by Andy Cohen
Had dinner with Grac and John Hill at Morandi. Grac was like a bird who had been let out of a cage, an untethered Upper East Side wife. She was a wild animal! I love seeing Grac that way because it takes me right back to the girl I fell in love with in London during our junior year abroad. Then I took Wacha out for a walk at two in the morning and everyone was dressed up for Halloween, and this drunk pack of girls accosted him. Maybe they were dressed as sluts, maybe they were sluts going out for the night. He was terrified. I was glad I wasn’t the only one.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2013—NYC–ST. LOUIS
Wacha and I had our first fight this morning. He chewed up my earphones. I told him NO and then he wouldn’t look me in the eye. He felt bad. And then I felt bad. He was looking at me like he knew he did something wrong, following me around the apartment as I was packing for St. Louis. I put him in the crate and left. Anthony from the show is staying the night with him.
I landed in St. Louis and we basically went straight to Busch Stadium, where I shot some jokey thing for MLB Network before the game. It was really cool being on the field with my parents. Unfortunately for me, the Red Sox were on the field warming up and those beards look as not-hot in person as they do on TV. The Boston Herald interviewed me and I said I was not crazy about the beards, that baseball players are so hot and these beards are gross. My mom was giving me these looks like she was going to erupt. The minute the reporter walked away, she did: “You shouldn’t be MOUTHING OFF to the PEOPLE OF BOSTON about these BEARDS,” and I gave her my most petulant “What do you care?” She was probably right, though. I have a hard time muzzling myself sometimes. I wonder where I get that from?
Right before the game, I was shooting one more thing for the MLB and they took me in the tunnel, where we saw David Eckstein, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Tony La Russa, and Carlos Beltrán in his uniform, looking like Superman. He looked seven feet tall, like a cartoon. I was speechless. Erin Andrews was there and she said, “Everyone says we should have a show together, but you would be too dirty for everybody,” and I was like, “Would I?” Am I dirty? And who is everybody?
It was very cold. My father had earmuffs on, and for some reason, I don’t know if it was for real or if he was using them as an excuse, he couldn’t hear a word my mother was saying all night. It was brilliant. My mother goes, “He doesn’t SPEAK to me at games. I’M ON MY OWN! I have to MAKE FRIENDS with the FANS AROUND US.” Halfway through the game, the Cards bring in this guy Kolten Wong, who has never done anything, so my mother starts yelling, heckling actually, her own team. “Oh NO! HE can’t do ANYTHING! He is just NO GOOD. He’s never done A THING,” and as she’s shit-talking this guy, sure enough he gets a hit. Then he keeps trying to steal the base, and she’s discouraging him. “Don’t STEAL! You CAN’T!” She just has no faith in this guy, and then he steals the base! The guy in front of us goes, “Lady, what are you doing?”
Then the call happened, the obstruction call. It was so hard for everyone to understand, all of a sudden, that we had won the game. It didn’t make any sense. I was texting Eli and Seinfeld asking them to tell us what the announcers on TV were saying. And then after the game we were in the car home and it was midnight and my mom was all charged up and ready to party—“Lets go get a BURGER!” Though I never turn down a burger, my dad was done—“I don’t feel like it. I don’t want a hamburger”—and she started to just ride him until I made her concede that the man is eighty-one and just watched a full baseball game in the freezing cold. When we got home I had a Popsicle that, upon closer inspection, I discovered was from 2010. Three years that Popsicle had been in there! (It tasted three years old, too.)
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2013—ST. LOUIS–NYC
Sometimes I walk into events and realize I didn’t think and got it all wrong. Today was one of those days. I went straight from the airport to a brunch for Jason and Lauren Blum’s wedding. Mark and Kelly were dressed so well and I felt completely filthy in my day-after-the-game airplane clothes. DVF told me they’re doing a huge exhibit celebrating the wrap dress and that I need to go to LA for it in January. I’m all for a dress exhibit, I said. I was so excited to see Wacha after a night apart, but when I got home he would barely look at me for the first half hour. He was not giving it up. Was he still feeling bad about chewing up the headphones? He remembered? Or was he mad at me for leaving? I felt terrible. I saw a cool apartment with Fredrik Eklund this afternoon, at 24 Fifth Avenue. I would have to redo the whole thing. There’s great outdoor space. Wacha and I could be very happy. According to my cousin Jodi, there are a lot of dogs running around St. Louis with the name Yadi (Molina). I’m glad I have the first Wacha.
Reverend Al and Cynthia Bailey were on the show. I couldn’t tell if Rev. Al was into it or not. I guess he was fine but I felt really codependent for the whole show, wanting him to be OK. He’s so compact! After the show I went to a party at Bruce and Bryan’s for the opening night of Betrayal and Daniel Craig was all seventies and super sweet. He has a mustache for the play that is just seconds away from looking very porny. I have zero issue with a porny mustache. Bruce offered some woman a blanket because she was sitting outside and he said her legs must be cold and she yelled at him, “I’m not eighty, you fucking asshole!” She ended up being the wife of someone famous; I guess she didn’t realize he was the host. Carole Radziwill and I were going to go pick a fight with this woman, but Bruce ended up being nice to her at the end. (He takes the high road; I hold a grudge.)
Radzi told me I’ve gained a lot of weight, and Bruce got upset with her on my behalf and she said, “I’m a Housewife. I’m supposed to be inappropriate and say what I think.” I thought it was funny. Oh, and she’s right on both counts.
When I got home it was my first time taking the dog out really drunk. I let him lick all the booze off my face. So we both got laid.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2013
This morning I screened two episodes of NY Housewives and a Miami Housewives reunion at home—barely any notes on NY and Miami is almost too nuts to give notes on at all—and then had two development meetings.
Watched the game in the Clubhouse and it was very frustrating—once again it came down to the bitter end. There were men in scoring position and at 10:55 I walked into the studio with Nancy Grace and Marysol Patton kicking and screaming. I did not want to be ripped away from the end of that game. I was commanding Deirdre to do play-by-play of the game for me in my ear. I wanted every pitch and every moment in my ear during the show. People can say as much as they want to me in my ear during the show, but I have no problem focusing on being a host. Maybe this is my ADD paying it forward. Deirdre, it turns out, knows nothing about baseball, so she is clueless with play-by-play. At 10:59 she’s telling me, “There’s two outs,” and as they are counting down to air, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 … right when they got to 1, Deirdre goes, “Three outs, they lost.” Just as she said that, my face appeared on the monitor. That’s when I went on the air. Live. I lost it. I was cracking up. That has never happened to me before. The timing was so brilliant that I had to laugh at the loss.
By the way, guess who lost the game for the Cardinals? Kolten Wong lost the whole damn game for us. The guy my mom was heckling. Of course I got a text from my mom saying, “WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT KOLTEN WONG?”
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2013
It’s a good thing there are only two games left in the World Series. I actually don’t know how much I can take. You would think I’ve been playing this game by how exhausted I am. I can’t take the stress anymore. And Kolten Wong got really emo in a series of tweets today, saying, “All I want to say is I’m sorry. I go out every day playing this game as hard as I can and leaving everything on the field. I’m so sorry I let you down, Cardinal Nation. I try to do my best for you every time I get put into the game.” It was heartbreaking. I emailed it to my mom and she said, “It’s sad but this isn’t junior high school, ya know?” Man! Tough love! And then later she said, “But if he doesn’t get put in again, it
’s gonna be some long winter for him.” And she’s right. Poor guy. I sent him a tweet of support to make up for the bad Cohen juju coming his way.
Glamour magazine came out today, with my Lady Gaga interview. It turned out fine. They kept a little bit of the Madonna stuff in (there was much better stuff that they left out) and they took out the Katy Perry thing. I mean, I get it. Why would Glamour magazine pick a fight with these people? At the same time, the interview would have been way better if they’d left that stuff in. Let’s put it this way: this article has been out for four hours and it’s not exactly burning up the Internet. Maybe that’s only me keeping score because I often walk away from interviews wondering what was said that will get picked up by other outlets.
Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg were on tonight celebrating their Andy-versary. They met on my show almost a year before and were so sweet. The publicist said not to talk about the relationship too much; meanwhile, it was all we talked about. They brought Donnie’s dog, who was really cute. I ran into the bathroom before the show to pee and the dog was in there and Donnie Wahlberg’s bodyguard was in front, so I walk in and Donnie is in the stall. I go, “Donnie, is that you? Are you pooing in here?” and he goes, “Yeah.” So I said, “Are you one of those people who can poo anywhere?” And he was like, “When you gotta go…” I told him I haven’t gone number two here once in four and a half years. Right before air he said to Jenny, “Babe, Andy busted me pooing.” Here I am worrying about someone walking in on me and I walked in on the guest.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013
The Cardinals lost the World Series. It was horrible, so upsetting. They played so shitty tonight, they deserved to lose. Halfway through I turned the sound off and turned music on. It was actually a perfect way to passively watch my hopes and dreams go down the drain. I’m just glad it’s over, because I am frankly exhausted by the entire process and I have so much other stuff going on. Again, I know that I did not play in the World Series and I know it seems like I think I did. This is just one less thing to worry about and I am putting my upset into a little lockbox and I will throw away the key. Hopefully my buried feelings won’t come out some wrong way at an inappropriate time.
While I’ll never regret going public as a Cardinals fan, outing my adoration of Snoopy may have been a mistake. People keep sending me Snoopy everything and I do love him but I’m in my forties and it’s getting weird. I could open a warehouse with all the stuff I’ve amassed. It reminds me of when Em announced she loved penguins when she was five and that’s all she got for twenty years. Part of my punishment for going public is that I was asked to write a foreword to the reissue of the Peanuts Guide to Life book and, while adorable, it has become this albatross. The publisher asks for the foreword every day and I have been looking to Wacha to tell me something profound, but he’s busy licking his ass. I hate writer’s block.
I saw the dog trainer and he told me that for a dog five minutes of mental exercise is like two hours at a dog run. I thought that was interesting.
Christina Hendricks and Dylan McDermott were on the show and I kept forgetting Dylan McDermott’s name, with the whole Dermot Mulroney/Dean McDermott/Dylan McDermott trilogy playing in my head. I forgot his name on air five times. And between Dylan McDermott’s tight pants, which looked loaded up, and Christina Hendricks’s overstuffed bosom, the atmosphere was so sexualized, but I felt like I was firing blanks. I wasn’t connecting and I felt like they were looking at me funny; nothing was landing as a host. It’s a form of erectile dysfunction. Everyone in the control room thought it went well but I didn’t believe them.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2013
Saw the morning news show Halloween costumes and I love it that CBS did not dress up. They’re going for Halloween as news anchors. What a novel concept! I did not get GMA’s costumes. It was like Halloween on a budget. Josh Elliot was Abe Lincoln with a synthetic beard. It just looked bad. Abe Lincoln?
We did a hilarious Halloween pageant with Neil Patrick Harris, with trick-or-treaters coming throughout the show. Neil and I were in suits. Neil didn’t want to dress up, which made me realize, I’m a forty-five-year-old man and maybe I shouldn’t dress up either. (My last costume on the show was Giggy and in the rearview mirror it was humiliating.) At this point I have to be reminded that I don’t need to be a child; it doesn’t come naturally. The costumes of our trick-or-treaters were: Teresa and Joe, drag queen Mona Lisa, Mr. Sheffield and the Nanny, drag queen Britney on the “Circus” tour, Endora from Bewitched, Slutty Tin Man, and John Hill’s dog Colonel was dressed as Mark Cohen from the West Coast production of Rent. The drag queen Mona Lisa won. NPH and I had a quick meal after the show and talked about a lot of gay stuff, including debating Kevin Spacey; I still get enraged when I think about him talking about being in love with that woman on 60 Minutes. Come out, sir.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2013—NYC–LOS ANGELES
The Village was a shitshow last night. I was in bed early so I could wake up at the crack of dawn for my flight to LA to do Leno. All night there were throngs of people under my window doing God knows what. It sounded like gang warfare, the Crips and Bloods duking it out over cupcakes in the West Village. I wanted to throw eggs out my window. I can’t believe it now but I actually used to do that in the early nineties—throw eggs out my window at the hookers on Horatio and Washington, before it was gentrified. They were some noisy-ass hookers and it was the only thing I could think of to get them to get off my corner. Now I kind of miss that New York. I also miss having eggs in my refrigerator. And hookers on the street!
I’ve been negotiating with Leno’s producers because I want to play “Plead the Fifth” with him backstage for our YouTube channel during his pre-show dressing-room visit. I sent all these questions for him to approve, since his people asked to see them beforehand. After going back and forth for a few days, I got an email late yesterday that they are not into it.
I got a “ride” to LA, which was lucky, because there was a tragic shooting at LAX and traveling was chaos. (Don’t get me started on guns.) On the flight I read the Carson biography, the one written by his lawyer who is now spilling all his intimate secrets after Carson’s long gone. Riveting.
On the way to Leno I found out they do want him to play “Plead the Fifth”—not backstage, but on the show. I was glad. Leno came in pre-show to visit in the dressing room and I asked him how he felt about leaving and he said he feels totally fine about it. He said that Conan and he are not that far apart in age, ten or fifteen years, and when he watches Jimmy Fallon’s show he sees that Jimmy does stuff he can’t do, like sing with Justin Timberlake. He said he gets it because it’s going to be a different show. Hearing his POV made me even happier for Jimmy because I want it to go well for him. I asked Leno if he was reading the Carson book and he said no. He thought it was so shitty of this lawyer to write it. Meanwhile, I couldn’t put it down on the plane, but I kept that to myself.
The show went well but he really is looking over your shoulder at cue cards and time cues for at least half the interview. It’s jarring. I got him talking about Letterman and Carson during “Plead the Fifth,” which doesn’t happen much. During the break I asked him if Letterman was going to come on his show before he leaves, and he said no, because Letterman never comes to LA. I didn’t buy that as an excuse. If he wanted to do the show, he’d come to LA. He went off on Jimmy Kimmel a little bit, saying that Jimmy has been really mean to him. He said Letterman is funny when he’s mean, but Kimmel is just mean. Leno asked me who was on my show next week and I could not remember a single person, which is kind of embarrassing. I was on with Melissa McCarthy and the band Empire of the Sun, who are really good but there was some significant body odor happening there. Maybe it was their costumes. Went to dinner at Sunset Tower afterwards and we were molested by Dmtiri the maître d’, who the New York Times—on their front page—called “the Most Discreet Man in Hollywood,” but who actually tells you everyone who is in the restaurant and in the ho
tel, so the press got that one wrong.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2013—LOS ANGELES–NYC
I finished the Carson book on the plane. It was revealing, but at the end this lawyer has the gall to say, “You know, I would like to think that Johnny would have loved this book.” Yeah, he certainly would have loved an entire book telling all his secrets and portraying him as a raging asshole. Simon Baker (The Mentalist) was sitting across from me on the flight and I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out if he dyes his (gorgeous) hair. I think he has to, but I just can’t picture him reading People with foils in his hair. I dunno. I noticed a cute guy across the other aisle, and when I got home that same guy was standing in the lobby of my building talking to Surfin. Turns out he’s Sally Field’s son. Weird. (No update from Surfin on neighbor upstairs.)
I went to dinner at the Beatrice Inn with Mark and Kelly and turns out that when Mark was leaving for dinner he saw Simon Baker walking into the Crosby Street Hotel. Essentially, we live in Mayberry. With a twist, because Lindsay Lohan was sitting across from us at dinner with a friend and they were both texting the whole time. Unclear if they were texting each other.
I went out with Bill Curtin afterwards on a Hell’s Kitchen gay-bar crawl that ended at this place Viva at Forty-eighth and Eleventh. It was so fun and packed and I had three very good guy prospects I was flirting with and I chose instead to go home and fool around with my dog. Leaving three balls in the air for a dog, that’s a first. On daylight savings night yet! In my mind I gained an hour of Wacha time.