by Joan Rivers
SEPTEMBER 10
Dear Diary:
Tonight was my first free night in two months and I was so looking forward to maybe just having a great dinner with friends, shoplifting with Winona Ryder at Walgreens, or just relaxing in Coney Island under the boardwalk under a sailor. But then I got a call from my florist’s husband’s adopted son from an earlier marriage, Peony Schwartz, inviting me to see a play he had written. PeePee is a nice guy and the ticket was free so I accepted.
I’ve heard of Off-Broadway, I’ve heard of near Broadway, I’ve heard of above Broadway, but if this theater were any farther from Broadway the play would be written in Swahili. And the “theater” itself is what Off-Broadway-ites call a black box—not to be confused with the device authorities look for when a plane goes down, or Ke$ha’s vagina, although they probably have the same seating capacity. It’s a little ninety-nine-seat room with a stage that’s surrounded by three black walls. This means there will be very few props or lighting.
I was optimistic about the play, and rightfully so, as it turned out to be very interesting. It brought to light the real truth about Helen Keller’s life. Yes, yes, yes, we all admire Helen but apparently she was boring. She had one story that she regaled her friends with over and over and over again: “I pueoro dniuwqq ce7393nd djeueuweueu snsf7483))dndj.”* She was also very stubborn and insisted on driving, saying to her friends, “Efncjis wnx e7w12ncnc9qwjqm snshd7dqwjvcnui^b 48ssjsj.”* And the play brings to light how everyone despised her equally deaf parrot, Mdhdyw.* Mdhdyw, instead of speaking, would scratch words with his sharp talons into Helen’s friends’ palms, causing them to bleed profusely and require a tetanus shot. What I liked best about the play was the title, which was so catchy: Helen Keller, Shut the Fuck Up!
SEPTEMBER 11
Dear Diary:
I woke up this morning and realized it was 9/11, one of my least favorite days because, out of respect, so many stores are closed. Being in New York on 9/11 is very difficult. The ceremonies and parades and dignitaries and politicians really fuck up the traffic. It took me almost an hour to get to my nail salon and I live only five blocks away. Believe me, no one is sorrier about the planes and towers and jumpers, but it’s been well over a decade—can’t we figure out a more efficient way to “remember” so I don’t have to miss my appointment and walk around with the feet of a Japanese prisoner of war?
I feel terribly sorry for the families of the people who died on 9/11 in the planes and towers, but I feel even sorrier for the relatives of the people who just dropped dead naturally, or in a car accident, or had a heart attack, or slipped in the tub, or were savagely bitten in the face by their unneutered male pit bull, Sugar. Their families not only don’t get any sympathy, they get scorn and ridicule thrown at them. If they even mention, “My husband died on 9/11,” everyone just automatically says, “In Tower One or Two?” And then they have to say, “Neither. Albert had a stroke while eating a pretzel in front of a Best Buy on Queens Boulevard and . . .” They usually can’t even finish their sentence as they’ve just been punched in the mouth.
SEPTEMBER 12
Dear Diary:
Just landed in Palm Springs to do a benefit for Barry Manilow, who lives there. Barry says he loves it because even though he’s no chicken himself, he’s definitely the youngest one in town. “Where else, Joanie,” he says, “can a man over fifty be called ‘boy’ other than Birmingham, Alabama, or Cloris Leachman’s bedroom?”
I love Palm Springs. It’s often called the “gay nineties”—because other than the celebrities, half the people are either gay or ninety. It’s the only place on earth where I can walk down the street and see old women who’ve had more plastic surgery than me, or middle-aged gay men who’ve had plastic surgery to look like me.
Performing at benefits can be tricky, especially if the infirmed, disabled, disfigured or famished I’m raising money for are in the front row. Try doing twenty minutes about flying coach in front of the Lockerbie survivors. That’s a tough crowd. Forget laughter; they’re so reconstructed they can’t even move their mouths to boo—there’s just a lot of guttural moaning. Sounds like Kathleen Turner’s husband, when she’s on top.
SEPTEMBER 13
Dear Diary:
I love Palm Springs and Barry is a wonderful host. The thread count on his linens is even higher than my age. He has pretty little soaps in the bathroom and fancy guest towels; they’re perfectly ironed and arranged and I feel so guilty about using them, as I know Barry has spent hours ironing. But if don’t use them he’ll think I’m a pig, so after a bath I waltz into the living room naked and dry myself on the drapes right in front of him. This way he knows I’m a fucking lady and I got taste and manners.
SEPTEMBER 14
Dear Diary:
Just got an invitation to a book signing for Paul Anka’s new memoir. Paul Anka! I’m going because I don’t want that little shrimp to be alone. Who’s going to read it? His fan died in 1997.
SEPTEMBER 15
Dear Diary:
Back in L.A. Drove from Palm Springs last night. Anywhere else in the U.S. it would have been a two-hour drive. It took me over five hours on a four-lane freeway. Who are those people and where are they going? There’s not that many interesting things to do in L.A.—you’ve seen one tar pit, you’ve seen them all. They say there will be six million more cars on this freeway by 2020, so if you need to cross it to get to Starbucks, do it now.
To make matters worse, I hated my driver. He talked from the moment I got in and never shut up. He knew who I was so he assumed I must know who he was, and that what he had to say about the Redskins, or the Blueskins, or the Purpleskins would intrigue me. He thought wrong. I can get Prince Charles, Woody Allen and Elton John on the phone—collect, if I use my Beyoncé voice, and say things like, “Stop that, Jay-Z, I don’t like my nipples powdered when I’m talking to big-time people.” And yet somehow Leon from Tarzana thought I’d find him intriguing, and be biting my nails and wetting myself as he bowled me over with stories of the heavy traffic flow on Sepulveda Boulevard. If I want to know about heavy flow, I’ll watch Octomom change her tampon.
SEPTEMBER 16
Dear Diary:
Last night on the local news they did a story about some new KKK-like, white supremacist, neo-Nazi group in the L.A. area, and my first thought was, “OMG!! This is awful. Tomorrow morning every lawyer and agent in Hollywood is going to be storming City Hall . . . not to protest the hate group’s presence in their neighborhood, but to change their names from Glickstein to McGlickstein. God forbid they should alienate the anti-Semitic demo and lose the chance to make a coupla deutsche marks on film distribution in Stuttgart.
I hate the term “White Supremacist.” First of all, it implies that these haters like all white people, and that’s not true. I’m white. Harvey Fierstein is white. Some of Mariah Carey is white. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t like us. And my gay, albino rabbi agrees with me. And second, no way are these people “supreme.” When your hood is made of faux-percale and has a thread count of twenty, you’re not a white supremacist; you’re white trash.
SEPTEMBER 17
Dear Diary:
My old agent, Steve Levine, has set up a couple of pitch meetings for me at different networks. Some mainstream, some cable and some you can only get if you live in a glass house located where the 40th parallel bisects the International Date Line.
I hope one works out, and then maybe next summer Cooper won’t have to go to South Africa to work in the diamond mines wearing pants without pockets.
Yes, dear diary, I worry about Cooper’s future. From the start, I loved being a grandmother. It was wonderful to finally have something to bounce on my knees besides my boobs. And to this day, I am still hoping he will grow up to be a man of character, integrity and principle; in other words, someone who will never be president of the United States.
SEPTEMBER 18
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nbsp; Dear Diary:
I’ve come up with a couple of great show ideas to pitch to the networks. Yay, me! I’ve been thinking . . . the creative people who run TV networks are lawyers and accountants who weren’t creative enough to make it as lawyers or accountants, so they became television executives. They wouldn’t know a good idea if it sat on their face, the way their twenty-year-old development girl/secretary/personal assistants do, so give them ideas they can understand. Don’t pitch them anything original or groundbreaking. Pitch them new takes on old shows. So I decided to combine some hit shows that are already successful. For example:
Tiny Stuffers: I’ve combined Little People, Big World with Hoarders—families of dwarves who live in filthy dollhouses, cluttered with footstools and stepladders. In the pilot, we visit tiny Grandma hoarder and find a dead Chihuahua blocking her driveway.
Honey Boo Boo SVU: Two very good-looking detectives try to find out who had sex with Mama June, and rather than arresting him, they give him the Congressional Medal of Honor for getting it up.
Larry King Sorta Live: Larry hosts a call-in talk show on the days he isn’t on life support or taking his meds. Every call starts with, “Hello, Forest Lawn . . .”
Dancing with the Biggest Loser: The cast of the Biggest Loser tries to win the dance competition. Watch the fun begin as we wait for Derek Hough’s legs to buckle when he tries to dip Massive Mona. And Bruno says, “You are so light on your hooves for a morbidly obese, six-hundred-pound Guernsey cow! You go, Elsie!!!”
SEPTEMBER 19
Dear Diary:
I was supposed to go to Malibu to play tennis with Goldie Hawn but there was bad weather. (The waves were higher than Justin Bieber.) Everything cleared up at 11:30 and old Goldie’s nurse called and said she’d like to try it. Goldie’s one hundred and thirty years old and she still plays tennis—amazing. Turns out it’s not the only game she’s good at. She’s also plays “Where Are My Teeth?” “Do I Smell Funny?” and “How Come Grandpa Isn’t Moving?” But give Goldie credit: it’s hard to serve while in a scooter. I think she cheats a little; every time she fell down she’d use her “I’ve Fallen and Can’t Up” buzzer.
SEPTEMBER 20
Dear Diary:
On the plane to do a one-nighter in Reno and I’m sitting right next to a hearing-impaired stroke victim. The moaning and slurring are very deafening and I can’t tell if she’s cumming, dying or asking for coffee. Being gracious, I smiled, and said to her, “Yo, Droopy—what’s your name?” She said Susan. Or Jill. Or Debbie. Or Brplmpjhuh. Turns out she’s Chatty Cathy. We’ve been in the air for almost two hours and the bitch hasn’t stopped groaning and yelping at me since takeoff. It’s like being in a flying slaughterhouse. I’m going to offer the pilot twenty bucks to whisper the next safety announcements just to force her to clam up and listen.
I just looked at the term “slaughterhouse.” Am I being too rough? Too on the nose? But maybe not. I like words that when you say them, you know exactly what’s going on. Whorehouse. Vaginal itch. Ugly bride. You know where you stand.
I hate euphemisms. Like “powder room.” It’s a toilet. Yes, some women go in there to powder their noses. But more women go in there to take a shit. True, there are some women who go in there to powder their turds, but they’re few and far between and they’re usually makeup-artists-in-training or Danny Thomas’s ex-girlfriends. (There’s always been this urban legend that Danny Thomas liked to lie under a glass coffee table and have a hooker come over and take a dump on the table. He should have named his TV show Make Room for Doody. I don’t believe this is true, but I’ve known his daughter Marlo for forty years and not once have I ever seen her wear brown.)
SEPTEMBER 21
Dear Diary:
The Danny Thomas urban myth got me to thinking about other Hollywood legends that may or may not be true:
RICHARD GERE, ANIMAL LOVER: For years rumors circulated about Richard Gere: first, that he was gay, and second, that he kept gerbils up his ass. (I never heard anyone say whether the gerbils were male or female.) I have no idea if Richard rented out his sphincter as a Habitrail but if he did, rather than mocking him as some kind of a freak, I preferred to think of him as an animal lover who saved rodents’ lives by turning his poop chute into a no-kill shelter.
MICK JAGGER, CUM GUZZLER: As far back as I can remember (and with my oncoming dementia, by next month that may only be since 4 o’clock), there was a story going around that Mick Jagger wound up in an emergency room and the doctors pumped a gallon of semen out of his stomach. I’m not a math major but I’ll bet swallowing a gallon of anything isn’t easy, let alone semen. I have trouble believing this tale. Mick Jagger is a very busy man; he doesn’t have the time to suck off the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
MAMA CASS, HAM CHAMP: The rumor is that while in France, Mama Cass, of the famous rock group the Mamas & the Papas, choked to death on a ham sandwich. Her daughter, Daughter Cass, says that’s not what happened. She said her mother died of natural causes. I say, if you weigh over eight hundred pounds, choking on a ham sandwich is a natural cause, but I’m not a doctor. All I do know is that the police report mentioned that Cass’s room was littered with crumbs, mustard, hooves and a couple of pink snouts.
TOM CRUISE, GAY BLADE: Ever since Tom appeared in his underwear in Risky Business, people have been saying he’s gay, but there’s no actual proof to support the rumor. Just because a rich, handsome movie star who belongs to a creepy religious cult and travels the world with longtime male friends can’t make his marriages work, it doesn’t mean he’s gay; it means he’s fussy. And if you don’t believe me, ask Kelly Preston.
SEPTEMBER 22
Dear Diary:
Back from Reno and had lunch at the Ivy with Smiling Steve Levine. Well, I didn’t actually have lunch with him—he was having lunch with his more important clients, Andy Dick, Tito Jackson and the ShamWow guy, and I was waiting at the bar for a table out back behind the Dumpster to open up. The Ivy is a show biz restaurant where coked-up, bulimic actresses meet their tweaked-out gay agents to grind their teeth and discuss business over scrambled egg whites they don’t eat. While I was waiting, who should come sauntering in but Jon Hamm and a lady friend. According to the tabloids, Jon Hamm is hung like a horse. In fact, I’ve seen a nude picture of him from when he was in college and it looked like he had a child in his lap. They claim his schvantz is so big that when male horses talk among themselves they say things like, “I hear Flicka’s hung like Jon Hamm.” FYI, I’m not a size queen. In fact, I’m turned on by Chinese men. To this day, every time I’m in a delicatessen and I see an egg salad garnished with gherkin pickles, I start fantasizing about Jackie Chan.
SEPTEMBER 23
Dear Diary:
Red-eyed in to New York today and it’s the first day of fall! Fall is my favorite season because as the temperatures cool down, the people smell less, and a ride on the subway is no longer like a week in a men’s room. And for a brief period of time, maybe a week or ten days, the homeless suddenly look like fashionistas, wearing multiple layers not just at the right time, but slightly ahead of the rest of us. If I can get my agent to come to New York, I think I have a show for Bravo: Project Bowery, where we get the homeless to compete to see who can put on the most jackets and hats and pants at one time, without ever stopping to bathe or urinate indoors. Andy Cohen, here I come!
SEPTEMBER 25
Dear Diary:
According to the Enquirer, O.J. Simpson has put on a lot of weight and prison doctors are worried that he’s getting depressed. I don’t understand this. Why would he be depressed? The man doesn’t have a care in the world. He no longer has the pressure of going on auditions or making mortgage payments or renewing his driver’s license with the correct birthday, or having to listen to his dumb lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, reciting bad poetry. I listened to him and Johnnie at lunch one day and Johnnie kept saying things like, “If the chicken
don’t smell, the cook can go to hell,” and, “If Kato don’t lie, you’re gonna fry,” and, “If I save your ass, I’ll have money for gas.” And most important, O.J. no longer has to listen to that slutty dead wife of his nag and nag and nag. So buck up, Juice—other than showering with “Big Ed” twice a week, your life is hunky-dory! All those people who say Disneyland is the “Happiest Place on Earth” have clearly never been to Cell Block 9 on a misty, moonlit April night.
SEPTEMBER 26
Dear Diary:
I didn’t sleep at all last night, so now I’m tired and crabby and that’s not good. Last time I felt like this I beat Pingpong within an inch of her life. I shouldn’t say that; it’s not completely true. I left her one hand unharmed so she could dust.
SEPTEMBER 27
Dear Diary:
Finally figured out why I’ve been so stressed out and anxious recently. It’s having to face the fact that I probably will not remarry, as all the age-appropriate single men that I know of are getting older or dying off. For example, I’m sad to say, a few months ago, Richard Ramirez—aka the Night Stalker—died in prison and I literally broke down thinking, “There goes a little piece of my past.” In the 1970s, Big Dick, as I called him, terrorized Los Angeles and Southern California with a string of grisly murders of young, semi-attractive women. When they caught him I was both surprised and disappointed. Surprised that he wasn’t even a little more attractive and disappointed because I realized that all the time I’d spent wandering around freeway exit ramps wearing frilly little dresses was for naught.
