The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation

by Melissa Rivers

  I don’t know exactly where my mother’s lack of patience with the ever-growing horde of incompetents began, but the first instance I recall witnessing was sometime in the late 1970s, when my parents were out promoting the movie Rabbit Test.2 My mother had just finished making a promo appearance, and we got in the car to drive to another city for another appearance the next day. I was hungry, and even though we didn’t usually stop for food, because afterward, at some point, we’d have to pull over and use a public restroom, about which, as I’ve already mentioned, my mother was phobic (see “The Loo of Love”), my whining that I was “starving like a beggar in Calcutta” wore them down and they gave in.

  We pulled into the drive-thru of some fast-food burger joint and ordered a couple of burgers. The guy on the headset taking our order said, “We’re out of burgers.” Before I had the chance to get hysterical, envisioning myself as nothing more than skeletal remains on the side of the road, my mother leaned across the front seat, practically pushing my father though the windshield, and started peppering the guy with questions: “What do you mean you’re out of burgers? You only make one thing: burgers. Your name is Burgers R Us! How’d you run out of them?” He said, “Well, it was really busy at dinnertime.” She barked, “Of course it was. It was dinnertime. It’s supposed to be busy. Didn’t you plan for that?” He stared blankly and gave us coupons for free meals for the next time we came (as though there’d be a next time). Then, as we drove off, my mother looked at me in the backseat and said, “Boy, is he bad at his job. He ought to thank God he’s not a lion tamer. By the way, don’t you worry, my malnourished princess. There’s a waffle house right down the road. Let’s pray they’re not out of waffles.”

  I understand that not everybody can be the best in the world at their job. For example, only one dentist can graduate at the top of his class at dental school. That doesn’t mean everyone else is at the bottom, but when you go to have a tooth pulled, wouldn’t you like to know that your dentist’s last job wasn’t in Marathon Man?

  My mother was not one to live in the past; in fact, she was one of the most forward-thinking people I’ve ever known. (Be honest, how many eighty-one-year-olds do you know who have Twitter accounts or make videos for YouTube or Vine?) She was not a curmudgeonly old “things were better back in my day” kind of person, but she did believe that, in recent years, basic standards (manners, language, job skills) had dropped, and what in the past would have been considered unacceptable had become the acceptable norm.

  For example, there was a receptionist named Carol who worked at a TV studio where we taped a lot of shows. She was happily married to Ken and had an eight-year-old son named Danny. Carol was kind and lovely and nice—and had the grammatical skills of a foreign-born toddler. Every time we came to work, before we went into the studio, my mom would stop by Carol’s desk and chat with her. “Hi, Carol. Is Danny having fun playing Little League baseball?” “Yeah. He done good.” Nails on a blackboard. My mother would continue: “Do you and Ken have plans for the weekend?” “Yeah. Him and me are goin’ out.”

  This would drive my mother nuts. Once we were in the elevator and safely out of earshot, she’d say, “He done good? Him and me? Why can’t she speak properly? She was born in Denver, for God’s sake. My gardener, who got here from Tijuana on Tuesday, has a better command of the English language. And somehow she got a job as receptionist in a major television studio, speaking to people? Arrghh!” We’re not asking anyone to speak the Queen’s English, but they could speak at least as well as Shakira or Celine Dion!

  I think that a lot of my mother’s hypersensitivity to professional incompetence was because she worked in the entertainment industry, which happily rewards incompetence. (Please don’t confuse the “entertainment industry” with the “arts.” The “arts” are usually run by artists, i.e., writers, filmmakers, authors, painters, musicians. The entertainment industry is run by lawyers and accountants and executives whose lists of failures are longer than those of the guys they’ve just replaced).3 There’s an old (semi-old?) adage that goes, “Show business is the only business where talent and skill aren’t requirements for success. It’s nice if you have them, but they’re not necessary.”

  Think about that for a moment, my friends. Are there any of you reading this right now who haven’t watched a movie or a TV show or heard a song and thought, “How the hell is this idiot so rich and famous? If this is the best we’ve got out there, we really are living in a cultural wasteland.”

  My mother thought this all the time. She especially loathed unfunny comics, which is not only an oxymoron but, according to her, a blight on humanity. Before I go on, let me just say that I understand that taste is subjective, and what one person finds funny, another may not. But I was raised by one of the funniest people who ever lived, and surrounded by other almost-equally-funny people (if I wrote “equally funny,” she’d strike me by lightning and this book would be over right here … No lightning?). Anyway, I am more than happy to defer to my mother on the subject of comedy.

  For example, my mother wasn’t a huge fan of slapstick, but if it was well done she could understand why audiences liked it. “I don’t find it particularly funny, Missy, but I know why they’re laughing.” She couldn’t say the same about Dane Cook or Ben Stiller.

  Let me make a disclaimer here:

  My mother actually thought Ben was a good director who could tell a story, and not a bad actor, even though she did not find him particularly funny. She said he was funnier than Dane Cook, “but who isn’t? I have stretch marks that are funnier than Dane Cook.” Had she not had bad experiences with Ben Stiller, it’s possible—not likely, but possible—that she might have found him marginally amusing. But she was disappointed in him for his lack of basic good manners. The few times they actually met, he was both dismissive and rude. It wasn’t so much that he obviously wasn’t a fan of hers. The problem was that she had a long-standing friendship with his parents (the great Stiller and Meara), and she knew he had been raised better than to be rude to his parents’ friends.

  She used to tell me that she heard that Dane Cook was “very nice,” and she thought he was very good in his acting roles. She just didn’t think he was funny, and she had literally no idea why people were laughing at him. One night we watched one of his comedy specials on TV. When it was over she said, “I don’t get it. There wasn’t a joke or a punch line in the whole show. Yeah, he’s a good performer but he’s not saying anything. There are no fucking jokes! And he’s playing an arena!” I said, “Mom, don’t begrudge him his success; he’s tapped into something that his audiences connect with.” She said, “Who’s begrudging? I want his agent’s phone number.”

  1 I have a theory that this seemingly unique American phenomenon was originally brought here by the French, along with the Statue of Liberty and the Croissandwich.

  2 When they were out on the road promoting Rabbit Test, my parents gave me an assignment to write something down about every city we were in. As the through line, I based it on my favorite food at the time: French Onion Soup, which I had in all forty-two cities we went to. Forty-two soups, forty-two Pepto-Bismols.

  3 The Peter Principle is a theory in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate’s performance in their current role rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. To paraphrase, it means, failing upwards.

  Fifty Shades of Cray

  Joan: Melissa, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

  Melissa: So you’ll forgive me if I tell you I spent the weekend in a cheap motel room with the New York Knicks?

  Joan: Don’t be an idiot. Of course not.

  My mother hated rules (ironic when you consider that Judge Judy was one of her best friends). Let me clarify, she hated rules for her; she had no problem with other people having to follow them. In fact, she insisted upon it. (Growing up, I broke the rules so often I spent a large portion of my teenage, wonder years in my bedroom
, grounded for committing some horrific offense and adamantly denying it, even though I had probably done it. And when I say “horrific offense,” I mean like wearing shoes on the carpet (which of course I’d been asked not to do ten thousand times. Ahh, being a teenager.)1

  My mother’s disdain for rules didn’t sit well with a lot of people, particularly those who ran the governments of small countries.

  In 1998 we were on vacation in the Caribbean, off of the island of Dominica. The captain of our boat2 made a slight geographical mistake and accidentally dropped anchor in a designated nature preserve. We had no idea that this beautiful setting was a preserve or we never would have stopped there for lunch. We’re sitting on the deck having lunch and all of a sudden we see these little tender boats filled with men in uniforms who were carrying guns … which they were pointing at us.

  The highest-ranking officer on one of the tender boats got on a loudspeaker and shouted at us, “Move the boat! Move the boat or you will all be arrested immediately!” We started shaking in our flip-flops and putting our hands in the air, having no idea why any of this was happening. Everyone was terrified except my mother. She saw this as an opportunity for adventure and excitement and possibly some TV news face time: a triple play! She grabbed her camera and began filming, all the while screaming at them through a bullhorn, “This boat is private property. You are not allowed to board.” I’ve got scenes of Midnight Express playing in my head and she’s turning to her friend, Phyllis, telling her to go put on a cover-up because she won’t like how her tan lines look in the footage.

  Eventually, as the tender boats got closer, I started explaining to my mother the gravity of the situation. She kept insisting that the men could not legally board the boat. I kept insisting that legally they could do whatever the fuck they wanted. At this point I took the camera from her and locked it in a closet; and then I lured her into her stateroom by saying that her lipstick was smudged, and promptly locked her inside. I left her in there until the Dominica Polizia and our captain did what they needed to do to resolve the mess.

  As the police were finishing up, my mother escaped from her stateroom. Apparently, in the time we had kept her belowdecks, she had come up with another strategy and now raced up the stairs: “I’m writing an article for Travel & Leisure and I’m going to make sure your island gets bad reviews and low marks for hospitality.”

  The police stared at her like she was a crazy woman (which I can’t say was inaccurate) and said nothing, as they had a limited command of English. Once I explained to my mother that we were in the wrong and that we had accidentally moored in a nature preserve, she said, “They should have put up a sign. In New York they put up signs for everything!” The next thing you know, it’s photo ops and Bee Pins for la Polizia de Dominica!

  Then there was the great Costa Rica incident. A few years ago Costa Rica was one of the hottest new vacation spots in the world. It was like South Beach with fewer Spanish-speaking people. And since my mother liked to be as trendy and current as possible, that’s where we went on our annual vacation. Everything was great—the hotel, the weather, the people—until it was time to leave and come home.

  When we were leaving Costa Rica we all checked in for our various flights out of the small jungle airport. Some of us were flying to Los Angeles, some to London, and my mother was flying back to New York, unaccompanied, which we rarely let her do. Even though we went to the airport together, our flights were at different times. My flight left in mid-afternoon; my mother’s flight, the last one out, left two hours later. As Cooper and I got on our plane, she hugged us good-bye, and everything seemed fine.

  Now for some backstory: Because my mother was in show business and worked under a stage name, her passport had two names on it, Joan Rosenberg and “aka Joan Rivers.” This is legal and normal, no problem. When she checked in at the airport counter in Costa Rica, there was no problem, and they gave her a boarding pass. She got through immigration with no problem. I was already en route home and assumed she would get on her plane, no problem. When I got off in Dallas to change planes, however, I checked my phone and saw there was a message from her. Whenever any message from my mother began “Let me just start by saying everything is fine and I don’t want you to be upset in case you hear what happened,” I knew immediately not only that there was a problem, but there was a big problem. (Whenever she led with the end of the story first, I knew the story wasn’t going to be good.) I wasn’t concerned; I was apoplectic. I knew she was physically all right, because I’d heard her voice, but I could only imagine what she’d done.

  Turns out when she went to board the plane, the local airline ticket agent wouldn’t let her on because the name on the passport and the name on the boarding pass didn’t match. So she showed them the passport with both names. The person at the gate didn’t care. She showed it to the other ticket agent; they didn’t care. So, rather than asking for a supervisor, what’s the first thing she did? Rush the gate to get on the plane. She runs up the ramp and onto the aircraft to try to find the pilot, so he could explain to the ticket agent that Joan Rivers and Joan Rosenberg were the same person. At this point we now have violated many FAA rules and have an international incident on our hands. The pilot (and all the other passengers) vouched for her, but by this time she had pissed off the security officials and the people on the ground so much that they took her and her luggage off the plane. They not only removed her and her luggage from the airplane but they removed them from the airport altogether.

  Being resourceful, she finds a car and drives to another airport in a bigger city and figures she’ll try her luck there. Fortunately, the gate agents there did recognize her and were not only able to get her on a plane and get her out of the country, but they were eager to do so. (Somehow they managed to “find” an open seat on a sold-out flight to New York on the day after New Year’s holiday. Imagine that!)

  Dear readers, right about now you’re probably thinking, “So, Melissa, how did your mother spend the six hours in the car going from the little airport to the big airport?” She spent it doing what any reasonable, sane, thoughtful person who had just created an international incident would do. She went on social media and began trash-talking the airlines, the personnel, and the inept immigration officers at the airport in Costa Rica. Figuring everyone knew she was Joan Rosenberg aka Joan Rivers, comedian, she thought this was quite funny. Apparently the government of Costa Rica did not. There was never a formal “you are not welcome in this country anymore” letter sent, but the next time we tried to book a trip to Costa Rica, there was not a hotel room to be found. In the entire country. ’Nuff said.

  #joanriversgetoutanddon’tcomeback

  1 Okay, now, in 2015, maybe I’ll admit that possibly there might have been a slight chance I was in a room with someone who was smoking pot and could have gotten a contact high from him. Maybe. But I still stand by the fact that I was trying to make donuts at 2:00 a.m. because I was hungry when the grease fire ignited in the kitchen. Coulda happened; anything’s possible. But that’s as far as I’m going to go.

  2 In the world of cruises, boat is a dirty word. As our captain explained to my mother, “Boats sink; ships don’t.” To which my mother replied, “What was the Titanic, a fucking boat?”

  Ivy Day

  I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. Over graduation weekend, three notable individuals are invited to speak: one at graduation, one at the baccalaureate ceremony, and one at Ivy Day, where every graduating class places a commemorative stone or brick on the campus. The Ivy Day speaker is usually voted on by the graduating seniors, and that person’s speech is the first event of the weekend. My mother was chosen by my class to share some thoughts with us on Ivy Day. It’s amazing how, all these years later, much of what she said still holds true. With great pride I share with you her speech:

  So this is Ivy Day, or as I call it Poison Ivy Day. I’m a little disappointed, because when they asked me to speak at graduation, I though
t they meant graduation. I thought I’d be toasted with champagne and have my picture in Time magazine wearing a black cap and gown to match my roots. And that I’d be receiving a degree. It was even printed in the paper that I was going to get one, and then they said I wasn’t getting the degree … then I was … and then I wasn’t—it’s a situation several of you seniors can relate to.

  Anyhow, typical of my luck, Mike Wallace and Digby Baltzell and I end up talking one mile away from Franklin Field, thinking, “God forbid, they would make me plant that stupid ivy and how it will ruin a sixty-dollar manicure.”

  I will admit that when President Hackney called me, all I heard him say was something about Ivy Day being a big tradition and [he] mentioned something about there being a large stone involved. Being a JAP, I figured at best it would be a diamond and at worst an opal. I should have caught on that there wasn’t any gift involved when, after hanging up, it occurred to me that President Hackney had called collect. “But no,” I said to myself, “Joan, don’t judge Sheldon Hackney too harshly. He’s doing a fine job considering he thinks he’s at Penn State.”

  Anyhow, this morning, Shelly—I can call him Shelly now ’cause my daughter passed everything—explained to me that each class plants ivy by a building that’s marked by the Ivy Stone, and he said, “Joan, it’s a real honor to be asked to speak on Ivy Day. Ignore the rumor that Morton Downey Jr. turned it down.”