Ben Stein's Diary: On Colloidal Course
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein On a Colloidal Course Tuesday 0ff to a cartoon recording session in Studio City. This is for an item called Bruno and the Kid. The main voice...
...They do not look as desperate as L.A...
...he asked...
...Tuesday 0 ff to Pepperdine to speak at a summer colloquium for high school students...
...There's a lesson of some kind in that, but what...
...The Russian engineer came up to fix the air...
...Didn't they notice that in one scene thirty minutes are taken up watching Tom Cruise hang from a rope...
...But it seems to be making us all pretty big and fat...
...We rode up in the elevator from the garage with Chairman Greenspan himself...
...I'm a character actor...
...I noticed that Tommy was almost asleep...
...I am so glad he is alive...
...He kept twisting and turning and tapping on the window...
...Larry Lindsey, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, told us about his struggles to cut his lawn in Virginia...
...This button makes him jump and this one makes the whip go out a long way and this one makes it go out a short way and this one makes you kick...
...I give up...
...Thursday am at the worst hotel in America, the Clift in San Francisco...
...There is a job you could not pay me to have: airline clerk at the United Shuttle...
...Then, through dense traffic back to 44 We rode up in the elevator from the garage with Chairman Greenspan himself...
...people...
...Something you should be thinking about is your nutrition," said B., a healthy woman in her late forties...
...These trips are unbelievably cheap...
...I do not like zoos...
...He now does voiceovers and does them well...
...but four, he has written a screenplay that is like Star Wars only better, which he would like yours truly to sell for him to help him raise money to make films that will allow him to showcase his talent as the next Max Von Sydow (which he pronounces, with aching pretension, as SyDOHV...
...44 Did I mention United doesn't believe in run ning the air conditioning at its San Francisco shuttle terminal...
...One of my fellow actors, a man who played a TV news anchor better than Dan Rather, accepted my high praise of him and then said, "You know, Spencer Tracy said, `Honesty is the only thing that matters...
...Also: De mortuis nil nisi bonum, I zoomed over to play with Tommy...
...Then off to an audition for a lottery ad...
...San Francisco people still have some trace of human kindness...
...No, my boy...
...I can ask for what I want, but God decides what I get...
...A Beechcraft Bonanza maybe...
...I decided not to go to the audition...
...When I walked in, the room erupted with cheers and foot stomping and cries of "Bueller, Bueller...
...After a 40-minute eternity, Tommy said, "Daddy, do we have to stay here...
...What if John Hughes and Michael Chinich had never met me...
...No...
...It means you don't just eat minerals you get off a store shelf," B. said enthusiastically...
...Exactly right...
...I play a scientist, surprise surprise...
...Anyway, Tina the troublemaker left so 58 September 1996 • The American Spectator I followed Tommy to his crowded room...
...Plus, too much of the zoo is devoted to birds...
...We had pleasant visits with Al Hunt, big liberal at the Wall Street Journal, and his lovely wife Judy Woodruff, with my hero of journalism, Bill Safire, Larry Sommers, deputy secretary of the treasury, who was likewise extremely polite, and a smart fellow named Mike Prell, who is a genius about monetary policy...
...It's obviously very important to little boys to think that their dads are strong in one way or another...
...Keker had a speaking engagement, so I had dinner with my lovely friend B., a real-estate mogul in the Santa Cruz area...
...57 The American Spectator . September r 9 9 6 But United cannot be relied on to do the right thing...
...It is not fun to travel, and it is torture to be cramped when you are traveling...
...Still no air...
...He was your partner...
...The main thing is to have some inner peace...
...I'm sorry for saying that, Daddy," he said...
...We are having breakfast with my parents as we prepare to leave...
...Tommy and Mommy slept, too, in an adjoining room...
...I can get you their catalogue...
...Let's not tell Bill Clinton...
...We play a professor and his daughter...
...I thank God every day that his mother didn't just kill him and call it a "choice...
...He's a woodworker...
...He was in no way prepared to live like that...
...The constant of the journey called life is uncertainty...
...It was called Mission: Impossible...
...Didn't I tell you that we were low on gas and you needed to buy gas this morning...
...Still, when I paused, he said sleepily, "More...
...How on earth do I hurt you...
...I have some bad news," he said...
...No...
...He turned on some kind of frighteningly lifelike game...
...Uhh, more than life itself...
...That's in a Thornton Wilder play my mother likes to quote...
...The world's best job...
...Tina does...
...Tommy ran around the room playing with his paper airplanes...
...A kind clerk helped me get on an early flight back to L.A...
...Then, with only moments to spare before we would be evicted to make room for the early edition of the Mandarin News, we finished and slapped each other on the back...
...Even if we don't agree with what you do, be yourself in the main, and be what we want you to be at the edges...
...Well expressed...
...Note: Please, any and all ex-Drill Instructors, please call me or e-mail me at Ben Stein@aol.com for a good job...
...Of course not...
...He was making something called an AlkaSeltzer bomb in the back yard, with the dogs cowering nearby...
...I gave my little speech, mostly about not doing things that are foreseeably harmful to you like drinking too much, or smoking too much (or at all), or eating too much or spending too much...
...What's that...
...How well I know," I said...
...Someone at United should be sued over this...
...Two, he tells you he came to San Francisco not to make movies, but films...
...It is vital to be in the right place at the right time...
...How come I am not a regular in a sitcom...
...Colloidal minerals...
...Daddy, will you play video games with me...
...It had no air conditioning and a loudly dripping faucet...
...Keker and Brockett, law school classmates, had founded a litigation firm that became extremely successful...
...Exactly," I said...
...You need to start out on the colloidal route," she said...
...A zoo is basically a prison, and I guess I do not like prisons...
...Where did he get that horrible question...
...There is still no air coming out," I said...
...I reached up to the vent...
...the hotel and off with my parents to Alan Greenspan's fete on the top floor of the Federal Reserve...
...They were sweet boys and girls, but wow, are they young looking...
...Makes life a lot easier...
...The most important task...
...We need far, far more natural nutrients, and fewer artificial ones...
...But it still makes sense to me...
...Those glaciers were rained on in a time when the moisture in the air got mixed with the real, original earth...
...I rushed over and hugged my little towheaded angel...
...I'm sorry," I said...
...Then at his beseeching I read the plans and could not make head nor tail of them...
...I like the L.A...
...The same poor soul who had driven me to the set drove me to the airport...
...I feel as if I am on a knife's edge...
...Any partner of John's is an ace in my book, even if he did make fun of me...
...How long can this last...
...But I forgave him, and wished him well, and even liked him...
...As the saying goes, this has got to stop...
...Another Malibu Serenity Saying guided me on my way back home: I can take the baby steps, but God decides the results...
...His caregiver, the trouble-making Tina, was also teaching him to whistle, for which I could just shoot her...
...Work has no real purpose...
...That's how we'll divide our responsibilities...
...I immediately called my old pal and law school classmate John...
...No, there is no air coming out at all," I said...
...When you get paid to be "witty" and make funny voices, you can hardly miss having a good time...
...I don't want you to ever be that way...
...It was so bad, so fey, and so nonsensical that it really puts into question the entire fantasy-making process in America...
...I slept through most of it in my room at the River Inn in Washington because I felt so tired after my trip...
...She is the only single woman I know who is a millionaire from her own non-show biz exertions...
...Not another word...
...Back to sleep before dinner...
...I get exhausted when I travel, so I have 56 September r 9 9 6 • The American Spectator to sleep constantly...
...I think this will be noteworthy for the folks at Bank of America, too...
...Must be very expensive," I said...
...At that time it was called the Four Seasons...
...BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...It was more like a small-town Fourth that just happened to be on C Street, N.W., Washington, D.C...
...I am sure of that," I agreed...
...Two adversaries faced each other on a high mountaintop, armed with scary implements of war...
...What can that mean...
...Come to think of it, I am not at all sure we can afford to keep buying him toys day after day...
...Colloidal minerals come from the high Andean glaciers that exist from prehistoric times...
...So the water from those glaciers has the original trace elements that make an animal strong and thin...
...A villain tries to steal it, but to no avail...
...I see...
...Still, it's creepy...
...Fifteen percent off store prices...
...I'm beginning to notice a common theme here...
...Did I mention that United does not believe in running the air conditioning at its San Francisco shuttle terminal...
...We do if we want to...
...Sad for him, I think I will soon have to start saying that very thing, mostly because it is true...
...You just show up and hammer and get your pay, and that's it...
...Friday How to tell if you are in the presence of a true loser of a production assistant on a training film or any other project: One, he picks you up from your hotel on the wrong side of the street...
...Here...
...He smiled a confident smile at me...
...Then, into my little black car and up the highway to see my little angel...
...In fact, everyone there was extremely polite and outgoing...
...Forget those airplanes," I said...
...You read it in the newspapers, and I guess it's true: the racial makeup of America is changing in a big way...
...How about when I'm r6...
...She used to make cookies for me long ago when I worked at the Wall Street Journal...
...How can I ever complain about the devolution of much of the Hollywood product into a morass of semi-pornography if I participate...
...No...
...I guess that's what people in Silver Spring said when they saw us Jews moving to town...
...I told him about the worst of my childhood-Montgomery Hills Junior High-and the best-Montgomery Blair High School, once a glorious perfect city on a hill, now something else...
...Well, because you won't let me go to Idaho for the whole summer...
...I couldn't be who I was at school because they wanted me to be like them and I never was...
...Tommy," I asked, "why so much violence against Daddy...
...To blunt Tommy's dismay, I took him to watch some scary movie experience at Universal...
...What if I had not been in town the day of the shoot...
...Loud, bright, colorful, deeply impressive...
...I'll try anything," I said...
...Far more who are more self-disciplined...
...For some reason having to do with my making a joke about living the Hollywood life, he had made cruel fun of me in the alumni magazine...
...But, I had to think, what if I had not done Ferris Bueller's Day Off...
...When I finished, I found a messengered script waiting for me...
...1~ Oh, boy...
...How come I have to just hope for the occasional small part...
...After a while, I was too tired to read any longer...
...Then about a decade ago Brockett retired to live life...
...How about an airplane...
...Think about it...
...I really get fearful in small spaces...
...Plus," he sniffed, "no one gave me money to buy gas...
...It was great...
...I had not been there in about forty years...
...Actually, it looked pretty much the same...
...We had no dressing room, no place to rest except for a chair in the closet sized lobby...
...Malibu Serenity Sayings tell us a few basic facts: Life does not change...
...It was for an audition for an independent movie...
...We are all in God's hands no matter what we think...
...You're going for two months...
...Burns, widow of the former Fed chairman, Arthur Burns...
...Must be Marine ex-D.I: s. Thursday Independence Day...
...Rude, desperate people, in a hot, crowded area, yelling at you nonstop...
...people...
...No, it means if I die of other than natural causes, you do not get any money ever and might go to jail...
...I can sleep during the day just about as well as anyone...
...If you can fake that, you've got it made...
...It helps a lot to know that I am not really the best at anything or the most special at anything...
...See, because of man's overuse of the soil, we have used up all of the natural nutrients in the soil and we just get man-made fake chemicals instead of nutrients...
...I know that my old Dad used to make things in the basement with his hacksaw and his brace and bit and I would be deeply impressed at his strength in his arms...
...Tommy is on the floor reading Garfield...
...Yes, he had a stroke about eight months ago, and then he turned out to have brain cancer, and he was just in bed, largely immobilized...
...Hamill, who became incredibly famous by starring in a little thing called Star Wars...
...There are no prizes for being the most worried and tense, but there is the prize of peace for being the most trusting of God...
...At home, Tommy was riding his bike back and forth while Tina watched him...
...Maybe from watching about the Menendez Brothers...
...Tommy came to have me read to him...
...Can I have an airplane when I'm twelve...
...Makes my life easier to know I am not the center of the universe...
...Plus, I don't want Tommy seeing me in a dirty movie years from now after I have told him not to curse...
...The only word that makes me smile just to hear it...
...Nutrition is really important...
...He got lost...
...Proud smile...
...Oh, all right...
...He is astonishingly modest and self-effacing...
...Next to me on the other side was a Mr...
...More tools, more hammering...
...How did this woman get to be a millionaire...
...Once I got on the plane, there was a crazed looking man sitting behind me...
...It was sort of a relief for him to die...
...You would never know to look at him that he is one of the power players of the world...
...Yes, but they kept me so busy I didn't have time...
...Three, he tells you he did not go to L.A...
...Iron law: Losers make excuses for not acting right...
...He sulked until we got to the terminal...
...He sounded depressed...
...Taking care of his annual toy needs seems to me to cost us about as much as a year of college costs...
...The world's highest title...
...Or a genuine movie star who works all year long...
...Then we got dressed and went to the National Zoo...
...Keker, San Fran litigator extraordinaire, and told him I was coming...
...People in San Francisco tend to have pleasant, cheery faces...
...Our pal, Peter, will do them for us...
...Then back home to get the joyous news that I was wanted in San Francisco on Friday to do some in-house pep talks for Bank of America...
...59 The American Spectator . September 1996...
...There are a lot of people smarter than I am in this world...
...What...
...We are all heading to the same place, and the only variable is our serenity en route...
...I see...
...We don't...
...It's okay, Daddy," he said...
...We use the soil so much that we have pretty much used up all of the natural elements in the soil...
...The fireworks were great...
...Plus, they tend to be clever...
...Joan Didion, a big liberal but also a big hero of mine, said long ago, in the immortal Play It As It Lays, "You can't win if you're not at the table...
...Some of that has to do with their being in the world's worst-planned and most cramped airport facility, with no good food, no comfortable place to sit, and no room to breathe...
...But what I kept thinking is, "If all of these kids love me so much, how come I am not a real star...
...So I was like in a thought-control prison for much of my childhood...
...Then he did something that is almost unbelievably cute...
...I played with him for about fifteen minutes...
...Brockett had never been a close friend, to put it mildly...
...Bill Brockett died last week...
...I asked...
...I pointed out...
...If you don't eat right, you can die prematurely," she said...
...Also a lot who are harder working than I am...
...The studio was run by a tiny Chinese/Indonesian/Tagalog broadcaster...
...My room this time was large, but barren...
...Isn't that enough...
...Does that mean Mommy and I are richer if you get murdered...
...Do you know how much I love you, my boy...
...You would never have thought from the meal or the demeanor of the guests that you were at a party of powerful officials and journalists...
...And, you won't let me have a pellet gun unless I'm good...
...And I talked about being scared much of the time when I was a child...
...Instead, I sat next to a funny woman named Kathi Nagler, who has a woman's voice much like my own drawling man's voice...
...I guess this is how it is in Russia...
...Still, by virtue of his talking, I did not have to talk much, and that was a blessing...
...Now, to fool us, it's called the Clift...
...Please...
...Doesn't anyone notice this is not even a story at all...
...The main voice belongs to Bruce Willis, who has a lot on his plate, so to speak...
...There are few similarities between L.A...
...Daddy" and "Daddy" and "Daddy...
...If all of these travelers just knew a few items I learned in the Malibu Serenity Sayings, they would be a lot happier, as I was on the shuttle as I repeated them to myself...
...He learned it by swinging from the arm of a friend named Steve Gage who is a genuine bodybuilder...
...At the United Shuttle terminal at LAX, men and women looked out of their minds with tension, wound up like drums, crazed, terrified, distorted with anxiety...
...He grabbed my right forearm with both hands, and then swung himself and just hung from it like a monkey hanging from a tree branch...
...The main reason I liked him was that he was Keker's partner, and Keker is one of nature's noblemen...
...These frequent trips east are too expensive, my father always says...
...Not at all...
...That's just it," B. said, still more enthusiastic...
...You be the one with the whip," he said...
...The event was in a large, pleasant auditorium called Smothers Theater...
...Then, he can't find the studio...
...I got cruelly murdered in each and every game...
...Are you kidding...
...That was nice...
...Daddy," Tommy asked as he wheeled his bike into the living room, "can I have a motorcycle...
...Didn't the people who made it realize there was no story...
...Then, back to the hotel and to sleep...
...Long afterward, I came to realize she was mocking the man who said that...
...I stayed here once about four years ago...
...He knew in his cunning little child's brain that no matter how tired I was, I could be counted on to talk about myself...
...I watched him struggle to assemble some balsa-wood model airplanes...
...Because you're always here to play with me and because you hurt me in some ways, too...
...My mother is tired and sits quietly in a silk dress on their ancient couch...
...However, we had a lot of fun...
...So, we're going to run out of gas on Route for at rush hour because you're sulking about not getting an advance for gas...
...I HATE whistling, unless it's done professionally, like in "The Colonel Bogey March" from The Bridge Over the River Kwai...
...because he disdains its crass materialism...
...Hmm...
...This is what he does to prove to himself that I am strong enough to carry him...
...Take what you want and pay for it,' said God...
...He played an Australian, a German, and a child, too...
...Then he was asleep, and a few minutes later, so was I. Sunday Alex, Tommy, and I are back from a very tiring trip to the Eastern Shore and my future ancestral home, Snug Harbor...
...But he was not there this morning...
...Daddy," he said as I walked in the door, and then I think he asked me what was the best kind of airplane for strafing dug-in Iraqi infantry and how big a 3omm cannon shell was compared to his fist, but I didn't hear, because basically all I heard was "Daddy" and that was enough...
...Works fine," he said...
...BEN S T E I N'S D I A R Y by Benjamin J. Stein On a Colloidal Course Tuesday 0 ff to a cartoon recording session in Studio City...
...Maybe give them a few laughs...
...What...
...I think that's also why Tommy asks me about buying him truly ridiculous things: to make sure that I do not say, "We can't afford it...
...I'll be the one with the club...
...We can meet it with serenity and faith, or with fear and trembling...
...When I was a child, I felt like a prisoner a large part of the time," I said...
...The high Andean glaciers are the only places you can get this stuff...
...Daddy," he asked, "tell me anything at all about your childhood...
...My father is in the kitchen making pancakes on an electric frying pan my grandmother gave them forty years ago or more...
...It made me very upset...
...I thought I did it perfectly, but I suppose everyone else who was auditioning felt the same way...
...The point of the movie seemed to be to have as many dirty words in as short a space of time as possible...
...No, I get it by mail order from a place in Oakland that certifies that every mineral is colloidal and comes from the high Andes...
...and San Francisco people...
...Don't you know there's no excuse for running out of gas, period...
...He put his finger in his mouth thoughtfully...
...The students seemingly loved what I said...
...Many, many more of them are now blacks and Asians and Latinos than when I first started giving these talks...
...All of us here with my son as the avatar of boyish perfection and my father making us pancakes...
...To know him is to love him...
...lack of pretension, but I hate the cruel, tough lizard faces of L.A...
...I have to know this with regard to rude people sitting near me, too...
...Those are the ones that make us fat...
...Yes, but what can that possibly mean...
...Alex is eating the pancakes voraciously...
...No problem...
...We ate at Postrio, a large, cheerful place owned and run by my pal Wolfgang Puck, a chef and promoter of Spago and its imitators...
...We have an invention to read minds...
...Afterwards, we visited with Mrs...
...He looked pensive...
...He is so smart...
...He hammered madly and then smiled...
...Oh, well...
...Plus, he had only a teaspoon of gasoline...
...No...
...I have to sleep now," I said...
...After my speech, I signed a million trillion autographs...
...I couldn't be who I was when I was with my parents, because they wanted me to be more studious and less lively...
...I had to change rooms three times because my room was so noisy...
...It's a pleasant, simple meal hosted by Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell, for just a few dozen staffers and friends...
...You can have an airplane when you're 40...
...No, it isn't," he said...
...Results are not part of the pay scheme...
Vol. 29 • September 1996 • No. 9
