by Joan Rivers
JANUARY 17
Dear Diary:
I’m back in L.A. visiting Melissa, and tonight I went with my agent, Steve Levine, to a semi-important dinner party in Beverly Hills. And I say semi-important because if it were really important he would’ve taken Chris Rock or Jimmy Fallon or JWoww. And I know it was semi-important because there were only three or four people there who could help my career, and they could only do that if they called in a favor to someone more important than themselves. In Australia. I’m not complaining however; last week he took Kathy Griffin to an all-you-can-eat buffet at an Olive Garden.
Gayle King was at the dinner party, looking quite feminine and sporting a small tattoo of Gertrude Stein on her left wrist. I made the usual small talk with her, like, “You and Charlie Rose have such great chemistry,” and “Your new high-collared dresses really hide your large, mannish shoulders.” And she seemed delighted as she smiled and walked away. But what I really wanted to say to her was, “What’s Oprah’s private number? I want to crank call her.”
And while I’m on the subject, Charlie Rose—who I like to think of as a good, good friend—once came to a dinner party at my house with Amanda Burden, his longtime lady love. I adore them both. I saw a new friendship starting: Sunday-night screenings, meeting at the dog run, sharing a house in Mexico . . . I guess they didn’t see it the same way because I never heard from them again. In fact, Charlie turned down the opportunity to narrate a PBS special I had written on anti-Semitism called Stop Bothering the Hebes.
JANUARY 18
Dear Diary:
Exhausted. Just came back from yet another party, this time with Steve Levine’s assistant, Jackie. I’m starting to know how bacteria feel on the food chain. I was the oldest person in the room. They were all young hip actor types who made no eye contact with me. Is this generational or just rude? In my day, people made eye contact. Take John Wayne Gacy, for example. Good mood or bad, bless him, he made eye contact. Even at his busiest moments, like when he was waterproofing his crawl space, he always found time to look you right in the eyes and say, “What’d you do today, Joan? Tell some jokes, sell some jewelry on QVC, just hang with your peeps and smoke a little blunt?” instead of being self-involved and saying, “I was very busy: I drank a six-pack, made some clown paintings and fucked my cell mate. Care for some more punch?”
JANUARY 19
Dear Diary:
I’m really upset!! I finally got into the apartment of my blind neighbor, Esther Mortman (I slipped past her while she was groping for her tennis racquet . . . who’s she kidding?), and I was right! She does have a park view! This kills me. Why, why, why should blind people have apartments with park views? I don’t want to say anything negative about Esther even though she’s a lousy dresser. Checks and plaids together? Time and time again I chide her, “C’mon, Esther, what’s with this outfit, are you blind? Ooops.” But as I suspected, she doesn’t even appreciate her view; just to aggravate me she purposely places her easy chair facing the wall. As I said, I don’t want to say anything because I really like Esther. She’s so independent, for years I didn’t even know she was blind; I thought she was just a stuck-up cunt who never gave me a compliment like, “Have you lost weight? New hairdo?”
JANUARY 20
Dear Diary:
It’s Melissa’s birthday. Thirty-nine years ago tonight I was screaming, “Get this out of me!” And thirty-nine years plus nine months ago I was screaming the same thing. It was an easy birth and I remember my joy when my obstetrician answered yes to the following questions: Is she breathing? Is she healthy? Is she white?
On the way to Melissa’s party I ran into Wolf Blitzer and he broke my aura; he was right in my face when he growled at me. We were practically conjoined. (It made me think: Do people have to represent their names? Be careful what you name your kids. You could be jinxing the little motherfuckers. What if Sunny gets a job as a guard in a concentration camp? What if Goldie has black roots? What if Lucky has one eye, cradle cap and an open spine? Nice job, Mom. I always wanted to ask Gwyneth Paltrow, “Does Apple have worms?”)
I said to Wolf, “Wolf, unless you’re a dentist removing a molar or my Melissa trying to get my jewelry off of me before I’m dead, there’s no reason for you to be this close. And don’t give me that ‘what if we’re kissing?’ crap. You and I both know a hooker will fuck you, suck you, put things up your ass and call you dirty names, but she’ll never, ever kiss you. Especially if your name is Wolf.” Then as he was walking away I said to him, “Yo, Shorty, have a nice day, and by the way, who the fuck named you Wolf? Looking at you, so many other names come to mind: Raccoon, Ferret-Face, Llama-Puss or just a simple, right to the point No-Chin.” (There’s nothing I hate worse than a person with no chin. When they get old they’re just going to be a neck and a smile.)
JANUARY 21
Dear Diary:
Wolf isn’t the only person who’s in your face all the time. Take that narcissistic loser Tyra Banks. Tyra’s always standing up for herself and her “race” over perceived slights. For example, she’ll say, “You just pushed me because I’m black!” No, I pushed you because the train was coming right at you, you bulimic twit.
JANUARY 22
Dear Diary:
Just got another no for my PBS special, Stop Bothering the Hebes. John Galliano said “Non.” I think I’m going to sic Jerry Lewis on him.
Just finished watching President Obama’s inauguration. (I TiVoed it because last night I was watching the premiere episode of The Price Is Right with Winona Ryder.) The president’s speech was okay. The “we’re all in this together” stuff plus the usual “we’re all Americans” and the ever-popular “we’re all equal” shit went over very well. I like the first two sentiments but boy-oh-boy is Obie wrong on number three. We’re not all equal. I’ve seen nude photos of Tommy Lee and Bruce Lee, and no amount of legislation is gonna level that playing field. Tommy wins ten to one. Poor Bruce Lee. As Confucius say, “Be happy with a mini. Could be worse; could be an innie.” I feel so sorry for Asian men; not once in my nearly two hundred years on this planet have I ever heard the Asian woman who lives next door to me yell out, in a fit of unbridled lust, “Oh, Hop Sing, give it to me, baby! Punish me with your huge, yellow tool!” Not once. Usually what I hear her say is, “Is it in?”
Back to the inauguration. I watched it at home and the television coverage sucked. First they’d show President Obama in front of the Capitol making a speech after taking the oath of office. And then during his speech they kept cutting to smiling black people in the audience. Then they’d go back to Obama for a minute and then cut back to three or four other smiling black people. There were over 900,000 people on the Mall watching the inauguration; what are the odds they were all smiling black people? If I want to see millions of smiling black people, I’ll set up a camera in the hallway outside Kim Kardashian’s bedroom.
I resent that the networks think we’re so shallow, that because the president is black they have to keep doing cutaways only to smiling black people in the audience. If Chris Christie ever becomes president, will they only cut to Kathy Bates chewing and burping?
I wish Obama would have livened the speech up a bit; given the crowd a wink, a smile, a bad-boy hip thrust. His biggest offense was that the speech was boring. How great would it have been if he said, “Good news, gang! My daughter Sasha’s expecting! She’s gonna be eating government cheese for two! And even better, Hillary’s the baby daddy!”
JANUARY 23
Dear Diary:
Just heard how my cleaning lady, Chiquita, enjoyed the inauguration. Apparently everybody in the country was invited to it except me. But I’m not upset. In my time, I’ve slept with many a president. There was Teddy Roosevelt, who was some little roughrider. I had a major, major affair with FDR, who, by the way, had a coupla fetishes. He used to say, “C’mon, Joan, you be a hot nurse and I’ll play a little cripple boy who needs a
sponge bath.” And I don’t want to rehash this bit of history here, but it’s common knowledge that Abe Lincoln and I were an item. And FYI, A.L. would’ve been alive today if he had just listened to me. I begged that little fairy boy (everyone knows he was gay. C’mon—shawl, stovepipe hat, a darkened mole. Obvious!) not to go to the theater. I said, “Stay home in bed with me. We’ll decoupage and watch Lifetime TV movies.” And he said, “Nope! I want to go to the theater! Les Miz is playing, and Fantine, before they pull out her teeth, is quite the looker in a clever little A-line and matching open-toed shoes.” The rest is history.
JANUARY 24
Dear Diary:
I had dinner tonight with my friend Cindy Adams, and it was great. Since Cindy’s a famous gossip columnist, there’s never a check because the chefs want to be on her good side. So I get the latest dirt and a free meal. We’re not lesbians, but if I could mooch steak and lobster off of Cindy every night, I’d learn to build bookcases, play golf and make her my gal pal. What I like about Cindy is that in her column she tells the truth. If I had a column, I’d lie or do a lot of “blind items” so I couldn’t get sued: things like, “Which five-foot-seven Scientologist was seen standing on a box trying on a muumuu in Forgotten Woman?” Or, “Which fifty-year-old star who used to be married to Ashton K. was seen at a playground asking little boys if their testicles had dropped yet?” Or, “Which blond British singer stopped rolling in the deep long enough to break into a Dunkin’ Donuts in desperate need of a fix? And then had to spend the night in the clink because even though she was allowed one phone call, her mouth was too full to be understood?”
JANUARY 25
Dear Diary:
Flew from L.A. to New York last night and had a terrible headache until Vonda, my favorite flight attendant, gave me some good dirt. Anne Hathaway is a regular on Vonda’s flight, and Vonda said that Anne eats everything on board and then spends the rest of the flight in the bathroom purging and vomiting and singing, not that I could tell the difference. Vonda said Anne’s vomiting really upset Natalie Portman, who was in 2F. “This is terrible, terrible,” she kept saying. “That hag is hogging the bathroom. Now I’m going to have to puke in my purse!”
JANUARY 26
Dear Diary:
Still thinking about Anne Hathaway. I don’t understand how she won an Oscar for Les Miz; she was only in the movie for five minutes. It was a great performance, but I say again, it was only five minutes. If they’re going to give an Oscar for a great five-minute performance then they should award it posthumously to Jackie Kennedy. She wowed me in the Zapruder film. Boy oh boy, that bitch knew how to steal a scene. Forget that Anne Hathaway acted and sang, Jackie did it with no dialogue at all! JFK’s flying gray matter was incidental. The eye never left Jackie in her pink suit crawling out of that convertible.
JANUARY 27
Dear Diary:
Q: What’s sweaty, lonely and weighs ten thousand pounds?
A: The front row of a Donny Osmond concert.
I went to a Donny Osmond concert last night. Got in free, which means I had to stand up in the audience and wave and hear their happy whispers about me, like, “She looks older,” “Check out the hump,” “Why does that Jew comic have a better seat than me?” etc., etc. Anyhow, he was fantastic! I had a great time, and not just because he put on such a wonderful show, but because in my entire life I’ve never felt prettier. I felt like Marilyn on The Munsters. The only negative was I didn’t know whether to offer the woman sitting next to me breath mints or peanuts. I fully expected Jack Hanna to walk in, clap his hands and suddenly have the entire mezzanine start grooming themselves and hurling feces. (Donny, who is no chicken himself, did the show without an intermission; maybe he figured if he took a break they’d never come back from the snack bar.) But to be perfectly honest, there is something special about seeing 2,200 wildly unattractive, morbidly obese older women singing and wetting their diapers to “Puppy Love.”
This doesn’t just happen at Donny Osmond concerts. Try going to a Joni Mitchell concert these days: Fistfights no longer break out with those old dykes; they barely have the energy to push and shove when Joni sings songs from Blue, which these days refers to their legs. The fans are just getting older, and this includes my audiences too, some of whom think the Carson show is still on (and some are referring to Kit). Instead of hearing “Bravo,” I hear “What did she say?” followed by “I don’t get it” and “I feel damp, Lenny, let’s go.”
JANUARY 28
Dear Diary:
I was thinking about the Donny Osmond show again. Nobody in the audience was dressed up. I understand that Spandex can only do so much, but make an effort when you’re at a show. Just because you’re watching War Horse doesn’t mean you should smell like one. The only people who can get away with not dressing up for a concert are Andrea Bocelli fans. But if, God forbid, his sight comes back while he’s onstage, he might take one look and pull an Oedipus.
Speaking of dressing up, I spent tonight watching a football game with Cooper. The camera swung around to the stands and showed a whole group of grown businessmen wearing uniforms with players’ names on them. Staring directly into the camera was a slovenly, bald, three-hundred-pound proctologist from Newark, New Jersey, wearing a Tom Brady jersey. I wanted to shout at the screen, “Are you Tom Brady? Because if you are you’ve really let yourself go.” Why do men do this? Do they consider it a form of homage? If so, shouldn’t Tom Brady go to his proctologist’s office wearing a plastic glove covered in Vaseline?
JANUARY 29
Dear Diary:
It’s the middle of Award Season in Hollywood, which is as important to actors as Ramadan is to Muslims. In fact, if a Dutch cartoonist ever drew a cartoon mocking the Oscar ceremony, I guarantee you there would be a violent jihad in front of Spago. And it won’t even be pretty to look at because no one is allowed to dress up anymore during Award Season. The networks have new decency guidelines which insist that no more breasts, buttocks or genitalia show. Luckily, because of celebrities like Pharrell and his stupid hat, we’ll still be able to see assholes.
JANUARY 30
Dear Diary:
Nowadays there are so many award shows: the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the SAGs, the Oscars . . . there are more awards to honor actors than there are stretch marks on Ricky Martin’s mouth. And I don’t watch to see who wins. As a matter of fact, I don’t give a shit who wins; I’m much more interested in who loses. I love to watch how the losers mask their reactions when their name is not announced. I can’t describe the feelings of joy I get watching narcissistic actors pretending to be happy for someone else. I tingle all over; I imagine this must be what a person in desperate need of an organ transplant feels when they hear the good news of a fatal, twelve-car pileup not three blocks from their hospice bed.
The Red Carpet is a special place to me; it’s where I spent my formative wonder years—thirty-five to sixty-seven. It’s magical; where else can an everyday, regular, simple hausfrau like me meet rich, famous superstars fresh out of rehab and grill them about their sobriety coach, their life coach and their meditation coach, or ask them if they have any idea when their tremors, teeth grinding and night sweats will stop? Where else can A-list actresses show off the $3 million necklaces they’ve borrowed or the four thousand African children they’ve bought and will love until they reach puberty and the problems start? And where else, other than on Bravo, can no-talent has-beens parade around, twirling and posing as though anyone in the audience knows or gives a shit who they are?
Working on red carpets is not new to me. My daughter Melissa and I have been on more of them than Aladdin, but what I like about them is they give me the chance to be a part of the excitement without actually having to watch the tedious shows themselves. Who needs to watch Catherine Zeta-Jones lip-sync or James Franco sleepwalk or Ben Stiller do anything? No! No! No! (I sound like I did on my wedding night.) I’m a busy woman. My time
could be better spent writing jokes, designing jewelry or cruising Craigslist searching for an eighty-year-old man who has eighty million in the bank and eighty days to live.
JANUARY 31
Dear Diary:
Today is Carol Channing’s birthday. If she were alive, she’d be 192. I idolize her. Whenever she sang “Hello Dolly,” she brought the house down. Unfortunately it was the only thing she did well. But many stars only do one thing well: Ginger Rogers could dance backwards, David Copperfield can make a motorcycle disappear. And of course the best one-trick pony is Kristen Stewart, who got a whole career by being able to juggle directors’ balls. These people don’t have a broad skill set, like Ted Bundy, for example. Ted was lawyer, a student, a model; he liked baseball, football, fishing; he drove a car, he slaughtered co-eds. He was a real jack-of-all-trades. I hear that on his way to the electric chair he sang a rousing rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” à la Carol, and in an homage to Ginger, he tapped backwards the entire way to Old Sparky.
P.S. My assistant, Jocelyn, just told me that Carol Channing may still be alive. Whatever.
The Backstreet Boys have not aged well.
FEBRUARY 1
Dear Diary:
Just the other day my dearest, closest, dare I say best friend, Goldie Hall—I mean Hawn—asked me, “Joan, you battered old crone, what does ‘red-carpet style’ mean?” I told her, “Goldalah, you delusional hag, red-carpet style is like herpes: You either have it or you don’t. Or as another one of my close BFFs Lou Ann Rhymes says, ‘You have to be born with red-carpet style. You can’t steal it from someone else’—like a husband.” If you’re Aretha Franklin, “style” means looking great while sweating mayonnaise through sixty yards of organza. For most actresses, red-carpet style means expensive earrings, designer gowns and the opportunity to make fun of all the big, fat girls who have to squeeze into a size two. But never mind the gowns and the accessories, the most important thing to wear on the red carpet is kneepads. Just like basic black, every starlet knows you can never go wrong in kneepads. As the first lady of American theater once said to me (and I’m talking about Helen Hayes, not Neil Patrick Harris), “You never know when you’ll need them: You could pass out from the heat, you might collapse because you mistimed your drugs, or—talk about luck—you might suddenly find yourself alone with Steven Spielberg.”