Ben Stein's Diary: It's Raining in My Heart
Stein, Benjamin J.
by Benjamin J. Stein It's Raining in My Heart New Year's Eve I t's drizzly and cool here in glorious L.A.—that means low 70's—but with a dreary fog. Still, a lot better than beloved Sandpoint....
...Was that to see how sick they were...
...My cousin says it's got the same architect, I.M Pei...
...I said I didn't want to shell out that much money for a gift for a two-year-old all at once...
...Then I bought him new wheels—just to bribe him—and he was able to go about ten times faster, more smoothly, with more pleasure...
...The sign of well-rounded people: bragging about their kids comes before bragging about their incomes...
...I'll ride anyway...
...The snow fell on a total-And you and Mommy and I are really ly depressing gray street and failed to light-blessed beyond are wildest dreams...
...She naturally took the kitty to a pet hospital, paid over a thousand dollars to get it repaired, and lent $500 to a woman who was waiting in the waiting room and who later stopped payment on the check ostensibly repaying the loan...
...On the way to Malibu, the sky was a perfect reddish orange...
...I guess we have a good idea of what to do for fun," I said to John...
...I asked...
...I like him especially because his son, a teenage baseball player, struck out Lowell Milken's son at a high school game recently...
...She looked angry...
...Every boy on the team except one had both parents there...
...I think I've made some major mistakes in my choices of friends lately...
...On those new, softer, better-gripping blades, he could really hustle...
...You're the one who's crazy even to ask...
...It looked darn good to me...
...Tuesday Monday have to say I am very impressed with 'm en route to Cleveland to give a the Young Presidents...
...Should be a rockin' good time...
...My students look extremely alert and cheery...
...So he did Carlton, where I had my reservation...
...Hi, Mary," I said...
...She also talked about her daily food intake —a sure sign of self-obsession...
...I make head...
...I could say some really mean things about you, because you're a worthless creep, but I won't because I don't want to sink to your level...
...The tour starts with a simply great movie about the birth of rock music...
...This is great," said Mary Muff with a terrifying earnestness...
...Still, she is a lovely early-middle-aged woman...
...Well, in the 1930's, my grandfather worked on the assembly line at Ford Motor," I said, "and he was very smart...
...Have more fun...
...So I headed off to the Santa Monica boardwalk (it's cement, of course) to meet up with Mary Muff to ride bikes...
...They called me about a ly good-sized companies, sometimes real-year ago and made the date, and now I ly big companies, that make lawn care am keeping it...
...Friday "No, he's in the hospital, paralyzed unch at Morton's again, this time from the waist down from some weird L with John Mankiewicz...
...After my bike ride, I went off to glorious Pepperdine to teach my class in finance and ethical issues...
...She had to talk about what she had seen at Nordstrom's that day...
...The rest of the movie was excellent...
...Because I have bought the apartment next to mine at the Shoreham Towers for us to use as a game room/club house...
...1972 and we have been close friends ever We hurriedly finished and rushed over since...
...Just two days ago, at age two, he stretched out his arms and pointed at me and my dogs and said, "You're my family and I love you" (or words to that effect...
...It scares us at the beginning by saying, "Can you believe once there was no rock and roll...
...I know him from conservative political events, principally a dinner long ago for Milton Friedman...
...Yes, it has a lot of waxwork dummies of rock stars...
...After Mary Muff left, I locked all of the doors, then went to sleep with the dogs...
...Oh, no...
...My next door neighbor, a frequent traveler to Cleveland, said, "That's why it's called Continental...
...He wasn't there...
...What a mess...
...He is time parking because the Chairman of ten years younger than I am, but looks the Board, Frank Sinatra himself, is in much older than he is...
...Let me ask you something," I asked her...
...The future...
...No, I want to talk only about myself," she said...
...These are rich kids in every meaningful way...
...crowding at the terminal...
...We were in the air five and three-quarters hours...
...No," she said...
...I asked...
...Do you think all of that drug use It seems to me that whenever 1 meet a truly sad woman, she's been abandoned by her father...
...around these people...
...There could have been a Chinese submarine in the water a mile offshore getting ready to shoot a missile into Los Angeles, and Mary Muff would still have paid it little attention, if any...
...I just left you a very nice, encouraging message...
...Suddenly, as I headed south along the bike 6. The American Spectator Marc h 199 7 57 path, I felt a tingling dread, as if some evil were about to descend...
...He clumped along after me on his ancient blades...
...Thursday unch at Morton's, I happened to run into my old shrink, Paul...
...It was at an unfamiliar field in a dismal spot in West L.A...
...Getting asked for my autograph at a rock stars' museum...
...After the speech, I went to my room and read for hours, and then off to sleep, again hemmed in by the gray walls of downtown Cleveland...
...I forgot," he important connections, no money...
...life and pay attention to him...
...0 58 "Hey, did you hear about Alan Rucker...
...I guess I can't blame her too much...
...For one thing, they really are young...
...Tommy said, "I think I'm coming down with a cold...
...Is it just me, or is she maybe just stoopid...
...Every so often she slows down, grabs the back of my jacket, and I pull her along with my bike...
...There is, however, a good Bruce Springsteen exhibit that has the words to "Back Streets" in his own handwriting...
...If men are that smart now, they work at an investment bank or in a law firm...
...I feel really bad for Mary Muff...
...We had a crisis later that night, though, because I told Shoshonna that I would give Martin Luther a gift for Christmas...
...there was major league discrimination I was just taking you to my home...
...Two different guides at the museum asked for my autograph...
...He got a chorus of "Arnold" as he rode along...
...Tommy's team won by a lot...
...This made her angry...
...In my mail box were lovely notes from friends...
...In fact, the whole day has been great except for my run-in with Mary Muff Maguire...
...That's legal...
...Well, I have to go back to planet earth now, dear girl...
...I tend to think of everyone writing about policy or about Hollywood, but it's not like that at all...
...They served us some kind of synthetic ice cream...
...Today he and I went to the Santa Monica boardwalk to bike and blade...
...the gray, institutional—well, prison—look The wives in particular have extremely of the Continental terminal, or the lack of intelligent, thoughtful faces...
...He turned himself inside out helping Burdette and the kids...
...now...
...There were grandmothers windsurfing, college students playing street hockey on rollerblades, parents pushing kids on blades...
...A block giving every week...
...People die too soon there...
...At least that's my impression...
...He's not responding well to the brain activity tests...
...Later that night, nestled in bed with Susie, half-Dalmatian, half-whippet, and ancient, lumbering Ginger, I called in for my messages...
...Then she starts to tell me about someone named Jonas that she is madly in love with even after he treated her badly for years...
...How else explain the cruel over- as they are proposed for membership...
...For one thing, I speech to a group of Young Presidents they really are young...
...Or how the legal system took so long to deal with them...
...I can't feel my feet...
...We went zooming along the boardwalk...
...about her weight, ditto...
...I think the police will be mad at you for wasting their time...
...I told him about here...
...Asian families picnicking on the bikepath...
...Hmmm...
...She also was furious because I said that, because she was so demanding, I would not take her and Martin Luther out on New Year's Eve...
...Then he told me about his business, gathering and transmitting oil and gas...
...Then there is a lot of whining about rock stars dying of One of Cleveland's tragedies is that it's served by Continental, an airline apparently staffed by convict labor...
...How else could you possibly explain look cheery and very nicely turned out...
...snowing outside...
...thing you know, he collapsed and was par"Yeah, a McIntosh one with tubes," alyzed...
...3 0 The American Spectator • March 1997 55 Sunday T ommy is back...
...We are putting a ping-pong table and a big screen TV and a pinball machine in there...
...You and your boring nerdy intellectual friends are the crazy ones...
...She accused me of every manner of moral evil, left over two hundred crank calls on my various phones—after she left with the TV—and promised to wreck my life because I had not gotten her the desired VCR...
...We en up the gray facades of the remorseless should have one day of prayer and thanks- buildings of downtown Cleveland...
...Why didn't your grandfather work on Wall Street or a law firm...
...But they are all identical, one to another...
...He is from that famous Mankiewicz to nearby Cedars-Sinai...
...But they look like that it is served primarily by Continental, fraternity boys...
...This really happened...
...drug overdoses...
...Alex and Tommy have gone off to Philadelphia to visit her sister and her family...
...She's actually rollerblading, and I am riding a rented bike...
...I asked him if he needed help putting his bike in his Hummer...
...Saturday U p early to watch Tommy in a soccer playoff game...
...So, off I went with him in tow to the lava-lamp store on City Walk...
...school...
...I said I thought just a TV might be enough for now...
...my student at UC-Santa Cruz in "WHAT...
...Hundreds of They're also dressed nicely, like people lying on the floor because the ter- grownups, in suits and normal ties and minal is double-booked by both Conti- shoes...
...We went to a good Japanese place on Wilshire for an early dinner...
...They all plies...
...I want to share my truth with you...
...I gasped, but said I would consider it...
...She began to tell me about all of her years taking angel dust and crank—an extremely potent, highly refined version of amphetamines...
...I want you to know that I think you often have good insights," I said...
...I'm on my way to go biking and I owe that to you since you suggested I do it to lose weight...
...I called and left a message on her toll-free number...
...Even in first class, my knees were up against the back of the seat in front of me...
...against Jews then...
...56 March 1997 The American Spectator their kids a lot, and that thrills me...
...I told him about Peter Feierabend, about Mary Muff Maguire, about various joys and sorrows of middle age...
...Otherwise he looked not just good but "Maybe a trip to Ireland," I suggested...
...He is amazingly friendly...
...It was Continental...
...Peabo was run over near Paramount while Alex was driving by about two months ago...
...You dare to ask me such a question...
...He told us cheerily about his situa"Or a trip to Thailand," a waiter tossed tion...
...But at home, little Mr...
...The roof of the high-school gym collapsed in town, and so did the roof of an elementary school in Priest River, where I sail my boat in summer...
...Then, to drive home the terrifying thought, it shows us a film clip of a family watching Dean Martin singing "Memories Are Made of This...
...But she demanded to know why I wouldn't get her a VCR, too...
...He drove over 500 miles in one day to identify Peter's body...
...It's harassment...
...It's been snowing there for about three months solid, and I now hear it's snowing and raining...
...We talked about how lava lamps work, how Mommy's new car, a huge BMW that she had to have, was different from the ancient Acura, what kind of car he wanted to have when he was i6 (currently, the choices are a Hummer and a cement mixer so Daddy won't have to worry about his safety), about why modern American cars weren't as well made as cars in the 1.950's...
...The rest of the museum is a mixed bag...
...This was early January and here we all were a la place...
...What can you do that's just fun for you...
...Jews have never had it so good ever land, was there to take me to dinner with in history as we have it in America right an amusing friend...
...Great," she said...
...I thought that the way the Manson family lived was a sort of guide to how I wanted to live as a hippie...
...The the best he could...
...I feel sad for anyone who dies, but when aging rock star addicts commit suicide, it's not like i8-year-olds dying at Omaha Beach...
...She is such a nasty, sick, confused woman that for her to wrap herself in the Constitution makes me dizzy...
...The original plan had been for me to spend New Year's Eve Day with my pal Shoshonna and her son, Martin Luther...
...We want a TV and VCR combination...
...I went home and napped and then had a call from Sandpoint from Craig Savage, the administrator of Peter Feierabend's will...
...about her sisters, who are nuns...
...No father, money crazed brothers...
...They head fairof businesses...
...Then they show a family sitting together in front of an old TV and that's supposed to be bad, too...
...John was kind of virus...
...It is a strange glass and steel building with a pyramidal shape, somewhat like the buildings of the Louvre or other Parisian constructions I sometimes see in magazines...
...She rides like a pro athlete from that great movie, Rollerball, blowing slowMarch 1997 • The American Spectator er riders out of the way, riding on the wrong side of the path to avoid sand, just a killer on skates, heh-heh...
...The only color here is the people...
...I am deputized to take care of the dogs, the fish, and Tommy's new kitty, Peabo, who started life as a stray...
...Come to think of it, neither has any- By the time I was ready to sleep, it was one else in America ever had it so good...
...We went for a little stroll in the sunshine and he asked about my life...
...He lost a lot of blood...
...Well, he came from Russia as an The airplane was packed, just jammed beyond words...
...They talk about Every so often she slows down, grabs the back of my jacket, and I pull her along with my bike...
...Mary, it's not harassment to tell someone she has good insights...
...John asked out of the blue...
...Hi, Ben," she said...
...What is it about Sandpoint...
...Oh, I see...
...she asked...
...I am all alone...
...We both laughed...
...products, hardened alloys, bridge parts, One of the tragedies of Cleveland is interior landscaping...
...I'm fascinated withevery aspect of the Manson family...
...While we live we are gods," said Nabokov...
...I guess so," he said...
...She's from a sad background...
...The food was awful...
...You won't believe this," he said, March 1997 • The American Spectator I have to say I am very impressed with the Young Presidents...
...This occasioned dozens more calls saying how mean-spirited and cheap I was...
...I think it's pretty bleak...
...Maybe you could listen to me for a while, so I can tell you how Alex was the most beautiful girl at Yale and how everyone would gasp when she walked by because she was so beautiful, plus she was really smart and plus she's a really successful lawyer and plus she is just about a perfect Mom...
...Glenn swerved to avoid a jack-knifed car and trailer on the road between Hope and Sandpoint and got hit by another car...
...This is gospel truth...
...to finish and now I've been in bed for thir"But we definitely need to do some- ty-two days...
...My little angel boy, Tommy Stein...
...But we parked and found Rucker my need to have more fun...
...For another thing, they an airline that is apparently staffed at some toil obscurely, but lucratively, in the guts levels by convict labor with convict sup- of the system, as one might say...
...He said some touching words then about Peter's spirit in the lake and in the sky...
...He was ahead of me, turning around, smiling and laughing at me...
...a ton of money, so much that I can't figure He had a gray beard, but then he had out how to spend it, and I feel like I need a gray beard last time I saw him, too...
...After blading, he wanted to go to Universal City Walk to buy lava lamps...
...Then she started talking once again about how fascinated she was with Leslie Van Houten...
...She was bored with my channel surfing until I came upon Court TV...
...Their husbasic amenities like water-fountains and bands give self-effacing little speeches toilets...
...I thought about that real hard and decided to go bike-riding on the Santa Monica boardwalk, even though I was all by myself...
...She drove off in a huff in the Jaguar she got from a former boyfriend...
...The high point of it was that anti-talent, Madonna, pretending to be bothered by censorship...
...Again, this sounds as if it should be a joke, but it was not...
...Intense women zooming along...
...You wouldn't let me talk about myself...
...We talked more and I gave him the names of some experts in myelin that MS-stricken, wacky but gorgeous Dotty had given me long ago...
...There were three from Mary Muff Maguire...
...What the heck, I thought...
...What can I say about the flight back...
...Actually, I think you and Hillary have a lot in common...
...If I say it, it's the law," she said...
...I like to just meander along talking only about myself...
...Mexican families blocking the bikepath...
...No more redheads on rollerblades...
...attacked his spinal cord's myelin, and next "Or maybe a really great stereo," I said...
...I know," she said...
...I never saw how they could regard Manson as Jesus, but the rest of it looked good to me...
...She went with me to the Good Guys to get it...
...41...
...There is full recovery in about a third of the cases, and partial recovery in a third, and no recovery in a third," Rucker said...
...Almost nothing about Dylan, though, and that is a shame...
...Now, he's in a coma in Deaconess Hospital in Spokane...
...It seems to me that whenever I meet a truly sad woman, she's been abandoned by her father...
...That's called 'stealing my truth' where I come from...
...A virus had come out of nowhere, in as he passed by...
...shoot me in the foot and I wouldn't feel it...
...But I think current assembly line workers are probably not quite at that level...
...You could thing," I agreed...
...Tommy was a bit sluggish until we ran into Arnold Schwarzenegger pulling two of his kids with a bike...
...You and I, by contrast, phones did not work, but my cousin, the live in a total Garden of Eden of oppor- lovely Jane, a major decorator in Clevetunity...
...A bit like Marilyn Monroe, only now her hair is a rich, dark red...
...Plus, said...
...Then, that deepest of dark underwater trenches, she started to talk about clothes she had seen in stores...
...It took ninety minutes from start John said...
...but Glenn Warren had a car crash and is in the hospital with extensive brain damage, on life support, and there is some doubt that he'll ever recover...
...We parents formed an arch of hands and the boys ran through it twice, laughing and giggling as they slapped five with their moms and dads...
...But just learning how to sleep like this is really difficult...
...Tommy also wants lava lamps...
...Plus, she claims to be about sex, but she is really anti-sex, a sort of Hester Prynne imitation of what she imagines sex to be...
...He stopped to talk to us for a long time, and showed Tommy his Hummer...
...In fact, they look the best they have ever looked...
...I AM NOT KIDDING...
...I wish I could forget these Milken folks, but their minions still send hate mail about me to TAS...
...They airlifted him to Deaconess Hospital in Spokane...
...That keeps Milken in my thoughts...
...It's really sweet and sad, particularly because Shoshonna's former lover, the father of Martin Luther, rarely sees the child...
...away was a dark gray ship canal...
...Why does she have a toll-free number anyway...
...It's amazing how many different things people out there in America do year by year...
...You know, I'm getting a bit tired of hearing about this guy," I said...
...They were showing a documentary about a 1992 parole hearing for Manson family murderer Leslie Van Houten...
...What...
...We had a tough family and he is a funny, funny guy...
...lying there with a handgrip above his "I feel the same way," he said...
...He orchestrated the disposal of the ashes in Lake Pend'Oreille from my boat last October...
...That's not the law," I said...
...Afterwards, Tommy and I rode bikes and bladed in Santa Monica...
...Just as I pulled up, a light rain began to fall...
...I forgot you were a paying passenger...
...I have become fond indeed of the boy...
...Mary Muff turned up in her blades and rollerblading outfit, a skintight body suit that might possibly make her seem a bit bigger-hipped than she might like...
...I'll stay in Southern California in the winter...
...Tommy asked...
...He had little education, no drove miles past the hotel...
...New Year's Day A gain, it's overcast and dreary, but no rain...
...The "We do, Daddy," Tommy said...
...That's a gift for both of us...
...There were several from Mary Muff Maguire telling me what a creep I am and how I criticized her and made her feel terrible and belittled her and had better stop torturing her...
...So, to make sense of all this, I had a quiet New Year's Eve with the nutty nutritionist, Mary Muff Maguire...
...Rucker is a bud of 21-years' standing...
...when you were a kid might possibly have affected your mental state and your personality today...
...The second movie was as bad as the first one was good...
...No, thank you...
...I am happy to step into the two-year-old's BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...It was cold...
...I rented my bike and rode along in the blessed sunshine...
...I'm going to call the cops on you...
...Or is a nice place, but I'll stick with the Ritz most law firms or most banks...
...A basic truth: nutty people tend to act nutty, and paranoid people tend to act paranoid...
...I read Helter Skelter three times when I was a teenager...
...He founded TVTV, a great documentary company, produced a couple of TV shows, and now writes awards shows...
...Wednesday 0 ff to the Rock'n'Roll Museum and Hall of Fame...
...The driver who met me at the airport, a man in his sixties, told me that his obsession was watching old black-and-white movies...
...great...
...But don't...
...to find some new ways to have fun...
...Plus an invitation to hear a speech by Antonin Scalia...
...It was about a mystery train picking up black work music in the South, mixing it with jazz, mixing that with hillbilly or country, and the result is Elvis Presley and also Bob Dylan...
...Now I can never find the kitty, whose only talent is to hide under the bed...
...I hate you," she said...
...It's whole world since I got to the Continencalled the Sabbath...
...It's offensive...
...He does not write the Oscars, I am happy to say, but I wish he did...
...I could easily get used to being nental and United...
...Then we watched TV...
...Perfect flew into my arms and hung there from me as if I were a jungle gym...
...En route, I checked my messages...
...Of course I'm normal...
...Shoshonna, the most aggressive woman on earth, threw a fit...
...You talked about him all day on New Year's Eve, and I don't know him so it's a little tiresome to keep hearing about him...
...I looked back at my boy...
...I'm not kidding...
...tal terminal in LAX this morning had I am so glad he goes to a religious turned gray...
...It really looked great to me...
...I got to know Glenn best after Peter died...
...It was hard for Jews to I'm sure the John Wayne Gacy Hotel get jobs in most American industry...
...Suddenly, just in front of a boarded-up beach club, there appeared Mary Muff Maguire, hurtling toward me on her blades, dressed to the nines, made up like crazy, with sparkling diamond earrings someone had given her, eyes flashing...
...If I say it's harassment, it's harassment," she said...
...John and I left the hospital in a full state of shock...
...Well, okay...
...She came over to my apartment, and allowed me to eat about two bites of chicken before she said she thought we had eaten enough...
...She's taken to wearing blue contacts, and even beneath her blue contacts, her brown eyes flashedwith rage...
...No good deed goes unpunished...
...as if to say, "Can you believe there was once no polio vaccine...
...Mary Muff's father abandoned the family when she was five, and she never saw him again...
...No, is he writing the Oscar Show this year...
...The sun was a dazzling orange...
...He got so wrapped up in it, he immigrant...
...and her brothers, all of whom are bond traders...
...You never had the guts to have any fun...
...You need to let go more," he said...
Vol. 30 • March 1997 • No. 3
