Ben Stein's Diary: Watch Yourself
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein Watch Yourself Sunday I have a list I keep in my head of the ten greatest consumer inventions of the twentieth century. Not stuff like atom bombs or jet...
...4i 56 October 19 9 7 The American Spectator...
...Monday 0 ff to a set to do a commercial for Oldsmobile...
...Mark is probably unlike any other man I have ever had a meal with...
...I love living in America...
...Friday Amajor struggle with the powers that be at the St...
...Then, I take them into town on bikes...
...A big question," I said...
...It's your problem," she said...
...Humans are a brave species...
...When I think about it, being on an airplane flight is like being with a group of people with whom you have absolutely nothing in common, who may or may not have just been released from prison or from mental hospitals, who might have grown up without any manners at all, who might have BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...As I passed by, they said, "Clear Eyes, Clear Eyes" and "Bueller, Bueller...
...I called the assistant manager...
...In my little dressing room, I prayed with thanks...
...But with the Discman, you can have some little measure of isolation and peace...
...I am not kidding...
...I have bought a Cannondale, and it's a revelation...
...After lunch, we go out on my mighty Thompson and zoom back and forth...
...We talked about Nixon and about Elvis, and about cafeterias, and the show was over...
...A little waitress named Angie shows me her poetry...
...Lucky me...
...The memory of boyhood bike rides with David Scull up to Silver Spring on Colesville Road comes flooding back...
...He looked at the timepiece my wife bought for me in the Virgin Islands a couple of years ago...
...Tommy did not want to come...
...We had lunch together before the show at Michael's, on 55th, and Billy told me hilarious stories about life in Kiev...
...she asked with a big smile...
...I had a tiny suite, which they gave to me at zo percent off, so it was a mere $600 per night...
...He wants to play Magic instead, a wildly complex card game I cannot even start to understand...
...And it was tiny...
...There was a nervous energy in the art-deco halls...
...I really loved Joel's spiel...
...Then, my $600-a- night bed had no top sheet, just a not totally clean bedspread...
...I feel bad because I have not seen him enough this summer...
...He wants to be a doctor," I said to Craig...
...Clinton, too...
...in French from Columbia...
...Wow...
...I said...
...Maybe Bob Dylan...
...I finally staggered into a shopping center at Wisconsin and M Street, mercifully air conditioned, and collapsed at a table next to a pizza stand...
...But day is far from done...
...Then, snacks from Safeway, usually Kool-Aid and toaster strudels, maybe some popcorn, and then to bed...
...I could see it a hundred times...
...Then I make breakfast for him and whichever of his many pals slept over that night...
...This summer I have been adapting Shakespeare and history for Tommy: Ren & Stimpy at Waterloo...
...Solly knows that a lot better than I do...
...I hope you're kidding," I said...
...missed their dose of Prozac for the last few days, who might have just learned that they were fired, and these people—with whom you would have absolutely nothing to do in a million years — happen to be sitting within inches of your face...
...Anyway, we finally arrived at DFW...
...Something is wrong here...
...Tommy sleeps in bed with me and he gets up about when I do...
...America, circa 1997, really is paradise...
...The boys skip stones...
...However, the marketplace told him that he could earn far more money working as a seller of very expensive watches, so he is now manager of Le Tourneau, a watch shop of giant proportions on Madison Avenue...
...Maybe it has to do with the fact that so many of the travelers can charge it to the stockholders or the taxpayers...
...So, Melissa," I said to her, "tell me this...
...The criminal law is about something else...
...In front of me, a man and woman are talking, drunk, nonstop, flirting, giggling, as if they had never met anyone of the other sex before...
...And it doesn't really keep exactly perfect time like those watches that you get in the cereal boxes...
...Regis to get my bill reduced for their derelictions of innkeeper's duty...
...Peter Feierabend's son, Alex, is with us, and we are getting ready to start our summer vacation...
...They both perform basically the same function: they blot out the outside world and allow you into your own better, quieter, or at least more private world...
...Then I buy the kids lunch, usually at Jalapeno's, a Mexican place overlooking the Sand Creek, or else at a new place overlooking the Marina called the Powerhouse...
...I find it amazing that people in airplanes can be as rude as they are...
...I like that a lot...
...Wow, have times changed...
...Ren & Stimpy at Elsinore Castle...
...They finally agreed to take off half, so now my completely inadequate room is a mere $30o a night...
...Regis, at 55th and Fifth...
...One night, Tommy and I stayed up late to watch the Persiad meteor shower...
...But when you're older, it's hard," he said...
...The stage is cavernous, freezing, almost empty...
...He wants to study, but I say, 'Forget it...
...Foiled again...
...the woman asked with a pitying smile...
...A ridiculously long time...
...As I sat there, consciousness little by little returned to me...
...I don't think I would want to live anywhere in Europe...
...Traffic was unbearable in the Manhattan rain, gridlock for block after block...
...First he was away at camp...
...Considering that he's up against scofflaws who don't obey subpoenas, I think he's doing well...
...11 a bike is one of those magical toys that offers a return wildly greater than its cost...
...Thursday U p to New York on the U.S...
...Then walk up a steep hill to Georgetown, sweating, panting, heart pounding, stomach churning, and feeling as if you are going to die...
...Night or day it's filled with beautiful girls...
...I think I've heard of him but I'm not sure," she said...
...Then I went up in an elevator to a floor of small, in fact tiny, dressing rooms, and men and women rushing back and forth in costume...
...The line was so long I did not wait, but I bought a book and left it for him to sign...
...He told me he liked my writing about Sandpoint, and I told him I disliked trials where the key issue was thoughtcrime, and we made a date for lunch, and here we are...
...He really knows his watches...
...He wants to get a boat very much like mine...
...He's a good old boy type guy, not a glitterati type guy...
...After he finished, he made a dramatic sweeping gesture along the top sheet, as if he had created a masterpiece...
...I could survive Auschwitz because I was young," he said...
...He is just not of the same social class as the people who usually write big books...
...In the morning, I made French toast for Tommy and his pals again...
...It never fails to amaze44 'He had so much time to spend with me it was hard to believe...
...It all looked like the backstage of "Saturday Night Live," which, I guess, is exactly what it was...
...More power to him, I say...
...He's a lot funnier than he appears at first...
...Anyway, Mark, his two kids, and I are racing through the water to Bottle Bay for lunch...
...The best one this summer, the best one in years, is Men in Black...
...money to afford a really expensive watch, you don't need to have a watch that keeps good time...
...This is insane," I said...
...Considering that he's up against deadbeats who refuse to obey the process of law, I think he's doing great," I said...
...The agency folks for my Clear Eyes ad are also from Dallas...
...So, you spend a lot of money on a watch to show that you can, not to keep good time, and keeping good time is for losers...
...Plus, it was amazingly expensive...
...He's not a cop in a novel...
...Thank you," I said...
...We had a cute little Russian waitress, and she and Billy spoke Russian...
...But in the best hotels," she said, "you get only one sheet...
...I remembered that I was sitting at Swan's Landing, a very beautiful restaurant on the shores of the Pend'Oreille River, and I was having lunch, and I had ordered it about thirty minutes ago and it had not yet come...
...She is a smart, smart woman...
...Washington is a bedrock of sanity and normalcy compared to New York...
...We passed through a line of people waiting to be in the audience for Conan...
...The bike cost $400 and I feel as if I get about a hundred dollars' worth of pleasure from it every time I take it out...
...Mark is telling me that he's writing another book, also a detective story...
...Just talked and talked...
...Off to the Mansion Hotel, the best one in Dallas, to a really nice room, and then down to the bar for a snack...
...My father talked cheerily about the ballet and operas, his new obsessions, and we only rarely wound up mentioning poor Mom, whom we both miss so much, and then we watched TV and then to bed...
...Tuesday H ere I am back in Idaho for a short vacation...
...Conan passed by, looking tall and worried...
...And my son and his pals are doing tricks with their BMX's out in the parking lot...
...You can see some tiny bits of snow still...
...Not at all," Joel said...
...I walked into a nearby lounge where a lone pianist was singing "Autumn Leaves...
...The American Spectator • October 19 9 7 55 She plays on a team here in town with her parents...
...Friday G uess who I'm having lunch with: it's Mark Fuhrman...
...We throttle down as we enter the no-wake zone...
...Scary, almost...
...Cyndi Lau-per appeared, very pregnant, looking like a parody of Cyndi Lauper...
...A self-winding watch has heart...
...He also talked to me about Roswell and extraterrestrials...
...I sat there and breathed in the air-conditioned air until I felt all right, and then wandered through the shopping center...
...I ran into him at Vanderford's Book Store here...
...Solly's were losing his whole family in Auschwitz, and losing his youth and joy of life at the point of SS guns and daggers...
...My little angel is at my side...
...I pity the people in first class who do not have Discmen...
...Off in a Lincoln Town Car to an interview with Catherine Crier on Fox news...
...May I note something...
...After the commercial, back to DFW to fly to Washington...
...The cloud bottoms on some nights are sown with red...
...Fleecy clouds float above the bridge in a pale blue sky...
...I called the hotel operator...
...We are having a food service catastrophe here...
...Of course," Joel said...
...Who's Walt Whitman...
...I also like my boat...
...I would have stayed just to watch her and hear the singer, but I couldn't bear the smoke...
...Talked and talked and talked...
...These days, they recognize me and giggle...
...You can see the Burlington Northern freight come over a little bridge...
...He sells about a jillion dollars worth of watches, and I have to say he convinced me...
...He's a cop, I kept thinking...
...To show that you can have it...
...Our rented house, same one we had last year, is all clean and neat...
...Then, off to Rockefeller Center to be on Conan O'Brien after lunch...
...But we arise late every day...
...Bliss...
...I didn't point out that you can't survive gassing or hanging or shooting or stabbing no matter what age you are...
...But this watch stops in the middle of the night sometimes...
...Without the disc players, there would be no means for me to have peace while I fly in the last row of first class from Los Angeles to Dallas...
...It has been a long time...
...Not stuff like atom bombs or jet airplanes or the computer, but things that make your life far more calm...
...Then, the kids change into their bathing suits and jump into the river and swim around...
...Then back into the boat for dinner at a restaurant on the water in Bottle Bay, a few miles from Sandpoint...
...I used to live in New York, but now it all seems wacky and strange to me...
...Please get this fixed pronto...
...We got everything done in no time at all, including a talk with the Oldsmobile people, who are truly working to sell that car...
...Sometime in the middle of the night I go into the guest room and look at the trains passing over the bridge into town and hear their heavy progress...
...I called the concierge...
...A huge question, but Adam Smith said the civil law was mostly instituted to protect property, and to protect those who have property from those who would take it away from them...
...What's it for...
...It's not a bad life...
...When I came back to pick it up—with Tommy in tow—Mark was still there...
...New York City, where service is our least important product...
...It's a great car, reliable, stylish, powerful, and an amazing value...
...How can people be allowed to smoke cigars in a public place...
...Ren & Stimpy storming the Bastille...
...I went on after Cyndi and Mr...
...I love working with Texas people...
...This was a perfectly fine flight with much more civilized people...
...I say my many morning prayers...
...Kids 52 October 1997 • The American Spectator came by and said "Clear Eyes, Clear Eyes...
...No, not losers," Joel said...
...Right now I am blessing the folks who invented the laser, in particular a pal of my dad named Larry Goldmuntz, because without it, there would be no disc players...
...for twenty-one years, you really can be taken totally-by surprise by the humidity...
...On another night, there was a lightning storm lighting up the whole lake and the mountains, sending immense splinters of electricity from the sky to light up the whole Sandpoint basin...
...I wouldn't want to live in Russia," I said...
...Tommy did ask Mark where the other glove was as soon as he met him, but after that, had no interest at all in him...
...He is a man who does not have to measure out his time for his boss...
...They are like a lava pathway through the evening sky back to port...
...Who are your parents' favorite rock groups...
...We talked for a while about my new show, and then she asked me what I thought of Fred Thompson, the great senator from Tennessee who is in charge of the campaign finance hearings...
...So, the idea is that if you have enough44 Conan was such a sharp satirist that I could not for the life of me tell exactly when the scalpel had gone in...
...North Idaho...
...At lunch, Mark talked mostly about Sandpoint, about repairs he hoped to make to his truck, about farming, about hunting and fishing, and about boats...
...On his workroom wall he has a number of clippings about him fitting Clinton and Gore for clothes...
...Two men were sitting at a table smoking vile cigars...
...No rehearsals, no sets, no shows...
...I have to tell Tommy a Ren & Stimpy story...
...Then Tommy and his pals swim some more...
...My driver took me to my hotel, the St...
...A number of people came by to listen to my Discman with its awesome headphones...
...But the people I am working with are hard-working, friendly, intelligent, just the kind of people that we all want to work with if we can...
...Often there's a movie...
...They were young and enthusiastic...
...The DFW airport is just jammed with beautiful girls tonight...
...Illustrated with butterflies...
...Who's FDR...
...Who's Bob Dylan...
...I was the last one on, but I can tell you that the audience was as excited as if I were the first one on...
...The boats are neatly lined up in the harbor...
...Right...
...Why...
...There were only two couples in the room...
...Then he studied French literature and got a Ph.D...
...When you were at Auschwitz, could you have even imagined that some day you would be talking to the President of the United States in the White House...
...He's a cop...
...Riding no hands all the way across the Long Bridge and back gives me a truly astonishing amount of pleasure...
...Now, he's next to me and we're talking about mountain bikes versus BMX's and all seems well...
...God bless all the people who made it, made batteries, made laser discs, and made the Rolling Stones...
...The flight cost $189 for a trip of about zoo miles, or about a dollar a mile...
...This was arranged largely by Billy Kimball, the world's funniest man...
...He's an older man from Poland...
...Wednesday H ere are a few really stupid things to do in Washington, D.C.: on a boiling hot, sticky, humid day, go out for a bike ride in a long-sleeved shirt and wool pants...
...What's the matter with you that you can't work a phone...
...We used to say "opposite sex" but now we know there is no opposite sex, folks, just brothers and sisters in PC Land...
...Now she's at Fox...
...It was amazing...
...Yes, that Mark Fuhrman...
...Then, off to do a radio interview with some really friendly, lively folks at WPLJ, and then to do a funny show called "The Daily Show," which is our lead-in on Comedy Central...
...He did a great job...
...Solly has altered many a suit for me...
...There has been some grass burning off to the west...
...Moments later an Egyptian named George in a butler's uniform came and put a sheet on my bed...
...I picked out a suit I liked, and had the tailor, whom they actually do call "Solly," measure it for alterations...
...They can, with behavior that would seem rude to a Hutu militiaman, wreck your trip and think nothing of it...
...Usually I make microwave French toast...
...He's not an actor playing a cop...
...Truly insane...
...Yeah...
...Afterwards we rest...
...High on my list are the air conditioner and the Sony Discman...
...God, they smell awful...
...The shower door leaked and the bathroom floor got flooded...
...I went over to fit Gore and he couldn't stop talking to me," Solly said...
...This was more than a little bit lucky, because innocent men and women get killed most every day on Route 95...
...Not losers at all...
...54 October 1997 • The American Spectator Conan made fun of me and my show, especially made fun of me, but he was such a sharp satirist that I could not for the life of me tell exactly when the scalpel had gone in...
...My pal Dana has installed my precious air conditioner and my room is cool...
...So, with good ads, it should sell, sell, sell...
...Like a huge bazaar with towers...
...I walked over to the hostess...
...I sat there stewing, confused...
...When you're fifteen, you can survive anything...
...I really think44 Fuhrman told me that he's writing another book...
...His kids are adorable...
...A strange man named Mister Food appeared with cookies...
...Thank you, God...
...When you have lived in L.A...
...He's not a clerk for someone...
...Then, out to La Guardia for the shuttle back to Washington and a nightcap with my father...
...Then, at dusk, back across the lake to the Marina...
...He has a concentration camp tattoo on his right forearm...
...We talked a little bit about Heidi Fleiss and the call girl business in West Hollywood, and his understanding of it was acute...
...Back in my room, I ordered English muffins, which arrived about an hour later, cold, tasteless, miserable...
...Half an hour for a salad...
...Crier asked...
...I did those things this afternoon, and truly felt it would be my last day on the planet...
...But we got it done, and the Comedy Central interviewer, Craig Kilborn, asked me about my son...
...My problems are wearing the wrong weight of clothes on a hot day...
...Not people whose time is their own...
...Where service is our least important product...
...But I want him to be either a beach volleyball player or a yachtsman...
...He's smart and very, very quick on the uptake, but has no interest in the lives of the beautiful people...
...It was a good day...
...Then I was doing my show...
...It's mostly about adolescent despair...
...to New York and back...
...His view of this subject is, let's just say, very different from my own...
...I calmed down, stopped sweating, and walked across M Street to Britches...
...Does it seem like it's been a long time since you ordered your food...
...Wow," they said...
...Uhmmm," she said...
...Billy asked...
...He is a bestselling author, but he fixes his truck's starter motor himself...
...One of them was a stunning blond woman in her twenties with a much older man who looked to me like her boss...
...From National, I took a cab to my father's apartment, sat down, had a nice talk with him about the budget, ballet, and opera, and then went to the River Inn, and fell asleep...
...Never in a million years," he said...
...How about Denmark...
...Air Shuttle to do some publicity for "Win Ben Stein's Money...
...Joel went to Montgomery Blair High School with me...
...I can hear Tommy breathing and talking in his sleep all night long...
...From there you can see the mountains near Schweitzer, the so-called Seven Sisters...
...Monday H ere I am with my son, his pal Jeb, a true rebel, his pal Alex, his pal Amos, a boy who wears his hair down almost to his waist, and our beautiful babysitter, Amber, and another young woman, the lovely and talented Melissa, who is a star baseball player at age i6...
...It's only two lanes, and people go far too fast, drink too much, lose focus, and slip into history...
...At La Guardia, as I wandered around looking for my driver, I recalled how, when the shuttle started long ago, we waited under a tin roof in the cold and heat for the planes, usually ancient Constellations or Electras (world's noisiest plane), and the flight at off-peak hours cost $11...
...So many people carrying around their sorrows and yet carrying on...
...I think that sounds about right...
...No," I said...
...Smooth, great shifting, excellent weight, rides like a dream...
...Off duty...
...The Rolling Stones...
...Service is actually quite good at Jalapeno's, and the view is superb from the Powerhouse...
...Time has passed...
...When I got back to my modest room, the toilet did not work...
...Very nice," he said...
...I recall Peter Feieraband telling me how you could always tell when it was time to plant your garden by the time the snow was gone from the mountains...
...It never underestimates me, and I love that...
...Sweat dripped off me onto the floor and formed a little pool...
...My lifelong pal, Joel C. Bloch, came over to visit while I was packing...
...That's the modestly priced M3oo...
...The top of the line first class from LAX to New York and back is about fifty cents a mile, and coach, which is what the shuttle is, costs about five cents a mile from L.A...
...Then he was away at amusement parks...
...He usually is asleep before I finish, and then I go downstairs and go online with my new pals on the net, the teenage genius programmers from Dallas, Spider and Raven, and then to bed...
...Nobody else has cornThe American Spectator • October 1997 53 plained...
...Because a man who can afford a watch like that doesn't need to know the time to the last second...
...We rented a huge Caddy, and our drive to Sandpoint was completely without incident...
...At the best hotel in Dallas...
...As I walked out, three young men told me that they were reading my father's book Presidential Economics in their economics class...
...I think she was a judge and then got hired by Ted Turner...
...It was pouring rain when I got to the terminal at La Guardia...
...I love that airport...
...Long ago and far away...
...Thank you, darling wifie, for making it possible for me to show the world that my time is my own and I don't have to account to the straw boss for it...
...Who's Bob Dylan...
...But people who need to know the exact time...
...she asked WHO'S BOB DYLAN...
...It is truly clever, brilliant, breaks the mold, assumes intelligence in its viewers...
...The staff was highly mixed racially, but everyone seemed to get along just fine...
...How did I get so lucky...
...That's why the media couldn't stand him: he's the class enemy...
...Regis...
...Clinton too.' me how well people get along without government compulsion...
...Our trip up on Alaska was uneventful by Alaska standards...
...While he slept, I stayed to watch dozens more...
...That night, my father and I had a fine meal at a fish place on 18th Street near where I toiled as a lawyer long ago...
...To you, what is law...
...She went into the kitchen and said the food would be out soon...
...A vertiginous occlusion opened at my feet...
...He had so much time to spend with me it was hard to believe...
...The food was ghastly, simply horrible, and the service was a nightmare of slowness...
...But it's not electric...
...Just talked and talked...
...I doubt if I could have survived it at fifteen," I said...
...That's not what a good watch is for...
...He is also talking to me about Roswell and extraterrestrials...
...Who's George Washington...
...And the Republicans are different...
...People were in a jacked-up mood...
...It's not a plastic toy you get in a box of cereal...
...He wassigning autographed copies of his bestseller, Murder in Brentwood...
...I wish I could have had all of them in my high school class, but most of them weren't born then...
...Out to the beach and don't come in until you're fried.'" I had dinner with my sister and my nephew, Jonathan, at the St...
...Alex, ace sailor like his father, ties me up at the dock, and we are back in the Caddy...
...I was in my dressing room listening to the Who, my new obsession...
...Wednesday I t takes a while to get into the routine of life in Sandpoint...
...Sometimes the boys ride a wakeboard behind my boat, yelling and screaming...
...I think the Clintons have their own level of contempt for the law all to themselves," I said...
...It doesn't seem like it's been a long time...
...Who's Bob Dylan...
...The Beatles...
...I really felt he was becoming a stranger...
...It's self-winding, which makes it old-fashioned, right...
...Maybe this is going around...
...Food and a funny little skit about Conan's conscience...
...The road has become desperately hazardous...
...Everyone looked light, friendly, almost illuminated...
...They are deafeningly loud, and I can only keep my sanity by listening to the disc of "Gimme Shelter" at high volume for the whole flight, over and over again...
...He is the boss...
...Maybe it was a mountain called Baldy...
...I am not sure now...
...It's called Georgetown Park, and on this day, it seemed to be peopled by angels...
...Little rockets of light darted across the night sky and disappeared, one every few minutes...
...I am telling you, this headphone-discman thing is the wave of the future...
...The phone next to my bed did not work...
...If they can do that, why can't they smear horse manure all over themselves and the people near them...
...Young people hurtled back and forth...
...I felt better about the watch my wife gave me than I ever have before...
...The Who...
Vol. 30 • October 1997 • No. 10
