Here’s To You, Mrs. Robinson

I must be getting old. (But...is that a bad thing?) I recently rewatched The Graduate, and found myself bored and annoyed by that spoiled kid Benjamin Braddock, and sympathetic to Mrs. Robinson. Yes, she’s a broken-down alcoholic (however smokin hot), but would you really want your daughter dating Benjamin, who lies around the pool all day cursing his Princeton education and having affairs with married women? It's not possible for anyone who has a daughter, I think, to think that Benjamin is an ideal match for any nice young lady. He actually reminded me of some kids I did a story on in LA a few years ago. They all grew up in Beverly Hills and were full of some kind of overprivileged ennui. One of the little buggers (an aspiring playwright) wound up writing a play about how I supposedly hoodwinked him and his friends into self-exposure. He actually used my name in the promotions. The play was mounted at some theater. I never saw it. To this day sends me emails asking for favors. I read them with bafflement.