My Rehab Roommate

Dear Arianna,

Thanks very much for your invitation to join you and David Geffen on the yacht later this month. Unfortunately, I will have to decline as I am in an "ongoing program of recovery" right now. Yes, that's right. After drinking a family-sized bottle of Manischewitz, then getting in my Mercedes and being pulled over while going eighty miles per hour through my neighbor's garden of dreidel-shaped topiary, I'm in rehab (please don't tell my kids - they think I'm in China manipulating the Yuan).

I've been here a couple of days just minding my own business (I must tell you, it's very hard to dominate the world when you only have access to a pay phone!) when they assign me this new guy for a roommate. He was picked up on a DUI in Malibu and tells me he's a movie star. I haven't seen a movie since Yentl and I don't watch television, so personally, I think he might be delusional. I tell him I'm Marie of Rumania to see how he responds. He mumbles something in a language that was either Aramaic or Toltec (it's hard to tell them apart and my Toltec is rusty), but I think it had the phrase Sugar Tits in it which makes me feel a little strange since I'm a guy.

He seems angry so I tell him now that he's in here he needs to give himself up to a higher power. He says: "You mean the Jews? They already control everything." I nod sagely, wishing it were true since it would help me get a better rate on my VISA card. Making small talk, he asks me if I'm aware that the Jews started all the wars in history. "Most people don't know this," he says, but the Peloppenesian Wars were started by someone named Mort Finerman. The guy who fired on Fort Sumpter? A well-known sheenie. And Gavrilo Princip who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and started WWI? Changed his name from Pinsky!" I'm backing out of the room at this point, but he blocks my way and says: "Did you know Emperor Hirohito was a lifelong subscriber to The Forward?"

He orders me to sit back down. What can I do, since he's obviously unhinged? That's when he tells me he's a director, too. According to this guy, he made a movie about Jesus for which he refused to take studio backing because every executive he talked to asked if he'd be willing to change the ending. He claims it was a big hit but he's afraid none of these Jews who work in Hollywood will be willing to distribute his movies anymore and now he's really annoyed with them. This is when he tells me he wants to do an animated movie. I'm thinking, good; something for children; take a break from all this heaviness. To keep him from coming closer, I ask what it's called. "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," he says. And he wants to do it for Disney, no less. I point out that it might be a little controversial for a family-oriented company and I didn't see the theme park ride angle either. "No, no, no," he says. "Disney bought the A.A. Milne books so I'm going to do it with Winnie the Pooh." As I desperately search my pockets for a thorzine tablet to give him he says: "Because everyone knows Poohs don't care about anything but honey." That was it for me, Arianna. I can take anti-Semitic spew from a ham actor, but bad puns are something else altogether. I say so and inform him that what he claims isn't even true." Then he looks at me and asks: "Is Marie of Rumania a Jewish name?"

Anyway, I'm sorry I can't join you on the boat. Send me a postcard. I'm hoping to be out of here by Labor Day. That's when Marvin Hamlisch, Alan Dershowitz, and I have a date to wage war on the Bahamas.

Yours in recovery, Seth