BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Going Places
Stein, Benjamin J.
MONDAY RAVEL, TRAVEL, TRAVEL. It is the last week in February of 2004. So far, since New Year's Eve, I have been to New York City on two trips, to Australia (which is great but had a lot of angry...
...My sister and I still get the benefit of them...
...Probably the biggest mistake anyone can make in this country is to fail to have a dog...
...And the day went fine except for a stint at a pretentious restaurant that made us eat a very expensive and inedible tasting menu...
...If they put abig glass of water in front of you, don't drink it...
...In my mind, my parents are still there, puttering around and watching Murder, She Wrote and the Redskins and my mother is offering me grapes...
...How lucky my parents were to live and die in America...
...At today's interest rates (or any day's interest rates) that does not pay much...
...There were a whole bunch of English guys who helped me by pouring bottle after bottle of Evian into the radiator...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, and economist in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...My main opponent was a highly belligerent Alec Baldwin...
...We had a few pleasantries together and then off I went...
...That was fine...
...In Washington, taxi drivers want to discuss Near Eastern affairs...
...I came across a fragment of my mother's diary from 1981 when she and my Pop were on one of their endless trips to Europe...
...He gave me the single best piece of advice anyone has ever given me about testimony...
...The last time I testified was in '98 about the National Endowment for the Arts...
...He was waiting in baggage with a sign, and as soon as I saw him, he asked me about Arnold's ballot measures for California...
...She is my connection with the world of love...
...I love Canada, but that show is a bit off-putting...
...If so, aren't the electrons whirring around all day long...
...It took me a while T to straighten up, and then we grabbed a cab to the Vietnam Georgetown Restaurant...
...He said it takes about thirty seconds...
...It won't last...
...So, what do these people do...
...I am so lucky my sister is still alive and very, very well...
...Anyway, I am back at my house in Malibu and I cannot sleep at all...
...Well, maybe it will...
...Then I thought about the future, and how I have already lived most of my life...
...I came across some memos and letters my father had written about budget policy for an AEI conference he chaired in 1996 with the good Sen...
...to look for an apartment that would take a dog...
...Mack...
...I spoke to them on a mountaintop, next to the home of the head of Ryland Homes, a great guy named Chad...
...Plus, I still own my apartment at the Watergate that my parents left to me and my sister (I bought her out of it...
...It was called WOOK, or as they called it, "the Wookin' man's station...
...I am pretty sure my parents are still here...
...My parents had those variable annuities and they did great...
...These are the baby boomers...
...No waiting...
...Bush, surprise, surprise, including some charges that just are not true (surprise, surprise...
...I fell into conversation with a lovely woman and then with several men representing hunters in Pennsylvania and then with a young man...
...But why didn't they get a dog of their own...
...I think, for sure, early days dating Alex, Tommy's childhood, and my time at UC Santa Cruz in the forests and in the sunshine...
...Perfectly genial, perfectly generous of spirit, endlessly beautiful and forgiving (the same things, really), and what I live for...
...After dinner, we took another cab back...
...Still, I could not sleep...
...Fudge from Julia Long...
...I brought cashews, as always, to tide me over, and they worked fine...
...How Mom loved that dog...
...I went to dinner with Pam Morton at a new Italian restaurant on Beverly...
...What pretension...
...He and his wife are so kind it makes me cry...
...The driver asked us how we thought U.S.-Jordanian relations were...
...I had an adventure tonight," she said...
...On the way back, my car overheated because the hoses [on her BMW 740iL] had come loose...
...I have often had him as a driver and he's always great...
...It is all perfect...
...She was talking about how worried she was that my Weimaraner, Mary, was sick with cancer...
...I did my gig for the Public Library association...
...No crowds...
...Just great...
...No lines...
...So we stopped at Morton's, where they're getting ready for the Oscar Party, to which, as always, we are not invited...
...My father often used to go with me...
...Sausage...
...And a cat...
...In Washington, the cab drivers listen to NPR...
...Just great...
...They are princes and princesses as far as I can tell...
...I love going to D.C., mostly because I still think of it as my home town...
...Anyway, the shocker this morning is that there is an amazingly long line to get into this Rayburn Building...
...My wife lay in bed reading a mystery and I read of my mother's love for mybeloved Mary...
...Orange juice...
...Plus, it is cold out here...
...She was still awake at our house in Beverly Hills...
...She used to just sit on the couch with Mary, talking to her for hours and looking into her beautiful blue-gray eyes...
...My only links with UCSC now are John Mankiewicz, family man and screenwriter, and Larry Wilson, ace magician and orchestrator of the slip'n'slide, which I will tell you about another time...
...Where's Pop...
...The driver, a Jordanian, was listening to "NP," that awful show from Canada where everyone tries to prove he's more holy than the next...
...And then I could fall asleep...
...Anyway, I got up and called my wife...
...Anyway, today, I am not on a private jet...
...The Representatives were quite cordial, although the Democrats did a lot of sniping at Mr...
...He was a likable U. of Michigan grad and we had a nice talk, and finally got in...
...Still, the Gale folks and the librarians at the dinner were so pleasant that the evening was worthwhile...
...The hearing might go on longer than you think...
...Great," I said...
...That is about 8,000 librarians, the nicest people you would ever want to meet, and my sponsors, from Gale Research Software, which can do wonders...
...What nice people to help out my wife...
...I hope I can be that polite...
...We got to my apartment, paid him off, thanked him for his aggressive nagging of me, and then entered my apartment...
...The hearing went on for a long time and I was glad I had not drunk my water...
...By the way, are planets made of atoms...
...We Jews believe that souls stay around where they last lived for at least a long while...
...That worthy fellow turned out to be the son of my across-thestreet neighbor from my youth, Alan Akman...
...Now he's a happy driver for a limo company...
...In great detail...
...And then I think about the catastrophe about right to life, and it breaks my heart...
...What great people those librarians are...
...Just land, and a limo is waiting and takes you away...
...Isn't that life...
...Don't get me wrong...
...Where is my mother...
...I sat in my father's chair and answered e-mails while I looked at the lights of Virginia...
...There are about 77 million Americans racing toward retirement age...
...So, when I go there, it's like I am seeing my parents again...
...My Pop was there with me and it was all swell...
...The hearing was delightful, except for some bickering about Secretary Rod Paige (Education) and his calling the NEA a terrorist organization...
...Oh, also about gun control and legalizing drugs...
...The letters and memos were so diffident, so devoid of any kind of boasting, so genuinely decent and open-minded to Democrats and Republicans alike that I was truly moved...
...I think my parents are talking to me...
...Well, I am touched...
...He was a straight-up-and-down liberal...
...And this is my third ride this year, so I am rockin' and rollin...
...Then I rummaged in my father's desk drawers...
...The average sum saved for retirement of those who have saved is about $100,000 and of everyone (including those with nil savings) the figure is more like under $50,000...
...I have been to the Hill to testify on many occasions...
...Arnold bread, the best bread on earth, English muffins...
...Bacon...
...Kerrey...
...From glass bottles, not from plastic...
...No security...
...Apparently everyone is being searched thoroughly and it is taking forever...
...But only about a fourth have defined benefit pensions...
...The gap between what is needed and what we have as a nation for the boomers is probably in excess of two trillion dollars, and on a household basis, it's several hundred thousand dollars...
...He was a 50-year veteran of congressional testimony...
...Remember us, but enjoy being on earth at the Watergate, among the policy wonks and limo drivers and Arnold bread...
...Then I had a better thought...
...After that, the conversation was fine...
...The flight was fine, although the food was literally disgusting...
...Then, in the car going along the magnificent night-time route into D.C., along the Dulles access road and then along the Beltway and then along the George Washington Parkway, he grilled me about outsourcing, the balance of trade, tariff policy towards South America, chaos in Haiti, and Bush's military record...
...But here comes the funny part, the part that is eternal Washington...
...He talked about how long it takes to adjust to being rich (although he had a very humble idea of what rich was—student at a high end English university...
...My wife already is, but I must strive to do better...
...I am thinking of what good examples my father taught me about saving—although I still worry that I don't have enough—and about hard work, and about politeness...
...I am up here on the Hill to encourage people to plan, to save a lot more, to buy stocks, mutual funds, especially annuities, since they take the risk of outliving your money out of the picture, and especially variable annuities, since they allow your money to grow along with the stock market and also allow you to avoid "longevity risk...
...Can you imagine how many anguished souls must be in Poland and Germany...
...On average, when they retire, they can expect Social Security to pay for many 38 percent of their expenses...
...Where is Mary...
...Just pull up in your car, get into the jet, and bam, you're on your way...
...I am with mywife on a Boeing 757, a miserable, narrow body, very long, ugly plane, and heading off to Washington, D.C.again...
...At first, I thought, "What extravagance, what waste...
...But above all, my wife is my lifeline to sanity...
...SATURDAY I AM BACK IN L.A...
...Alas, it had been worked on (the "condensate pipes," whatever they are) and the workers had left a huge mess...
...After the hearing, the Committee Staff had their photos taken with me, and that was fun, and then on the way out, I met my hero of the Right to Life Movement, Henry Hyde...
...But the great part is that in Washington, even the limo drivers are policy wonks...
...The basic problem is this...
...She often told me that the happiest days of her whole life were when I left Mary with them for two weeks in 1976 when I went to L.A...
...Where will this money come from...
...I think it takes one ride in a private jet...
...To help young and old people get the information they need, the mysteries they need, and then to do all ofthat for so little pay that it shows true devotion...
...The cab driver, a Senegalese, was listening to NPR, where some poor woman from Time was being interviewed from Port-au-Prince...
...There I spoke to probably the nicest people on earth, the men and women of Ryland Homes...
...It is the way I always wanted to live...
...What do I recall as my happiest moments...
...But if I did not have her, I might as well be as alone as an atom in another galaxy, cold, desiccated, and dead...
...So far, since New Year's Eve, I have been to New York City on two trips, to Australia (which is great but had a lot of angry looking Moslems staring at me), to Washington, D.C., three times, to Orlando three times, to Miami, which brought back upsetting memories of Garth Wood, M.D., to Colorado Springs, which is where the Air Force Academy is and where I spoke, and to Santa Barbara...
...In my heart...
...I see her lying there reading and I realize she takes up about six cubic feet on the planet in the infinite universe...
...I could not sleep for hours...
...Our driver was a large black man named Mr...
...If I ever run for President, which I will not, my main plank will be Right to Life, but second will be legal rights for companion animals...
...He was a news reader for years on an early black R&B station that Carl Bernstein and I used to listen to long ago...
...I often remember a book by Norman Podhoretz...
...Isn't Hollywood great...
...I think that's what my father would have thought...
...And only about that many have 401K's or IRA's or Keoghs...
...Let me tell you that there is nothing better on this earth than flying, all by yourself, on a private jet...
...I did not throw out my parents' clothes, and they still have my mother's scent and my father's aftershave on them, so it's all very nice...
...What are they saying...
...Glorious, glorious, glorious Santa Cruz...
...I had the plane catered with fried chicken, and I ate some, and went to sleep...
...And then a second dog...
...WEDNESDAY T -r-13 EARLY AND OFF TO CAPITOL HILL to testify about retirement planning...
...It is great...
...No noisy fellow passengers, no lines at the bathroom, no delays on landing...
...Eggs...
...The great part was that the next thing after the speech I was whisked to the Santa Barbara airport and flown by private Lear 60 jet to Orlando...
...My refrigerator at the Watergate has everything good in this earth...
Vol. 37 • April 2004 • No. 3
