Burton as my best friend...
...What's the point...
...Sometimes when I'm in my car in traffic, I just start to laugh out loud and think that they still haven't caught me and thrown me out...
...So we did a show on women with huge breasts...
...Oh well, I'll just do what I can without being likable...
...You live in a trance with your subject and your characters...
...I was not surprised by this, since he had begged me to let him fly by himself...
...In her slouching way, Dotty showed me around the apartment and confided her fears about it...
...Monday Dinner at Morton's...
...There's Ron Meyer, the head of MCA...
...By the time dinner was over, the snow was heavy...
...It's a short term phenomenon...
...Tuesday Adeposition in a case that will be tried in a Contra Costa court...
...Forgive and forget...
...Of course, he only cared about seeing Alex and wanted to stay at the airport and play video games...
...You might want to call Al...
...I asked him what the problem was...
...By now, I might be their most frequent customer...
...I can't...
...I mean even on bad days, you have one of the best jobs there is...
...Just why do people want to have talk shows anyway...
...White middle-class people and black middle-class people and yellow and brown middle-class people—and law abiding poor people of every race —do not like this kind of horror...
...I hurtled east on Route 90 to Coeur d'Alene and then up Route 95 to Sandpoint...
...Most back yards in the Hollywood Hills are small, but this one is huge...
...So I'm going to Florence tomorrow, actually to Fiesole...
...The City of Chicago has a program (paid for by the taxpayers) that pays a ten thousand dollar award for the funerals of gang members killed on city property...
...I used to write a lot of books...
...I went over to talk to her...
...Neither one works...
...This is the way Hollywood works...
...We bundled up...
...I have known him for almost twenty years, since he was a fledgling producer along with Michael Shamberg, who is a really, really successful producer (Get Shorty, A Fish Called Wanda...
...I was inside, warm, with my boy...
...The airplane was late, so I was scared...
...Former model...
...I really had a good time...
...I have known Ma Belle for years and years, and I have known her to be the second most optimistic person I have ever known—after Al...
...You were so friendly and forgiving that you absorbed his anger," my side's lawyer said...
...Ben," she said...
...I can't tell you what a day I've had," he said...
...I drove very carefully...
...It got so painful after my last book (the one about Milken) that I simply walked away...
...Tommy breathed smoothly...
...In Hollywood, I am not considered at all a hot catch for women with blond hair...
...Wednesday Avisit from the beautiful but wacky Dotty, my lovely neighbor...
...Allen Cox, a major figure in Sandpoint business, had been killed in a collision the day before on a slushy stretch of road near the tiny hamlet of Careywood...
...I worked with him—if you can call it work—when I first moved here almost twenty years ago...
...My idea is to put my diary on videotape...
...Then afterwards, the questioning lawyer was effusively friendly...
...My colleague looked at me as if I were mentally ill...
...Then she sat wearily on her mighty bed, towering over me on the floor...
...It's packed again, like the old days...
...Did you know that...
...52 February 1996 The American Spectator...
...There's Ivan Reitman, star producer and director, maker of some of the world's greatest movies, including Dave and Stripes...
...My son's being as cute as he is will be a short term phenomenon, too...
...It's just not me to be likable...
...Her sister is dating a Harvard Law grad...
...My daughter [who is a stunning girl of about 21] is working her way through college in Coeur d'Alene...
...Very butch...
...I decided he was missing too much school, so he will come tomorrow...
...Tuesday As usual, I cannot sleep, so I am up on-line getting bulletins from my far-flung correspondents around the world...
...In her last years, she traveled constantly, enjoyed far-flung places, reported back enthusiastically, and then got sick and died...
...It was a picture postcard of a small Rocky The American Spectator • February 1996 49 Cl The worst part is when he pretends to be sleeping when I give a long answer...
...A. is a tall, handsome fellow of startling intelligence...
...It's a great house...
...That was her motto...
...We talked for a long time...
...Turns out she's smoked up all, not some, of the money...
...There are limos at either end, so it'll be bearable...
...I felt as if I had been left alone on a busy street and made to fend for myself as a child...
...It was a lonely trip without him...
...I love it anyway...
...Several really kind people had written urging me to write a book about this or that...
...Well, I thought...
...It has a really big back yard...
...I've tried being sweet and nice," she said in a sweet, nice voice, "and I've tried being mean and tough," she added, with her voice becoming snarling and mean...
...It has a bed about ten feet off the ground...
...Now, I live with my boy playing cards or shooting me with his Nerf gun, and that's better than any review or any advance...
...Now they are both grown up and really successful in Hollywood...
...These are very, very big, fancy offices...
...He is well prepared and probably a good friend to his neighbors...
...This is a heavy group tonight...
...We walked back to the hotel and watched TV and then Tommy walked out on the balcony and said, "Daddy, it's really snowing...
...My son loves to play in it...
...To lose a son...
...How sad for America, and how long before this is not just in Cabrini Green but in Pleasant Valley, Everywhere, USA...
...Besides, they're still fairly slushy...
...Progress, I guess...
...The worst part is when he pretends to be sleeping when I give a long answer...
...Like 120 triple-J breasts...
...That didn't really bother me...
...They put six bullets in his The American Spectator • February 1996 51 head...
...Let's walk to the Safeway and the Gas-n-Go...
...I went to talk to a man about some talk show ideas starring yours truly...
...Plus, I felt scared...
...Al and I share many interests, including the decay of educational standards among the young...
...Her boyfriend works there with her...
...Someday if I am well, I will write again between hard covers, but for now, I am living, not writing a book...
...Usually she calls to tell me a joke...
...Julie is a producer and Daniella is an executive at Atlantic Records...
...In true Alaska Airlines fashion, the flight was late, then canceled, then reinstated, and I had to rush to get onto it before it left—only one hour late...
...There's a beautiful blonde woman who keeps waving at me...
...I'm flying first class on Air France...
...They're all black, of course...
...There are a lot of people who've accomplished bigger things than I have...
...I was so excited and happy that I could not drift off...
...I have stopped writing books for those exact reasons, and some more...
...When all else fails, hug your Martha...
...I heard, then saw a hundred car freight go eastbound on the Burlington Northern tracks...
...When I awakened, the snow was general over the lake, falling in buckets, but the air was surprisingly warm...
...The two of them get outside and the friend runs away...
...She was in ecstasy...
...Turns out his mother is a major crackhead...
...Alas, as the deposition wears on, he's getting nasty to me...
...She's a smart, literary, lovely single mother...
...It means someone cares about you...
...Now, you might think that it would be uncomfortable for someone as tall as I am to fly on that long a flight, but Air France has special really, really long seats just for really tall people like I am...
...Cox and his five kids...
...Not bad...
...I do not know these roads anywhere near as well as Allen Cox did...
...Most important, I think this guy is a Spectator reader...
...I told him a Ren and Stimpy story and then drifted off to sleep...
...I just thought you should know that Ma Belle died," she said in a sad voice...
...He said that his nephew had died...
...No Chanel and no Tiffany, but friendly, outgoing people...
...I thinkit's interesting, and my observations as I drive around town are particularly lovely...
...When I got to Sandpoint, there was a wake for Allen going on in the lounge of the Edgewater...
...How did you know he was a stockbroker...
...Bueller, Bueller" they said as we walked by...
...Then today, my maid crashed into the gate, and that hit a fire hydrant and that broke open and water sprayed everywhere and my basement got flooded...
...He got it from his mother, Ma Belle, who must have been born in a trunk, as they say...
...When I got home, there was a letter on e-mail from a dear friend in Sandpoint...
...I have never laughed so much in my life as I did on that gig...
...So was I. I waited for my car in front of Morton's and talked to Ron Meyer for a few 44 In a word, I was really surprised that this lovely woman was thrusting her number at me...
...Also a eulogy for Allen Cox...
...We invited him to join us for lunch and he did...
...It's what I call "legislative realism" and it happens a lot...
...When I got to Spokane, I hustled off the airplane and headed for the Avis counter...
...For a long time I wondered how she did it, and I think I finally figured outthat at a certain point in her life, she, like a few others, chose happiness...
...So the mother passes the hat and they collect money, and the mother tries to run off with it to get more crack...
...Hmmm...
...We both know you're lying...
...They always greet me with great cheer, and usually have exactly the car I want waiting for me...
...Friday Iam almost finished with Maurice Stans's recent book...
...Also, the boy's father had a small life insurance policy on him, and he gets that money and gives it to the mother...
...Do you ever think about having one of the five or ten best jobs in America...
...Jaquita, her sisters, and other friends and family were in the bar, drinking and remembering...
...Well, maybe not...
...They each get $6 per hour...
...He is the former head of the Bureau of the Budget under Eisenhower, former secretary of commerce under RN, major league famous accountant, and fundraiser for the Nixon library...
...I feel it's a good day when I can rise above someone else's unhappiness...
...You're lying," she said...
...Look...
...She appeared with her little scratching dog, "borrowed" some orange juice, and then asked me to have a look at her new apartment in the Shoreham Towers...
...Not possible...
...and me...
...It's important to know...
...This really hurts my feelings...
...It's too hard...
...James was a sweet, unassuming boy, without any trace of attitude at all despite being the son of a major businessman in town...
...They would vote for anyone in a second if they really thought he could clean it up, and they would have damned good reason...
...I rented a villa...
...It's also my job to realize that this fellow questioning me is probably trying just to do his best for his clients, who pay for his roof over his head...
...This must have shown on my face because my colleague looked puzzled...
...I felt really sad for Mr...
...I think her group's name was Belle and the Buttercups...
...I felt really bad for Jaquita, and I admired her strength...
...That's life in the inner city in Chicago right now...
...Wednesday Lunch with beautiful Juliette and Daniella Capretta at my delightful Clafoutis, an outdoor restaurant on Sunset Plaza...
...Allen Cox owned many businesses in Sandpoint, but most important for me, he owned the Edgewater hotel...
...Oh, happy night...
Vol. 29 • February 1996 • No. 2
