Superficial

by Andy Cohen

  He dropped me off to see an apartment on West Third Street, where the real estate guy kept saying a big famous actor had been staying. Well, it hadn’t been cleaned yet, and there was a Christmas tree and a lot of trash and he kept saying the big actor this and the big actor that … then I noticed a stack of headshots signed by the red-haired kid from Harry Potter who’d been in town doing Matthew’s play. So I said I guess it was Rupert Grint, the Harry Potter kid, and the guy was shocked I figured it out. I said to get rid of the headshots next time. Got an at-home pedicure from Gina and read RHONY field reports, which were incredible. Dinner with SJP at Barbuto; we had the chicken and split some carbonara. It was wonderful. She said Hamilton’s doesn’t totally live up to the promise of what it’s supposed to be. I went home and read the Roz Chast book about taking care of her dying parents, which was, no surprise, depressing. Then watched Downton Abbey and went to bed. A sober Saturday night!

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 2015

  Hamilton’s stinks. They’re gonna be closed soon. Drafty, bad service, weird vibe. Went with Troy and Jonah. The waiter said sorry, we’re short staffed; we didn’t expect it to be busy. I asked him what the busiest days at the restaurant are and he said Thursdays and weekends. I said but you didn’t expect it to be busy today, Sunday? Got fitted for the leather pants. My ass looked better in the black temp pants yesterday, sadly. Apparently the leather on the red pants is thicker.

  Skyped with Mom, who wants to know what Bill Maher’s gonna talk to me about: “The HOUSEWIVES? He’s gonna make MINCEMEAT out of you. I don’t CARE, it’s not your VENUE but just WATCH IT first.” She denied saying that I would be looking at empty seats on the tour with Anderson and twenty minutes later said sometimes it’s good for somebody to be honest. She said to remember that Joan Rivers had agreed with her at Liza’s wedding in thinking that I shouldn’t do Bill Maher. My parents had just seen a lot of my high school friends at a funeral, “They were all HUGGING us. I guess they were thinking they might be at OUR FUNERAL soon. We’re DEAD MEN WALKING!” On that note, have a great show! FaceTimed with the Wasp. He does magic too. I thought he was lying, then he sent me a picture of himself in tails doing it. Did the show without incident.

  MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2015

  DVF said on the boat that I’m competitive. She was right, and I also think I might be a sore loser. I never realized it. I had a great walk with Wacha, lip syncing all the way down the street. I kept saying, “I got this.” Went to rehearsal and did both songs with the red leather pants. If I heard it once from the producers and crew, I heard it twenty times: “You got this, you’re winning; Willie hasn’t even rehearsed.” The director told me to watch out for grabbing the women too hard; apparently I was making the whole routine look like forcible rape and not consensual sex. Whoops! Oh, and the whole rehearsal they’re saying, “Todd will hand you the mic” and “Todd will introduce you” and I said who the fuck is Todd, and it turns out that’s LL Cool J’s real name! And Todd told me I was gonna win. I like that Todd! I went to wardrobe for a fitting and they said you got this, you’re winning. Went home and walked the dog again. Back to Lip Sync, where John Hill, Liza, and thirteen-year-old James Wilkie Broderick (he was off school and wanted to come) met me and we watched Anna Kendrick versus John Krasinski. Krasinski had a tear-away outfit and sang “Proud Mary” in a dress. But Kendrick had JLo come out (she was supposed to do a whole dance to “Booty” but just walked out and waved). James Wilkie kept saying “He was robbed; he pushed his body to the limit!” He also thought it was unfair that the winner is chosen by the audience because the person who goes second always wins.

  Guess what—it was time for my show, and I went first both times. I lost my way during the Cher song and stumbled a little during my big finish. When Todd(!) was interviewing me he asked what I did to prepare and I told the story about texting Cher, and then realized what a douche I looked like for telling that story. Then Willie did “9 to 5” and the audience cheered for him more. I did the Loverboy song and it was pretty good. I might’ve been too concerned about not appearing to be raping the women, so it may have looked neither here nor there. Willie’s next song was an LL Cool J song, and I didn’t even realize it was an LL song until thirty seconds in when I saw Todd was beaming in a way that told me that I was completely fucked. I plastered the biggest, fakest smile on my face and it was a painful final twenty minutes of me smiling and watching my hopes and dreams get stolen in slow motion as Willie took the belt with zero rehearsal and I stood there drenched in sweat, feeling like a total loser in a scoop tank top, mullet wig, and red leather pants. The whole crew that had been up my ass all day was now barely looking at me! John Legend looked right through me backstage! It stung! I went back to my dressing room and raged to John, Liza, and James Wilkie, who all thought going second in the audience polling killed me. I felt like Valerie Cherish losing Dancing with the Stars (“Lisa Rinna told me I’d have fun—I DIDN’T!”). I was in a weird rage for a few hours after the show and I think I was additionally pissed that I had the night off, no plans, and no possibility of drinking alcohol. I FaceTimed with Bob Harper. I said I was using him for his money and gifts. John Hill wound up coming over and I had an omelet. Was asleep by midnight.

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2016

  On Tuesdays and Thursdays I leave the door cracked, Sherman comes in, Wacha runs out, and he’s gone for Brooklyn and I go back to bed. It’s a beautiful thing.

  I figured out today that I’ve been a sore loser before. Something like nine times at the Emmys. I went every year and sat like a chump with the Top Chef and Project Runway teams and lost and lost and lost to The Amazing Race and the one year I didn’t go (because I’d just gotten back from Tahiti the day before and didn’t feel like schlepping to LA to lose) we won and I watched in slow motion on TV from Sag Harbor and had the worst FOMO of my life.

  Worked out. We boxed the whole time. I’m back in the zone. RHOA is on my mind. The reunion is months away and I am oddly stressed about it. Taped JLo show. She is so stunning. She was wearing one of her classic boob separator tops and it was hard not to stare at them the whole time. It felt like I was doing my show with someone with bare tits next to me. She said she could only wear that top on my show, which was flattering but the truth is she wears some variation of that top all the time. It’s boring to say but she is perfect. I told her I wasn’t drinking and she asked, “What do you think it means that you are angry about not drinking?” Is JLo getting to the heart of the matter? She said that buying the apartment Fredrik found her was the first time she felt like she’d made it, which makes me wonder if renting somewhere great from him will make me feel the same. The live show was Kyle and Brad Goreski. It is Hot Men of Instagram week, and what I have discovered is that the hot guys on Instagram are fugly in person. One of them had apparently not had anything to drink for seventy-two hours in preparation for me asking him to take his shirt off behind the bar, but after I looked at his face the last thing I wanted to do was see more.

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2015

  Worked out with the Ninj. The afternoon was all conference calls, including a pre-call for this paid speaking thing I have tomorrow night that I barely listened to. I just zoned out on Instagram like a preteen. We taped Julianne Moore and Jonathan Groff. I walked into the lobby and there was the most beautiful man sitting there—so beautiful that I had to say hello, and when I did he informed me that he was going to be my bartender that night, to which I replied that he is the only legitimately hot guy on Instagram. He helps disabled veterans get support, so he’s a good person too. He has huge blue eyes and reddish-blond hair. I was effusive in my praise of him after the show. He was very sweet back but gave me no clear signal. But Anthony gave me his number and I texted him. Went to the Rainbow Room for this NBCUniversal executive dinner and arrived as cocktails transitioned into dinner. Steve Burke showed a video that detailed how they transformed the building to make Jimmy and Seth’s studios and all I could think was how much money
they dumped into them and how mine is the size of a Tic Tac. The guy who won The Voice performed for us. He won the biggest singing competition in the country, and now he’s singing to a room of jaded TV executives who are on their mobile devices. I went to the bathroom and got a text back from the bartender. We texted late into the night, and this is a boy who loves sending smiley faces but he does it the old-fashioned way—colon and parenthesis. I asked him out and he said yes with an exclamation point and a smiley.

  THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2015

  JLo wants Sherman’s info, so now her two boxers are gonna be part of Wacha’s playgroup. Got dubious info about the bartender from my friend at the beach, but I am going to find out for myself—I booked theater tickets for Saturday night and am taking him out. He is pumped about it and sending lots of old school smileys.

  Computer geek came and set up all the Apple products I don’t need while I got updates from the producers of RHOC, RHOBH, and RHONY. Spoke to Liz Rosenberg, who said she will deliver Madonna if it kills her. That paid gig—a Q and A at this travel agency awards dinner (the Travvies!)—turned into something of a debacle. In their initial offer to come speak, they’d requested that I talk about the parallels between the changes in the TV industry and the changes in the travel industry, which I felt like I was possibly incapable of addressing. I asked for the format to be not a thirty-minute speech but a conversation with the guy who runs it, followed by audience Q and A. I was in the hall outside the ballroom waiting to go on, texting with Jack and Angela (who are going to be in LA in ten days when I am) as the guy inside was introducing me. I turned to the handler—whose name was Courtney Love—and asked her which seat they wanted me in. She said I wasn’t sitting, I was standing. I said, wait, we’re doing the conversation standing up? She said, there is no “we,” and there is no conversation—it’s just you, and you’re giving a speech. So my heart sank as I flashed back to that pre-call yesterday where I was zoning out on Instagram. There was nothing I could do but completely wing it to the top travel agents from across the country. As I stood onstage I saw Courtney Love whisper to the man in charge that I was unprepared.

  My speech turned out to be a little Tom Cruise in Magnolia-esque. I said I wanted to talk about passion—my passion and their passion. I said we had a lot in common because they are passionate about travel and I am passionate about TV. I said that they were lucky people in that room because they are so talented that they wound up at the Travvies, and that they get to work in the travel business. They don’t have to, they get to. And that is a privilege. And I said the same about TV: You get to work in the TV business. I went on and on, talking about how challenging the TV business is right now and making loose and lame connections to travel. The whole time I was looking at this man in charge, wondering if I was doing what he wanted. He came up to run the audience Q and A and said it was all good. Then he announced to the audience that if they wanted to take selfies with me I would be going out in the lobby and to “just grab me,” so I guess that was my punishment. After being manhandled by selfie grabbers for a half hour in the lobby, I went over to Hickey’s, where I reenacted my entire speech, which he said sounded concurrently great and horrible.

  FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2015

  Feeling insecure about my date tomorrow with the hot ginge. This guy is a literal fitness model. Anderson said don’t be insecure; you’re handsome and he should be happy you’re interested. So that made me feel better for a minute but I’m still seventeen years older than him and a lot less hot. Worked out, and that made me feel even older and even less hot. Took Wacha to be dry cleaned and once again he attempted to change our course. Saw two dud apartments with Hickey and had a long FaceTime with Bob Harper. I’m trying to follow DVF’s advice and have more dates, so tonight was a movie date with Andres, and the truth is that some friends with benefits shouldn’t be movie dates. He showed up drunk and late and was behaving like a child during the movie. It was a real bummer. I loved Part 1 of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, though. We went back to my house and Wacha snarled at him. So he verbalized what I was feeling.

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 2015

  It snowed and rained all day so I stayed inside with the dog. I had an hour-long FaceTime with the Wasp in Boston. The big news is that we made a plan for him to come spend the night on February 14, not because it’s Valentine’s Day but because it’s my next free weekend night. This should be interesting. I picked up the ginge for our date and the convo in the Uber required a fair amount of work, which didn’t bode well for the night. But man, was he cute. We saw The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which was relentless, intense, and ultimately really good. Overhyped, though. Everybody said it was the best play they’d ever seen—you can’t walk into something with that in the back of your mind. We had a lot of hand-holding and cuddling so that made it better. After, we went to Joe Allen, where I asked him what kinds of guys he liked and his answer was very PC and canned, about guys who know what they want and have something going on and are powerful in their own way. I was all “Yeah, but hairy or smooth? Blond or brunette?” All the while Mark was texting that he and Kelly were out with David Muir and wanted to go to the Diamond Horseshoe, so I set up a table for them with Erich Conrad and I didn’t want to go because I wasn’t drinking, but I was down the block so the ginge walked me there—he had to go bartend in Queens, which had always been the plan—and we had an awkward good-night kiss and I went into the club, which was already teeming with people. Kelly was spinning like a top and Erich was in rare form; he kept saying, this is our house and it’s right down the street from Poop, which is true. I realized I have been going to his parties for twenty-five years, since Grac was working the door of Poop—holy shit. I said good-bye to him and he said, never say good-bye when you’re at a club; just disappear, which is so true. Kelly was on a platform dancing when I left—I did say good-bye to her—and I was out by one o’clock. It was a nice night downtown and Wacha and I strolled around meeting people on the streets. In front of the Cubby Hole a group of people got me high. People are so kind! I love NYC.

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 25, 2015

  The Backstreet Boys are on the show this week and I actually watched their entire two-hour documentary and I can’t believe it—well, I can—but I cried several times. Basically each of the BSB has a breakdown at one point or another in the doc, so I went on the journey with them.

  De Blasio had a press conference and said the worst storm in NYC history is hitting tomorrow—we may have three feet of snow and he’s closing the entire city down starting tomorrow evening. We immediately started scrambling to tape two shows tomorrow before the sun goes down. In the meantime, Kandi and Ne-Yo were on with some hot Philadelphia Eagle behind the bar who wanted me to Instagram a picture of us, but my caption was “I love linebackers!” and I don’t think that was what he had in mind.

  MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2015

  Went straight into work with the dog and the snow was already starting to come down. Luckily all of our guests for the next two days were in town, so we did Eileen Davidson and Whitney Cummings at twelve-thirty and Kristin Chenoweth and Tom Sandoval at three-thirty. By the time we were done it was dumping snow on the ground. Thankfully the RHONY got out on the last flight to Turks and Caicos for their big trip. Every damn thing is shut down and who knows if we will be able to shoot on Wednesday. The Backstreet Boys already cancelled for Thursday, so I’ll never get the time back that I spent on that documentary. All the talk shows are cancelled tomorrow—Kelly said they’ve never done that before. I felt so accomplished that my team pulled it all together and we have two shows in the can.

  Ray drove Wacha and me through the snow to the D’Agostino on Bethune so I could “stock up” for the storm. The supermarket was complete bedlam—ten-minute lines at each checkout. I don’t know what it means to “stock up” for a storm whatsoever, and my cart was pathetic: ice cream, eggs, frozen pizza, SpaghettiOs, turkey, cheese, chicken breasts, lots of chips, chocolate, Kraft mac an
d cheese, and Duraflames. Basically just carbs and sugar. Is that what you buy for a storm? At home I checked in with Liza (she’d also bought a bunch of pizza) and Bruce (under a blanket in sunny LA watching the East Coast feed of WNBC, eating his heart out that he isn’t in NYC). I was all cozy, hunkered down and ready to be inside, but then Hickey and I decided to go to Rossopomodoro, which was open until 8:00 p.m., and as I sat there I realized if there was ever a moment to drink a glass of red wine this was it—superstorm hitting, two nights off from work, and tons of firewood and a warm puppy at home. I ended my sober month five days early, with two glasses of red, and it wasn’t that amazing or life-changing but it sure drowned out Hickey railing on me for going to D’Agostino, which he says is a cheap supermarket. After dinner I lit a fire and FaceTimed with Bruce and then the ginge, with whom I truly have no connection beyond a physical attraction. We went back and forth on him coming over to hang out and finally decided we will see each other in the morning. Before bed I took Wacha out in the snow—there was an eleven o’clock ban on cars on the road, so the street was completely empty save the snow and we walked in the middle of Eighth Avenue, which was surreal and peaceful and gorgeous. And incredibly cold. I went home, FaceTimed with the Wasp in Boston, and compared snow stories. I ate an entire pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream, so I guess I am unable to have ice cream in my home. That being said, I didn’t have any more wine. I went to bed with a niggling suspicion that the blizzard would be a bust.

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2015

  Yup, a total bust. I woke up at six-thirty to pee and saw that it looked not that much different outside than it did at bedtime and didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. Walked the dog on the fresh snow; watching him submerge his head into snowbanks was delicious. The ginge came over. He borrowed a pair of sweats because his were wet, and we made pancakes from a mix I found that turned out to be just terrible. His whole thing is putting peanut butter on pancakes, but that made them even mealier. Sad to say, we have zero connection. Took a cold walk with Hickey and spent the rest of the day rescheduling tomorrow’s two (and at one point possibly three) shows, and there were many iterations of guests throughout the day. John Mayer’s flight got cancelled and Martha Stewart didn’t want to go on with any of our other possibilities, so that whole show went down the tubes and we wound up with Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker. We figured Al would be good because of the weather stuff. I texted the Ninj asking him what workout I should do, then got high and actually went to Equinox and did what he told me to do, which is a revelation. I saw Lance Kash, who was full of bummer financial information for me: I have more tax payments to come and he withdrew more money for me this morning. This is the news that’s waiting for me at Equinox? Now I know why I never go there. I texted Brandi and said don’t watch the show tonight; Whitney Cummings and Eileen are a little brutal on you. Sit it out and stay off social media. Adam showed up for my massage, and Bruce called and I said I officially am Sandy Gallin—getting a massage and talking on the phone. I actually cooked dinner with some of my D’Ag stuff—broiled chicken teriyaki and broccoli—and Skyped with Mom and Dad. Mom said my eyes looked red, and I said I smoked weed and Dad said is that pot? “WHAT DO YOU THINK IT IS, LOU??” was Mom’s response. I explained to my parents what it feels like to get high. Then Hickey came over and we watched RHOBH. I love his sociological reaction to it. I went to bed and watched Downton Abbey. It’s starting to get good.