CAL POLY - Ben Stein has been so many things in his 58-year life -- actor, author, game show host, law professor, presidential speechwriter -- that it's tough to know what to expect from him.

Will his message be serious? Will he tell jokes? Maybe he'll re-enact the famous "Bueller? Bueller?" scene from the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Close to 1,000 people got all three when Stein spoke at the Cal Poly Performing Arts Center on Wednesday night at a college Republican club-sponsored event. The Renaissance man blended comedy with a serious but sarcastic message of "How to Ruin Your Life," also the name of one of his 17 books.

Stein -- wearing a pinstripe black suit, pink shirt, navy blue tie and tennis shoes -- charged onto the stage and labeled San Luis Obispo as "such a great, cool hippie town. I love it a lot."

Then he started rapping to the beat of hip-hop star Snoop Dogg and introduced the format of his speech: "I'm going to tell you some funny stories, then get serious, then we'll all get high."

Stein said he was kidding about the last part and then launched into ways to ruin your life. He dedicated the speech to his 15-year-old son, Tommy, whom Stein said he once wanted to enter into the Guinness Book of World Records as "the laziest human being with a pulse."

So Stein decided to write a book to his son on how to ruin his life. Tommy Stein, whom his father labeled as a troublemaker who earned bad grades in school, is now doing much better.

"Because of two words: boarding school," Ben Stein said.

His life-deprecating tips included using drugs and alcohol freely and not saving any money. But perhaps Stein's bedrock message in his cynical view on life was to disrespect parents.

"Parents are the ones who got you into all this trouble," Stein said. "Be ungrateful and surly to them all the time."

Of course, he was being sarcastic. After he went through his tenets of how to ruin lives, he then segued into how people can live meaningful lives.

"Parents will tell you that receiving gratitude from their children is about as rare as good Democratic candidates for president," said the former speechwriter and lawyer for Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Stein then related how he spent copious amounts of time with his mother and father just a few years before they died.

"After all the mistakes I made in my life ... that was something that I did right," he said. "Parents can be unbelievably difficult; but cling to them and show them your appreciation."

After the speech, Stein said he plans to co-author more books and perhaps even host a game show again.

On his former Comedy Central show, "Win Ben Stein's Money," he would answer trivia questions in the final two rounds of the show.

"I'd like to do a quiz show where I'm not one of the contestants," he said, "because that was too damn hard."