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• Twenty six ways to ruin your life

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Ben Stein, November 29 2007, Foellinger Hall. (Kristine Eudey, Buzz Magazine)

He entered to a standing, hooting ovation, to flashes from digital cameras. He closed his lecture to a quieted, confused, respectful applause.

Ben Stein visited campus last night and, though billed to talk on politics, gave a forty-five minute sermon on life as he’s known it, and life as we should lead it. Stein is famous both for his typecast TV and film roles as a monotonous bore, and for his real persona as an intelligent, conservative wit. He was valedictorian at Yale Law in 1970 and then a speech writer for Nixon and Ford.

He came “representing for all the gangsters across the world” and began his speech with three long, breathless jokes. Stein then played the theme for the evening, saying how grateful he feels each day he wakes up in the United States. But he followed with a rant of sarcasm and irony, pushing through – at my count – 26 suggestions on how to ruin your life. They ranged from the philosophical – convince yourself you are the center of the universe and the source of all wisdom – to the practical – don’t save any money, live above your means.

The near-capacity Foellinger Auditorium crowd was rapt and laughing through this grim torrent, as Stein pointed at one or another of everyone’s shortcomings. But then he reversed himself and gave ways to get ahead in life. The comfort of the cynicism was replaced by the awkwardness of sincerity. Stein said that, for him, “the whole credo of what we should be as human beings” is to serve others, especially the less fortunate. He concluded with a story of his father-in-law, a World War II veteran, whose selflessness in combat he holds as an epitome of moral living. Stein even directly challenged the audience to go home, call their parents, and tell them they love them. Any hope for a light lecture was gone at this point.

Audience Q&A followed, with some stumbling questions about Bush, the economy, torture - asking for political platitudes from a famous face. And, of course, Stein was baited to comment on red, dry eyes and to call the role for Ferris Bueller. Once a “dope-smoking maniac” college student himself, Stein’s lecture seemed a sincere shout of what he knows now, of what he wished he knew when he was younger, and what we can know before we get older.