by Joan Rivers
And now Charles Manson is starting to look his age, which I guess is understandable because he’s seventy-six. Seventy-six! Wow, our little Chuckie, can you believe it? I saw a recent photo of him and I was quite shocked. In spite of his rather unhealthy lifestyle, he’s always managed to stay spry and snappy, and even as his hair took on that sexy salt-and-pepper tone, he somehow maintained his impish manner. But now, all of a sudden, he looks jowly and sallow, and that maniacal stare that became his brand seems to have been lost to both time and a lazy eye. But the worst thing is, his skin is starting to sag and his forehead swastika is now under his nose, and he’s starting to look like Hitler. And as a Jewish girl, I can’t be having any of that.
SEPTEMBER 28
Dear Diary:
Flew back from a one-nighter in Boston and, my luck, I got a very pregnant woman sitting next to me, wearing a T-shirt that said, “I’m not fat, I’m pregnant.” I had nothing to say to her, but to be nice I smiled and asked her the usual boring questions like: “Is it your first?” “When are you due?” “Have you picked a name?” Later it occurred to me that maybe there’s a little niche business here: T-shirts for pregnant women that could actually move the conversation along. Wouldn’t it be great if they could get something like, “Shit, the rubber ripped,” or “I was tripping so I left my foam at home,” or “The bastard said he would pull out,” or “I’ll do anything to get on The Maury Povich Show.”
Going to the theater tonight with my friend Margie. Not sure what we’re going to see but as long as she’s paying for the tickets it’s fine. I’m happy to go to midget wrestling or a poetry jam or the execution of a retarded inmate, as long as it’s free.
SEPTEMBER 29
Dear Diary:
Last night Margie and I ended up at this silly little Off-Broadway thing called Naked Boys Singing. Guess what it was about? You guessed it—naked boys singing songs about being naked boys singing songs. Not exactly Death of a Salesman, but in all fairness, I didn’t get to see Willy Loman’s penis swinging in front of me as he called for Biff and Happy.
One weird thing is that all of the men in the cast shaved off their body hair. All of it, I repeat, ALL OF IT. I find this very creepy, but Melissa says it’s the new trend and almost all men are doing it these days. I can’t imagine going out with a man who has no body hair; it would be like dating a giant nine-year-old. And unless you’re Demi Moore, that’s just wrong.
SEPTEMBER 30
Dear Diary:
Thirty days has September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one,
Except February, which has twenty-eight except sometimes it has twenty-nine.
So leave me the fuck alone. I’m tired, I’m old and you’re confusing me.
Whoever wrote that can’t write poetry or do math and needs a near-death experience. I’m going to call my friends in the FBI and have them hunt him down and torture him—maybe send him to Attica or Guantánamo or make him go to a live taping of Dr. Phil. And I could do this; I have lots of friends in the FBI.*
If you think my tongue is big, you should see the size of the cold sore I gave Robin Thicke!
OCTOBER 1
Dear Diary:
I just got a call from my soon-to-be ex-friend Sylvia. She said, “Guess what? I just found out that on this date in 1962, Johnny Carson hosted his first Tonight Show.” I said, “Guess what back? I don’t give a fuck.” Then I hung up and thought of calling my mob friends to see if she could “accidentally go swimming” in the Hudson River with something heavy in her purse, like John Goodman’s lunch. I’m mad because she only told me half the facts. She never said that from then on Johnny was drunk and cheated on all of his wives.
And it’s not just Sylvia who doesn’t give the whole truth or all the facts. It’s a blot on our society that our newspapers and magazines are filled with half facts and they never tell you the whole truths. For example, in April 1863, the first Siamese twins were separated, but it was never reported that in May their mother said, “I never would’ve done it if I knew that I’d have to pay for double diaper service.” And I read that on October 1, 2009, paleontologists discovered the Ardipithecus ramidus skeleton, the oldest human fossil ever found. But what they didn’t tell you was that while the fossil did not have a formal name, it answered to “Miss Dyan Cannon.”
Half Facts Plus the Full Truth
HALF FACT: In 1776, George Washington crossed the Delaware and everyone declared him a hero.
FULL TRUTH: Fucking idiot was trying to get to Maine.
HALF FACT: The wettest spot on Earth is the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
FULL TRUTH: The second wettest spot on Earth is Cloris Leachman’s Spanx.
HALF FACT: Infant beavers are called kittens.
FULL TRUTH: Adult beavers are called Mrs. Jodie Foster.
HALF FACT: An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire fifty miles long.
FULL TRUTH: A pound of gold can be stretched into a never-ending alimony hearing.
HALF FACT: Swans are the only birds with penises.
FULL TRUTH: Black swans are the only birds with white girlfriends.
HALF FACT: In 2560 BC, the great pyramids of Giza were finally finished using six thousand Jewish slaves.
FULL TRUTH: It should have been finished a whole year earlier, but the Jews took the winters off to go to Boca.
HALF FACT: The world’s largest mammal, the blue whale, is known for weighing up to 150 tons.
FULL TRUTH: The world’s second largest mammal is known for singing “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
OCTOBER 2
Dear Diary:
I’m really pissed. I have very little time in New York but I spent the morning at FAO Schwarz looking to buy toys for my lesbian neighbors’ new adopted twin girls. Some woman came over and asked me if I was their great-grandmother. Great-grandmother? Do I look that old? I would only accept that if I was from the Ozarks and I started birthin’ babies at nine.*
This kills me that I look old!!! After all the money I’ve spent on Botox? And it’s been a lot of money! Maybe I was wrong to do it; maybe I should have saved it just in case Cooper ever wants gender reassignment surgery.* Botox is not cheap and I’ve had a lot. Melissa says I’ve had more needles in me than a pine forest in Maine, and Cooper always adds, “Nana, you’ve been pulled tighter than Rick Santorum’s asshole at a Pride parade.” And that cataract-riddled old crone thought I looked like a great-grandmother? I was so upset I went out to hire a PI to hunt down the old bag and push her under a Meals on Wheels delivery truck.
OCTOBER 3
Dear Diary:
Just came from visiting my lesbian neighbors. They’re such a nice couple. I think their names are either Bonnie and Sue, or Connie and Rue, or Ellen and Portia, but it doesn’t really matter; I call them Steve and Rocky and they always answer. They’re both good-looking blondes from the Midwest (I think Steve was corn-fed; she’s a rather strapping gal—thirty-six-inch inseam on her Dickies), but their new daughters look like Chairman Mao. They haven’t picked names yet, but after looking at the babies and watching them gobble a lunch of green ferns and bamboo shoots, I suggested Ling Ling and Ding Ding in honor of the giant pandas.
OCTOBER 4
Dear Diary:
This is one embarrassed Jew. I had no idea that Depends leak. And if you don’t believe me, ask the people sitting next to me on the breakfast dais at Temple Israel.
OCTOBER 5
Dear Diary:
I had two extra hours this morning so I laid in bed and tried to catch up on my essential reading. I like to be informed when I go to intellectual dinner parties (instead of being classified as just another pretty Hollywood blonde). The National Enquirer’s headline caught my eye immediately: Jessica Simpson says she’s “found love and contentment with her womanly body.” I studied her picture intently but could
n’t tell if hers was a genuine happiness or a medicated happiness over weight gain, or if Jessica’s just given up on dieting and no longer gives a shit. Her hips look so big that I’ll bet she has to let out the shower curtain. Her idea of a wheat dish is Kansas. Anyhow, Jessica was smiling away and looking perfectly happy in her gravy-soaked muumuu that stuck to her now pendulous breasts. This article made me angry. I hate big, fat celebrities who brag to the world, “I’m fat but I’m beautiful just the way I am.” No, you’re not. Everybody—and I mean everybody, including nice people, like Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, and Billy, the forty-six-year-old box boy who lives with his mother down the hall in #16F and still claps every time he makes a boom-boom—makes fun of you. That “I’m beautiful the way I am” kind of exaggeration gets me crazy. It’s simply a justification to not do a sit-up, walk a block or have a salad. (By the way, I don’t do sit-ups or walk a block or eat salads. It’s not because I’m fat or lazy; it’s just that I no longer have to. I have people to do that for me.)
I’m also sick and tired of people who actually buy self-help books and say, “I love me just the way I am.” If you are one of these people, I want you to put this book down right now, strip naked and go and look in your mirror. Okay, are you looking? Don’t you dare tell me you’re glad you’re you. If right now, you could trade your you for someone else’s you, whose you would you pick? Here is a simple test that I would like you to take. Which would you prefer: A or B?
I Prefer:
A
B
My broken-out, oily black-headed back.
OR
Angelina Jolie’s silky, alabaster skin.
My flabby, cellulite-dimpled (not in a cute way) thighs; my batwing, Hadassah-hunk arms; my saggy, uneven, dark brown heavy-nippled breasts.
OR
A trim Japanese prison camp physique.
My fat, lumpy varicose veins.
OR
The smooth, rounded stumps of a heroic land-mine survivor.
If you have checked even one from Column A, put down this book—I don’t want to know you, speak to you or ever see you because you’re crazy.
OCTOBER 6
Dear Diary:
What a weird business show business is. I saw in TV Guide that there’s a special on TLC called The Man with the 132-Pound Scrotum. (Catchy title; I wonder what it’s about.) This really was a one-hour show and I can’t believe it—I know people in this business who spend their entire lives writing and studying and performing, and sadly, they often get nowhere, and now this slob gets his own special just because he has a ball sac the size of Cleveland? I’m trying to get in touch with him, to find his wife and then do a follow-up special, The Woman with the Severely Crushed Pelvis.
What upsets me even more are the names of television channels that no longer represent their product. A&E used to be “Arts & Entertainment,” now they air Duck Dynasty—a show about hillbillies who shoot birds. Exactly which one of the arts is that? When was the last time you screamed “Bravo!” to a skanky, collagen-filled housewife from New Jersey?
And if you remember, TLC stood for “The Learning Channel.” Please tell me what we’re learning from this 132-Pound Scrotum show? How he crosses his legs without crushing his nuts? How to make living room drapes into a Speedo? TLC has changed a lot—it used to be informative; these days it’s all dwarves and midgets. TLC should now stand for the Little Channel.
OCTOBER 7
Dear Diary:
Just read that Ellen DeGeneres is hosting the Oscars again. I wish they’d go back to the old days when they had comedians host the show.
I’ve decided my career is in the toilet. I’m an eighty-year-old heterosexual and the only drug I take is Boniva, so I might as well face it: I’ve got no shot at a big-time gig. As a matter of fact, my career is at such a low point that I’m writing this with the burnt end of a match in a bus terminal where I’m waiting for the 2:17 to Kalamazoo where I’m the opening act for a retrospective slide show on Tiny Tim. What did my parents do wrong?
OCTOBER 8
Dear Diary:
Lying in bed feeling very sorry for myself. On my way back from the club date in Kalamazoo the bus let me off on Kissena Boulevard to do a “personal appearance” in Queens. (A personal appearance is when a celebrity is paid to show up at an event and has to pretend that he or she cares about the people, the cause or the event itself.) I don’t mind doing personal appearances for charities. As a matter of fact, every Christmas I do a benefit to raise money for gifts for lonely hookers whose johns are spending the holiday with their families. It’s called Toys for Twats. I also am involved with a charity very similar to Meals on Wheels. We visit older men who take Viagra but are housebound. We just ring their doorbell and jerk them off. Ours is called Feels on Wheels. Anyway, I was at a banquet for some sick-kid thing and it was very upsetting. I thought, “This is so stupid. Why are they paying me when they could use this money for the sick kids?” It bothered me so much that I took all the money they gave me and did what any decent, empathetic person would do: went to Bergdorf and bought six Hermès bags. It made me feel better immediately.
Oh, I forgot to mention that as I was leaving the event, I heard lots of loud, terrible barking. My first thought was, “What’s Susan Boyle doing in Queens?” but then I looked around and saw a couple of teenaged boys walking pit bulls. At least I think they were pit bulls. I’m not sure as neither one of the dogs had a baby in its mouth. I said to thug-in-training number one, “Why do you have an unneutered male pit bull?” He said, “It’s an attack dog.” I said, “You live in Forest Hills. Not the Serengeti. Who’s going to attack you, the Widow Feinstein?”
OCTOBER 9
Dear Diary:
Speaking of dogs, here is a sad afterthought: As I was going out, I met my neighbor carrying her little girl Fiona’s dead puppy, Chuckles, all wrapped in newspaper. She was dumping Chuckles in the garbage and she was very upset, as she didn’t know which bin to put the stiff, rotting corpse in—paper, plastic or recyclable. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “He’s dead and he’s wrapped in paper, but his collar is plastic.” “Easy peasey,” I said. “The people next door are Korean. Put Chuckles in the recycling bin and call it a day; #18B does it all the time with semi-dead kittens.” We spent the next couple of hours figuring out how to tell Fiona that Chuckles wasn’t chuckling anymore. I told her about the way my parents broke the news to me when my best pal, my closest companion, whathisname died. They took my favorite toy and ripped it to shreds. Then they called me and said, “Joan, Joan, look what your dog did!” I said, “Oh, oh, I wish he were dead.” My mother smiled and said, “Good news, honey. He is!”
Unfortunately Fiona didn’t have a favorite toy but she did have a brother no one in the neighborhood liked. No one’s spotted Little Jimmy since 9 a.m.—and frankly, no one in the neighborhood cares. (He was unpopular and so ugly that he was even turned down at a petting zoo.)
Losing a pet is tough. A pet is one of the only two things in the world that gives you unconditional love. The other being your vibrator. I’ve always been a big animal lover but only lately have I begun to appreciate cats. I always found them annoying and too aloof, always thinking they were better than I was, just like my cousin Bernice. But I’m coming around because I realize they make great fur coats (as the children of my cousin Bernice with her hairy ass will someday find out). As a child I remember telling my mother, “I hate cats; I hate cats.” And she said, “Fine. Then eat around it.”
OCTOBER 10
Dear Diary:
It’s 11 p.m. and I just got home from a poetry reading at a hipster café in the Village called Café a-Go-Go,
and after listening for an hour to bad poetry, I was upset that I hadn’t left the Go-Go and Gone-Gone. Anything up to and including being stoned to death by angry rebels in Tahrir Square would be a lot more fun than listening to some Jesse Jackson wannabe complain about “the man” in an ABAB rhyme.
“I hate you mister ’cause you fucked a sister.” Yeah, yeah, boring—we heard it already on Dr. Phil.
Poetry is bullshit. For openers, all those rhyme-crazy morons—Yeats, John Donne, e.e. cummings and Wads-worth, just to name a few—were just fairy boys who sold a gullible public on the fact that poetry is terrific. Poetry is just stories being told in a short form by “poets,” who are people who got rhyming dictionaries for their birthdays and who can’t punctuate or write in complete sentences. Think about the “greatest poets” of all time—T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg. If they were so great, how come you couldn’t pick them out of a police lineup even if your life depended on it? I could pick out Gotti, and I could identify Larry King’s testicles while blindfolded before I could tell the difference between the faces of Longfellow, Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson.*
I’m going to bed. I need my beauty sleep. I plan to wake up in 2037.
OCTOBER 11
Dear Diary:
Went to visit my friend Flower, who recently moved to Brooklyn. Flower kept telling me, “Oh, Joan, you’ve got to come over; Brooklyn is the new New York.” On my way to her house I saw three hookers, two rapists and a crack-whore pushing her kid in a baby stroller while the baby daddy rode shotgun. Flower is right.
OCTOBER 12
Dear Diary:
Just had my morning coffee and checked my calendar. It’s Hugh Jackman’s birthday and I don’t know what to get him. It’s hard to shop for very rich people because whatever they want they already have, or they can buy it themselves. Or worse yet, someone else will buy them a better, more expensive version of whatever I buy, and I’ll have to smile and feign amusement, and then follow them home and kill them.