Diary of a Mad Diva

by Joan Rivers

  I know a smattering of French, but when I’m in Paris I don’t try to act like the late General de Gaulle. For starters, my nose has been fixed and I don’t sleep with young girls.

  Anyhow, back to Mexico. First of all, who plans a wedding in Mexico in July? Even the Mexicans don’t stay there; they tunnel into Arizona to cool off. Second of all, I resent when the bride and groom call it a “destination wedding” and I have to pay to get there. It should be called a “two destination wedding,” because long before I hit Mexico my first stop is to my bank. Between airfare, hotel and a gift, I figure this fancy-schmancy destination wedding is costing me fifteen grand to attend the nuptials of a couple whose marriage will probably last three weeks longer than my actual trip.

  And, if I’m going to pay to go to a destination wedding, make it different. We’ve all seen Hawaii, we’ve all been to the Bahamas and we’ve all gone barefoot in the sands of Iwo Jima. I want it to be unique. Join Fritz and Helga at their destination wedding in Auschwitz. You’ll laugh, you’ll learn, you’ll love! This gives a whole new meaning to the term “bridal shower.” And the gift shop, believe me, is to die for.

  Back to the destination wedding in Mexico. For starters the groom is half her age and rumor has it he signed the prenup in crayon. And he’s already cheating on her. My friend is smart enough that the prenup will only leave him $600, a used mink coat* and a couple of tins of Friskies.

  JULY 2

  Dear Diary:

  Just got off the plane from my flight home from Meheeco and I’m tired and cranky. The wedding was horrible; the big attraction was hitting the piñata. There’s nothing worse than watching adults whack furiously at a donkey made out of crepe paper and then push, shove and elbow each other out of the way to get some candy. “Look, it’s a Jujube! Hey, after twenty swings and a crushed disc I got a Jujube.” One of the bridesmaids got into a catfight with the groom’s aunt over a piece of Laffy Taffy. Trust me, there wasn’t a Jew in the bunch. We only push, shove and elbow each other out of the way for diamonds and a 40 percent off sale at Bergdorf. Never mind candy, if Mexicans were smart they’d fill the piñata not with Snickers but with green cards. Believe me, Pedro would’ve broken it open on the first whack.

  The best part of the trip home was that I got to sit next to Andrea Bocelli. The guy is blind as a bat and covered with taco stains. I started to strike up a conversation with him but since he wasn’t wearing dark glasses I didn’t know if I was boring him or he just didn’t know where to look. I asked him if he’d ever heard of Joan Rivers and he said, “I thought she was dead.” I was very hurt so I did little petty things to get back at him, such as when the stewardess brought the menu around I shoved it in his hands and said, “He’ll order for both of us.” I just kept making guttural, engine-stalling sounds as well as pointing out the sights off the left side of the plane. Finally I leaned over to him and whispered in his ear, “Please don’t say anything if you feel a little dampness; my strawberry douche is leaking. I was feeling a little yeasty yesterday.”

  JULY 3

  Dear Diary:

  Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July, a day most people think of as a chance to celebrate the birth of our nation. I, however, think of it as a chance for Chinese kids to blow their fingers off with cheap fireworks.

  I don’t understand explosives, per se. The only explosive I deal with is colitis, and the only people who celebrate that are the manufacturers of Charmin, Depends and Glade. If you really want to see fireworks, sneak into a staff meeting run by Katie Couric. The workers on Deepwater Horizon had a less explosive work environment.

  JULY 4

  Dear Diary:

  I woke up half an hour ago and I realized just how lucky I am to have been born in the greatest country in the world (except for Malawi, where everything is always on sale, including the children). As I looked out of my window and saw the streets of New York below me, I realized that the people on those streets were below me, too. And not just because I’m on the fifth floor, but because in what other country could an eighty-year-old Jewish widow buy ices from an Italian pushcart operator, get a pedicure from a Vietnamese sex slave or take a ride in a taxi driven by a Haitian ex-con hiding out from the feds? I was so overcome with emotion I called my illegal Filipino housekeeper, Pingpong, up to my room to revel with me in my happiness before I yelled at her for making my latte too strong. (The ones from the big island never learn.) I’m one lucky woman. God bless America.

  JULY 5

  Dear Diary:

  Seeing all those American flags flying from poles and car antennas and buildings and wheelchairs yesterday, one thought crossed my mind: I hate Tommy Hilfiger. The man’s made a fortune working with simple red, white and blue, but Betsy Ross, the original primary colors gal, got zilch, zippo, nada, the big zero. Not a fucking dime. Admittedly, she only got the flag assignment because she was banging George Washington (Martha was no looker), which makes her the Monica Lewinsky of her day. As the flag turned out to be a real winner, Betsy should have gotten something out of the deal—cash, jewelry, a time-share at Valley Forge, something. We’re still draping caskets with it today. Would it have killed George to toss her a colony or a compound or a slave?

  JULY 6

  Dear Diary:

  Worked all day on jacket patterns for QVC with a new designer who claims to be straight. He kept showing me pictures of his kids and his wife, which he kept in his pocketbook in a Hello Kitty photo album. I’m tired of “straight” designers. Don’t spend all day drawing dresses and scarves and belts and then go home at night and pretend to be interested in the “little woman.” Any man who knows what a peplum is, is not straight. I don’t care how many wives or prop children he has, if the words “summer shift,” “open toe” or “cinch belt” come out of his mouth, you can bet the dick of another “straight” designer is going in it. I want my designers gay, I want my tailors straight, I want my dry cleaners Chinese and my gynecologist blind. I don’t need to be lying on an examining table and hear a doctor say, “Yucch.”

  JULY 7

  Dear Diary:

  Watched the Wimbledon tennis tournament this morning. I hate tennis. All that head turning, back and forth, back and forth. It can loosen even a good facelift. I just stare in one direction, usually at the player who grunts less. If the ball doesn’t come back, obviously the other idiot missed it. FYI: If I want to hear someone grunting, I don’t need Wimbledon; I’ll watch CeeLo Green try to cross his legs.

  I love England, I love London, I love the royals but OMG the Brits are just not an attractive people. At least not compared to all the Botoxed celebrity types that I run with. Then again, compared to the hirsute Greeks, the peasanty Russians or the slope-browed Croats, the Brits are big-time stunning. To help me feel better about my looks I constantly remind myself that most minor races are ugly. Sometimes I pull them up on the Internet alphabetically, and every time I start to feel really homely, I just go and stand next to Miss Eskimo.

  JULY 8

  Dear Diary:

  Today Sassy Steve Levine said I’ve been invited to go on Dancing with the Stars. I politely declined. I said, “No fucking way! What’s wrong with you?” (1) I’m not a good dancer. (2) I hate touching sweaty strangers. (3) I’m deathly afraid that Bruno will jump across the judges’ table and bite me in the face.

  JULY 9

  Dear Diary:

  Today is the first day of Ramadan, which is a Muslim “holiday” where Muslims fast for thirty days. Just what we need: groups of hysterical, angry people who hate us to start with and who are now hungry on top of it. We keep sending them millions of dollars and soldiers; it’s so fucking stupid. We should send them a thousand boxes of Twinkies and a little KFC; not only will they be appreciative, they’ll be way too bloated and lethargic to attack us.

  JULY 10

  Dear Diary:

  Feeling great. I just finished reading the newspaper of record in my
house, the National Enquirer, and there was a cover story on fat celebrities. What surprised me was that the story included Keanu Reeves. I was shocked. I didn’t know he was still a celebrity. I could have sworn I saw him last Tuesday making lattes at the Starbucks in Malibu. But what really surprised me was a picture of Renée Zellweger. Not only was her face pulled so tight that she could whisper in her own ear, but because of her weight gain her eyes, which had always been a little squinty, now looked so Chinese that the U.S. government is questioning her country of origin on her passport. If the fat pushes her squinty eyes up any more I predict she’ll go from being an A-list movie star to being the next Mrs. Woody Allen. I say with this love: I really like that little prune face. I remember when Renée starred in Bridget Jones’s Diary and she made a big stink about how she gained twenty pounds for the part because she was devoted to her “craft.” Big fucking deal. Shelley Winters gained eighty pounds making The Poseidon Adventure because she was devoted to craft services.

  JULY 11

  Dear Diary:

  We’re starting to plan Grandma Week with Cooper. Every year he and I go somewhere special, just the two of us . . . plus my publicist, assistant, stylist, and hair and makeup people, and of course Pingpong. It sounds like a lot but we hardly notice them, as Cooper and I sit in first class, and they all take turns sharing a seat in coach. The time away with Cooper is great as it also gives Melissa and me a breather before we appear on Discovery ID as the lead story in a “Daughters Who Kill” segment. I don’t think she has it in for me—although for my birthday she bought me a bathing suit made out of lead—but I know things. Last year I had walking . . . well, limo-ing pneumonia and the doctor came out to the waiting room and said to Melissa, “I just need to know, God forbid, are you prepared for your mother’s death?” And Melissa said, “Prepared? I’ve had a shovel in my trunk since 1983. The Boy Scouts aren’t this prepared.”

  There are ways to tell your family is sick of you:

  They take the batteries out of your Clapper when you’re dying to sleep.

  They find you a hospice nurse on Craigslist.

  They turn your room into a storage space while you’re still living in it.

  At Thanksgiving they put you in the oven to check on the turkey.

  They send you on vacation to Guantánamo Bay.

  JULY 12

  Dear Diary:

  It’s 800 fucking degrees in New York and the city smells worse than Precious after a six-day cleanse. It’s so hot even the fragrance-schprizters in Saks are starting to smell like the homeless.

  And yet so many politicians and preachers are saying they don’t believe in climate change and think that the world is collapsing because God hates homos. If God wanted to “punish homosexuals,” as Pat Robertson said, then why did He make the tsunami in Japan, or the earthquake in Haiti? Doesn’t God have a GPS? If God hated homos, those catastrophes were such a waste of His efforts. Why didn’t He just flood Key West with cotton-poly blends, or even worse, open a Walmart in West Hollywood? That would’ve stopped those gay guys dead. I find it hard to believe that God’s melting the planet because a couple of florists in Palm Springs added baby’s breath to an arrangement.

  JULY 13

  Dear Diary:

  I was watching The View or The Talk or The Chew . . . I can’t remember which one, they’re all the same except that The Chew has burping. So I was watching and one of the hosts said about one of those young, interchangeable actresses no one can really identify, “I don’t begrudge her success.” And I thought, Neither do I. This girl obviously worked very hard for it—just look at how raw her knees are.

  The only person whose success I begrudge is Mother Teresa, that underdressed, poorly coiffed, androgynous old bag. People carried on about what a wonderful, giving person Mother Teresa was because she washed the feet of the poor. I say, wash the feet of one poor person and you’re kind; two, you’re doing a mitzvah; three or more, face it Big T, you’ve got a fetish. She did it because she liked it. Terry washed the feet of millions, yet not one reporter ever mentioned that when she was finished scrubbing the heels of the downtrodden, she always lit up a cigarette and sang a Johnny Mathis tune.

  JULY 14

  Dear Diary:

  It’s Bastille Day in France, marking the day when millions of French people stormed the Bastille protesting Jerry Lewis’s upcoming tour. They celebrate with a huge military parade. Of course, being French, they march backwards down the Champs-Élysées, in full retreat.

  JULY 15

  Dear Diary:

  Just watched back-to-back episodes of True Blood and The Walking Dead, and I’m fed up with vampires. They’re everywhere: movies, TV, museums. Enough already! If I want the life sucked out of me I’ll spend a long weekend with Bethenny Frankel.

  How many vampires do we need? I was hunky-dory after Dracula; my desire for cave dwellers was sated. But now, suddenly there’s this popular resurgence in bloodthirsty old bats that just won’t die. Which reminds me, I have to set my TiVo for the season premiere of Hot in Cleveland. I used to always watch True Blood on HBO, but after six seasons, Ryan Kwanten has still not showed off his junk, yet Anna Paquin won’t stop showing hers. And I really don’t understand the Twilight series. I’ve seen all the movies and they bore the shit out of me. The only good part is watching Kristen Stewart suck the blood out of the director through his penis.

  JULY 16

  Dear Diary:

  Summer is upon us, and you know what that means: people in restaurants in tank tops and halters. Uck! I don’t want to look at your unkempt armpit when I’ve got a mouthful of angel hair pesto. And the first part of halter is “halt,” as in “Halt! Go back in your closet and put on a fucking blouse. Or if you’re fat, a bedspread or a boat cover.”

  JULY 17

  Dear Diary:

  Just read an article that said who we are is determined in the first five years of life because our brain has grown to 86 percent of its capacity by that age. I don’t believe this. I don’t think that 86 percent of our entire personality is formed by age five. C’mon, are you trying to tell me that at four and a half Jeffrey Dahmer decided that instead of eating Gerber baby food he’d much rather eat the Gerber baby? Plus, if this is true, explain that kid in the movie Mask to me. That kid’s head kept growing and growing and growing. By the time he was eleven he was blowing his nose on the drapes. His poor mother, who looked a lot like Cher, spent more on hats than rent, car and utilities combined.

  JULY 18

  Dear Diary:

  My agent wants to book me on a lesbian cruise. I told him I’d let him know. The money’s good but I’m not sure I want to spend two hours staring at a group of angry women who think nothing’s funny except jokes about Antonin Scalia, Martina Navratilova or three-quarter-inch drill bits.

  JULY 19

  Dear Diary:

  I turned on the TV hoping to find Yentl (I love watching Barbra Streisand magically transform from a homely girl to a homely boy), and instead I got a commercial for Christian Mingle, the dating website for happy, perky young Christians. The announcer says, “Find out God’s match for you.” What if God had been drinking, or Jesus double-dared him, or God was auditioning for Punk’d so he deliberately made a bad match for you with a pasty hunchback with a club foot and money problems? Should you marry him just because God says “Go” and be nauseous and miserable every time this guy wants to climb on top of you in the Biblical way? Or should you date the quarterback with the great smile and big dick and then eventually marry a Jewish millionaire with mommy issues and high cholesterol? Seems like a no-brainer.

  Since good Christians aren’t supposed to think about, have, or enjoy sex, I can’t imagine what the attraction to that website would be.

  Hi, I’m Chad McWhitey, and I’m a young Christian trying to find God’s match for me. I go to a Christian college where I’m taking Christian classes like “Don’
t Do That, You’ll Go Blind,” “Intolerance Is a Good Thing” and “Your Penis Is Just for Peeing.” I have a part-time job as a cook in a non-Jew deli where my specialty sandwich is pastrami on white bread with butter—and I love to serve it with a teeming glass of whole milk! Mmmmmm!!! My hobbies include thinking about Jesus, drawing pictures of Jesus, talking to Jesus and wondering why Jesus never met God’s perfect match for himself. If you want to have a clean, wholesome, sex-free experience, HMU! We can pray together!* Praise the Lord.

  Christian Mingle is much different than JDate, the website where Jews go to meet and complain.

  Hi. My name is Elliott. I’m good looking in a Semitic way (thanks to my mother’s side) and have a share in the family dry goods business (thanks to my father’s side). My hobbies include going to nice restaurants, taking nice vacations, having a nice house within twenty miles of a big city (but not the bad ones) and schtupping my nephew’s camp counselor, Rivka, twice a month. I’m looking for a buxom, appreciative Sabra with dead parents.

  JULY 20

  Dear Diary:

  Today was Natalie Wood’s birthday. If she had either learned to swim or vacationed in a desert, today she’d be close to 804 years old. And if Elvis were alive today, he’d be close to 492 pounds.

  JULY 21

  Dear Diary:

  Off to do a show in Nashville, which is like Branson, Missouri, with teeth. I’m looking forward to it. Country audiences are so much fun; they embrace you just like you were one of their underage cousins.

  Nashville is a city that really loves its celebrities and it seems every country star has a museum there. I love museums; they can be full of fun when they accurately reflect their location and give their patrons art they can relate to. For example, in New York the Metropolitan Museum has a da Vinci that depicts Ben Hur riding around in a chariot, looking for a parking space. The world-renowned Pepe Museum in Mexico City has the same theme painted by Frida Kahlo in which Ben is driving a Chevy with stolen plates. And perhaps the most famous museum of all, the Getty in Los Angeles, has Michelangelo’s Last Supper, done originally as a triptych. The third panel features a vegan salad bar in the background, which art historians say explains Jesus’s lanky physique.