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Ben Stein's Diary
Out of Sorts
New York, Washington – they’re not Sandpoint.
Saturday
Now, let’s
see. Here I am in New York City. I am here with Big Wifey for my
sister’s 70th birthday party. We’re here at the Essex House. It is
a great hotel and my room is perfect except that it took forever to
get the Internet to work and there is no radio. Other than that,
it’s great.
I met my pal Joel Block for lunch. It’s his 66th birthday. We have been friends for many years and it’s truly magnificent to have him as a loyal friend. I think in some ways he was my first real friend, even though I didn’t meet him until I was 17. All of the others were jealous and competitive and some were downright mean and tricky. But Joel has been a great, wonderful friend for close to 50 years now. He is a scholar of French and of watches and a generally impressive man. We had some snacks at the Essex House and then said hello to Alex, and then Alex and I had to go to my sister’s birthday dinner.
The dinner was fine and I don’t really have much to say about it. The main point here is that my sister is probably the best sister in the world.
She is extremely intelligent, totally loyal, lovely to look at, knowledgeable about life, and just a great human being. I think I may have told you this story before, but it sums it up.
When I was 16, I had my first drunken evening — on vodka and Hi-C. I felt great until I went to sleep and threw up all over my sheets and myself in my sleep. I awakened to a vile smell. Naturally. My mother said, “Let him sleep in it,” which seems unkind but I guess it was her way of teaching me a lesson about drinking. My sister got up and washed and dried the sheets and put them back on the bed, without even having to be asked.
That was perhaps the most saintly thing anyone ever did for me in my youth.
My sister is the fount of many incredibly astute and insightful comments about life. Some are a little too true to be mentioned here. But just let’s say, she has a great understanding of la vie.
As far as I know, there is no better sister than mine and I feel grateful to God every day for allowing me to have such a fine sister.
My mother and father somehow taught us to stick together and we really have never had a quarrel that lasted more than a few hours, always my fault. She’s not on the same political page that I am on, or maybe she secretly is, or maybe I secretly am on a bit of her page.
Anyway, she is the best sister ever.
My wife and I walked the almost twenty blocks back to the hotel. I like walking in New York very much. We saw a variety of people. At a Starbucks, a homeless man tried to pick up my wife while I was in negotiations with the clerk about cupcakes.
At the hotel, time to sleep and listen to the sirens. How I miss the sound and rattle of the trains in Idaho. At some point, I turned on TV and watched a replay of the women’s tennis match. It was Serena Williams vs. an incredibly brave Polish woman. Serena was unstoppable. What a machine of skill and endurance and courage. Surely, she cannot possibly lose the final to Stosur.
Sunday
A visit from my
pal, W., who is a woman of almost 50 who is a workout maniac and
looks great. She has many questions to ask me about investing. I
have known this woman, this W., since roughly 1988. She was
beautiful then and she is now.
Alex sat patiently while we talked and then wifey and I set out with our driver, Bob Noah, to Washington, D.C. It was 9/11 and I was reluctant to fly or take the train.
Besides, I love being driven in a car on the freeway. I sleep soundly. We stopped at an incredibly clean rest stop in New Jersey and got some magnificent Roy Rogers Chicken. Wow, they make good chicken.
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (28) | Leave a comment
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Jesse| 9.19.11 @ 6:38AM
That was perhaps the most saintly thing anyone ever did for me in my youth.
http://www.besthandbagsshopping.com
http://www.discountsunglassesforsale.com
hardcard| 9.19.11 @ 8:26AM
Wow !! You get paid to write down this dull stuff?
Intelligent Design| 9.19.11 @ 8:45AM
Truly boring.
Cosmo| 9.20.11 @ 2:41AM
I love Ben because he is humble enough to talk about simple things and is thankful for what he has. Give him a break, guys.
Bob K.| 9.19.11 @ 8:34AM
New York City, Washington DC, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Sand Point, Idaho. Do you ever get to see the rest of America? The part that will also vote in the 2012 election. Do you ever even think of it?
Occam's Tool| 9.19.11 @ 3:54PM
Yup, the Phoenician truly has comfy beds and is very nice, although the meals there are not overly fantastic, and the area of the city surrounding is not that fantastic, either.
Been there, Ben, on someone else's dime, too. (Can't remember the pharma company.) Never would go on my own, however.
That was horribly dull for me to recount, Ben. Mind numbing. Meals and hotels are the ultimate in boring, Ben, especially as you tell them. A man who thinks McDonald's is "America's home cooking" is a blithering idiot who has never been treated to an Alabama farm meal by a master Southern cook (my Saintly late mother-in-law.)
Ben, your ideas and feelings are sometimes interesting. Your travelogues are soporific.
Notary Sojac| 9.19.11 @ 9:59AM
Reading Stein's column on spectator.org is one of my guilty pleasures.
I'm helplessly drawn to it like a moth to a flame, hoping that maybe this time he'll say something that is either (a) conservative or (b) not pointlessly self indulgent.
My wings are getting pretty darn singed, I'll tell ya....
Herb| 9.19.11 @ 12:03PM
Ben Stein is starting to remind me of Don Imus asking the late Tim Russert for a name for his new website. Russert replied,
"How about www.selfabsorbedaccordionneckedgeek.com?"
Ben has taken the merely banal and transformed it into the truly banal. And by the way, just how do you pronounce "banal"?
I suppose Ben will soon answer the ultimate challenge and spend his entire column describing a glass of water.
AhiaGuy| 9.19.11 @ 10:12AM
Newsflash to Ben: you can pick up radio on your laptop; no need to have one in the room if they have internet.
Sue| 9.19.11 @ 10:26AM
Dear Mr. Stein: I saw you on O'Reilly a couple of weeks ago and you talked "stupidly." Keep posting this tripe and not only will we stop defending the rich, we'll join the anarchists and demand that everything is taken. Do you have anything important to say about anything? If not, do as your mother should have taught you, say nothing.
Dave| 9.19.11 @ 10:32AM
I feel sorry for Alex, Ben's wife. She always, always is sick or not feeling well according to Ben.
Clint| 9.19.11 @ 11:15AM
That's because she's married to Stein.
Not tonight Ben. I have a headache.
JP| 9.19.11 @ 1:32PM
Perhaps Ben should just sell his Malibu manse, convert his stocks into cash and gold, and retire to Idaho. Heck, he's almost 70.
Dixie Pixie| 9.19.11 @ 1:58PM
Under the cover of being a traveling conservative lecturer of economics, Ben Stein is actuality the underground coordinator of the Republican economic sabotage teams.
He meets with the “Wascally Wepublicans” groups who are actively trashing the economy to thwart Obama / Progressive economic plans, tactics and strategy.
Of course, the sabotage groups need a method of sending directives to their field agents.
The Ben Stein articles in TAS are that method.
The Ben Stein posts are coded messages utilized in the same way the BBC sent coded messages to its agents in the field.
I will leave it to others practiced in the art of cryptography to come up with the translation table for the Stein Posts.
There may be alternative explanation for the Ben Stein Posts, so I will open the discussion for other guesses.
PCC| 9.19.11 @ 3:03PM
All of the above posts are on target. But I read Mr. Stein anyway, maybe more now than ever. It's becoming a "I love to hate him" sort of thing.
Junius| 9.19.11 @ 6:10PM
Seems like all poor old Ben does is travel around in comfort, stay at plush hotels priced beyond the pocketbook of the rest of us great unwashed, and mainly graze his way, like a wandering herd of buffalo, through an endless vista of all the fine dining eateries in America with an occasional daring foray into fast food paradise. Best of all he complains, and whines all the while living the good life. How inspiring! I still think that Mr. Stein with his apparent overwhelming preoccupation with food would be the perfect challenger in a pig out contest with the host of the cable TV show Man vs. Food which is a unabashed tribute to the sin of gluttony. At least it would worth reading about.
Herb| 9.20.11 @ 7:34AM
Junius, your very funny rant is one reason I now wait at least twenty-four hours before reading the articles at TAS: the comments are priceless!
And as for Ben's food rhapsodies, how different from Calvin Coolidge, who as President never turned down an invitation to a banquet or luncheon of any sort. He was asked why not.
"Well," replied the frugal Cal, "a man's got to eat."
Chris Ruetenik| 9.19.11 @ 6:36PM
honest and real.. it's a diary and I find it interesting.
trampoline| 9.19.11 @ 7:00PM
I was struck by the poignancy of Ben's never having a friend that was not jealous, mean or "tricky" until he found one that was fawning, obsequious and beguiled by Ben. That's the way he likes 'em.
Note: Ben just hi-jacked Jackie Kennedy's description of Martin Luther King. She thought he was "tricky" because he was onto JFK. You never heard Ben use "tricky" before. Plagiarizing adjectives!
Consider this, what kind of pure greed allows this man to continue serving up this swill in TAS, when the only compliment he has received in three years is from some shill/friend in Sandpoint?
McDonald's and Roy Rogers and Walmart's is when Ben is having to pick up the tab, himself.
Do I get the prize for the most insight into Ben's personality?
PCC is right, though. It's a cobra and mongoose facsination. To follow describing a snack and a bowl of cream of crab soup with the reverent declaration, "There is a lot to be thankful for.". . .
Big Wifey ought to haul herself up from her bed of pain and do a little proof-reading for him and say, "Ben, you just can't continue with this crap - its getting embarrassing."
idalily| 9.19.11 @ 10:10PM
I just wish he'd shut up about how wonderful Idaho is. Can't he brag about some other state than mine?
MarkR| 9.20.11 @ 12:17AM
TAS is in some sort of strange agreement with this old guy to give him a diary that only irritates. Last time I spoke here concerning him I was accosted as some horribly mean spirited man attacking a saintly aging honorific statesman of some sort. I responded to the effect Mr. Stein is a public figure who pontificates constantly in the media and then retreats here to be calmed and nurtured. I find this man vain and self absorbed and in that way similar to Obama and the progressives as though personalities and not principles are the key to our future. I say that because he drones on about what has never worked and holds men like Buffett as virtual saints. This is a mentality of the left and on a conservative site. Its pathetic.
Brian B| 9.20.11 @ 2:23PM
I get the "moth to a flame" comments but am mystified by everyone else who claims to hate what Ben writes but apparently can't wait to read the next installment, so they can whine about how much Ben whines.
Don't read him if you hate it (of course I guess that applies to my reading comments too. Oh well, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I guess).
Ore Gone| 9.20.11 @ 2:38PM
I agree with Ben that there is something uniquely refreshing about a mountain lake and the woods. It replenishes the soul and pushes the evil mean people in this world to mere annoyances compared to the majesty of God's creations. Keep on Keeping on Ben.
road rage in the driveway| 9.20.11 @ 4:19PM
Consummate conceit - -
"It was 9/11 and I was reluctant to fly or take the train. . ."
Yes, Ben, if terrorists were to strike again, they would surely choose the mode of transportation you were using that day.
Plouxie| 9.22.11 @ 6:07PM
THE WOLF IN SHEEP CLOTHES-
don't be fooled by Ben Stein's boriness. He is no dummy. He makes lots of money playing dumb and boring. He is as shrewd as a fox. He exploits people whom he believes are stupid. He has no talent except for taking people's money. He was a Yale Valedictorian, so what?He used to do drugs, hard drugs, coke, etc. ain the 1970s and that was NOT boring , was it? He also pushed the stuff, but some did not bite. He tells of is innocent boyhood, a first episode of drunkness and vomiting in his sheets, of a nice older sister washing him up. How cute! But Ben Stein is anything BUT cute. A shrewd manipulator of money, including yours, he comes across as a truly dangerous individual, unscrupulous, self-righteous, self inflated, the world OWES him, he is the master and you the slave. A chief needs slaves and servants. SThose of us who he "bores" are his subject. He doesn't reveal the depth of his depravity in inciting Barnard's freshman girls to suck the stuff...THAT IS NOT BORING, IS IT? I hope this has unbored you a bit: this macho Ben Stein needs a little dose of reality. He glides in fantasy , in a world of fantasy, where he controls us. He has another name: HYPOCRITE. or, in French: TARTUFFE; in Italian TARTUFFO or TARTUFFIO. Addiction might or might not be a crime, but inciting young female to taste the stuff certainly is.
Plouxie| 9.23.11 @ 10:47AM
Reply to TRAMPOLINE 9/19/22
Now that Ben-the- glutton has mentioned Roy Rogers in his column, you bet he won't have to pick up the tabs at any fast food either; he knows on what side his bread is buttered.
Plouxie| 9.23.11 @ 11:13AM
PARIS HILTON AND BEN STEIN (or PH and BS)
Paris Hilton and Ben Stein are famous for being famous (or she at times (in)famous). Not much else under the fluff of their (illustrious?) parentage. They know how to make the system work for them, although PH has paid a bit for her celebrity. BS continues writing, publishing, preaching uninteresting stuff of which boriness is made--it used to be called boredom in the times last century of La Dolce Vita, l'Aventura, Last Year at Marienbad, or some Woody's . And of course Flaubert writes about stupidity. Ben Stein's revels in self-referentiality and bovarysm. The glutton loves to eat? Isn't it what he has "learned" about the French haute bourgeois society--to which he aspires to be compared-- such as in Bunuel's Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie which he would like to emulate? B.S.' imitations are laughable, but his pockets filled, a testimony to the indulgent times we went through until recently in which naive gent, you and I, swallowed B.S.' b...s...
But Paris Hilton, on the contrary, is very pretty. Letl's see more of her.
j batlay| 10.16.11 @ 12:19PM
Joel Block is an ass-kisser
He tried to kiss mine but I said:
"No sir"
So he found out that
Benjamin Stein
Had a great juicy one and he said:
" My my my
Ben Stein's 's Mine!!"