Diary of a Mad Diva (16 page)

Four fab supermodels. Or as I think of them, one hundred pounds of fun!

SEPTEMBER 1

Dear Diary:

Today starts Pilot Season, which is the busiest time of year for actors, flight attendants and anyone else who wants to do a pilot. I’ll be heading to L.A. in a few days because that’s where most of the pilots are shot (except for the ones leaving airports in Afghanistan). I don’t usually go up for roles these days (I used to go down for them but you can see where that got me—doing one-nighters in Milwaukee for old Shriners and their nurses). I’m in a very bad place in my career for pilot casting. On one end, that old has-been Judi Dench gets offered all the feisty-tough-talking-adorable-wise-been-though-it-all granny roles, and on the other end of the spectrum, that young whore Diane Keaton gets offered all the if-you-squint-and-keep-the-lights-low-I still-look-good-enough-to-have-one-fuck-left-in-me mother roles.

My old agent, Steve Levine, always said that I should be more interested in getting shows produced than being in them. “Joan,” he’d say, “producing will bring you passive income.” I’d say, “Steve, you sound like a lazy prostitute.” He’d answer, “Joan, look at the bright side—you don’t have to ‘do lunch’ with the johns. You just have to ‘do’ them.” So just as soon as my stitches heal (I had a small procedure yesterday; I had my left ass cheek removed from my ankle), I’m going to put on my thinking cap and come up with some show ideas to pitch to the network.

SEPTEMBER 2

Dear Diary:

Today’s Labor Day, the day we honor Kate Gosselin, the Octomom and any other woman who’s spent more time in hard labor than a mouthy prisoner at Leavenworth.

Labor Day has always been very close to my heart because I get to honor those wonderful adult workers in Thailand who make a dollar a week cutting, buffing and polishing the jewelry I sell on QVC, jewelry that they themselves could
never
hope to afford. But what I like most about Labor Day is that it’s the day of the year when sloppy men and fat women are no longer allowed to wear white, which allows the rest of us nicely appointed, well-groomed citizens never to have to vomit in our mouths again.

I believe the “No White After Labor Day” rule was created by rich people who like to get away from the city and go to their summer compounds where they’d wear light-colored clothing so they wouldn’t sweat under the hot sun on their yachts. Or, Paula Deen created it, in a wild overreaction to the scandal involving the N-word.

I did a little research and discovered that the Labor Day holiday was created in 1894 by Peter J. McGuire, who was a member of the Brotherhood of Carpenters. (He’s not to be confused with Karen Carpenter of the Carpenters, who founded the Let’s Starve Ourselves to Death holiday in 1983.) Everyone thinks Peter was a staunch union organizer who believed in the greater good and created this holiday to honor the brave efforts of the workers who were standing up for their rights against The Man. The truth is he just wanted a day off to drink and bang the little chippie he kept in a walk-up near Union Square without his wife knowing.

I’m heading off to a party in the Hamptons, which I love. I always feel better about myself coming home when I have really nice silverware in my purse.

SEPTEMBER 3

Dear Diary:

Just got on the plane to head to L.A. Had a great time in the Hamptons, BBQ-ing with people I loathe. The Hamptons are like Heidi Klum’s vagina—a place where lots of diverse rich people go for fun, but Jews are not really welcome.

The Hamptons are also filled with second wives who are very easy to spot; just check out their rings. First wives’ rings are always little bitty chips; the second wives have rings the size of NeNe Leakes’s ass.

The guy sitting next to me on the plane started getting all chatty, but I cut that off right away. He started waxing on about lawn care so I pulled out my private collection of Yoko Ono CDs and said, “Wanna listen?” He put on a sleep mask and headphones and stuffed a sock in his mouth. And I couldn’t blame him; even John Lennon, when he heard Yoko’s first CD, said, “Yoko, oh no!” Should be a pleasant flight.

SEPTEMBER 4

Dear Diary:

Had twenty-five minutes between
Fashion Police
and
Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?
tapings, so I headed over to the plastic surgeon’s office for a quickie. I’ve had so many procedures done I’ve spent more time in surgery than the doctors on
Grey’s Anatomy
. I’ve been pulled so tight that the last time my doctor asked for a urine sample I just cried into a bottle. I’ve been pulled tighter than Mary-Kate Olsen’s belt. Yes, I admit it; I’ve been given more lifts than Aileen Wuornos. It’s reached the point where I’ve paid Dr. Wrinkle so much money that when his son made his college valedictory speech he thanked
me
for making it all possible.

SEPTEMBER 5

Dear Diary:

Spent most of the day at the pool, lying on a chaise lounge, in a bathrobe, with cucumbers on my eyes. Not to help heal the stitches; I was being t-bagged by Melissa’s greengrocer. That’s one of the differences between New York and L.A. In New York when you order “fresh vegetables,” “fresh” means they’re two days away from being part of a landfill on Staten Island.
*
In L.A., “fresh” means that the cleaning lady’s husband’s third cousin, Jacinto, who sleeps on a mat in their garage, is down the road picking them as we speak, and they’ll be washed, cut and in my salad shooter before you can say “border patrol.”

Speaking of vegetables, I hate it when people refer to paraplegics as “vegetables.” The lack of specificity drives me crazy. What
kind
of vegetables? Tubers? Yams? Beetroots? It’s not accurate to call Drooling Dave or Catatonic Cathy vegetables. Vegetables are growing organisms; Dave and Cathy are end tables.

SEPTEMBER 6

Dear Diary:

Cooper starts school this week and he’s at that age where he’s going to start thinking about dating. I don’t know if Melissa has had the birds-and-the-bees talk with him yet, but I hope she included surrogates, Petri dishes and turkey basters in the conversation.

In my day it was so much easier. When I was a kid, getting to second base meant the girl let the boy feel her up. Nowadays it means she slept with half the Yankees’ infield. All my mother ever told me about the facts of life was, “Joan, sex is easy. The man gets on top, the woman gets on the bottom.” I bought bunk beds. I literally knew nothing. On my wedding night, I’d never seen a naked man before. When my husband, Edgar, came out of the bathroom, I hung my blouse on him. And I think those days were better. As I said to Melissa, “Your generation just bangs anything; it’s wrong. Sex should be a beautiful thing that a woman shares only with the man she loves or, if he’s out of town, her husband.”

I worry that kids today are having sex so much earlier. It used to be that if you were a slut you’d be ashamed. Now girls put it on a resume.

And by the way, I hate the terms “baby daddy” and “baby mama.” A baby daddy is just a horndog who was too cheap to buy a condom and a baby mama is the local slut who got knocked up in the back of a truck. You shouldn’t be a baby anything if you’re still wearing pull-ups yourself.

SEPTEMBER 7

Dear Diary:

Turns out it’s not just kids who are getting whorier—older people are getting skanky, too. I was just at the mall (I don’t shop in malls, I just like to sit in front of Abercrombie & Fitch stores and say to fat people who are thinking of going in, “Keep moving, Tubby, not for you. You need a sarong, just to go to Bed Bath & Beyond”), when I saw a woman walking through the food court wearing a T-shirt that said, “Blow jobs are the new black.” I was horrified. “Meryl,” I said, “Have some dignity. You’re a star. Be a fucking lady.”

SEPTEMBER 8

Dear Diary:

Back to New York for Fashion Week for
Fashion Police
and I’m a little depressed. There seem to be no rules anymore. I always believed in “no white ’til Memorial Day,” but then you see a picture of the Pope. “Black is thinning,” then you see a whale. And the rule “Don’t overdress for church,” and then Mother Teresa would show up for prayer meetings in a leper-skin jacket.

There’s nothing quite like Fashion Week: hundreds of emaciated runway models staggering around, hoping they have the strength to live and pose another day. It’s like
Schindler’s List
with better clothes.

Fashion Week is a little bit of heaven: gorgeous clothes, great accessories and thousands and thousands and thousands of gay men . . . Normally if you want to see that many gay men in one place you have to look inside George Michael’s mouth.

SEPTEMBER 9

Dear Diary:

Going to the Fashion Week Gala tonight. Can’t wait. It will be all the beautiful people. And Mayim Bialik. I love going to the gala and people watching. My favorite thing to do is play a game I call “Make Anna Wintour Smile.” The way it goes is, I sneak up to her table on all fours and tap her on the shoulder and say, “Psst, Anna . . . ,” and then I show her pictures of bus plunges, sick puppies and orphans. Last year I actually got her to giggle when I showed her a video of a military funeral.

Another fun thing is taking bets on which cater waiter will snap first. All night long these poor boys walk around with full trays, getting more and more frustrated as the evening wears on because nobody will eat anything. Their arms get so tired ’cause the trays are getting heavier and heavier, and they start getting all pissy and snarky, and begin saying things to the models like, “Care for a grape, or will it make you look fat?” or “How about half a carrot? You can purge that up in no time flat,” or, “Hey, Skeletora, why don’t you have a parsley sprig? It’ll help wash the vomit from your breath.”

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?