Diary of a Mad Diva (19 page)

If you have checked even one from Column A, put down this book—I don’t want to know you, speak to you or ever see you because you’re crazy.

OCTOBER 6

Dear Diary:

What a weird business show business is. I saw in
TV Guide
that there’s a special on TLC called
The Man with the 132-Pound Scrotum.
(Catchy title; I wonder what it’s about.) This really was a one-hour show and I can’t believe it—I know people in this business who spend their entire lives writing and studying and performing, and sadly, they often get nowhere, and now this slob gets his own special just because he has a ball sac the size of Cleveland? I’m trying to get in touch with him, to find his wife and then do a follow-up special,
The Woman with the Severely Crushed Pelvis.

What upsets me even more are the names of television channels that no longer represent their product. A&E used to be “Arts & Entertainment,” now they air
Duck Dynasty
—a show about hillbillies who shoot birds. Exactly which one of the arts is that? When was the last time you screamed “Bravo!” to a skanky, collagen-filled housewife from New Jersey?

And if you remember, TLC stood for “The Learning Channel.” Please tell me what we’re learning from this
132-Pound Scrotum
show? How he crosses his legs without crushing his nuts? How to make living room drapes into a Speedo? TLC has changed a lot—it used to be informative; these days it’s all dwarves and midgets. TLC should now stand for the Little Channel.

OCTOBER 7

Dear Diary:

Just read that Ellen DeGeneres is hosting the Oscars again. I wish they’d go back to the old days when they had comedians host the show.

I’ve decided my career is in the toilet. I’m an eighty-year-old heterosexual and the only drug I take is Boniva, so I might as well face it: I’ve got no shot at a big-time gig. As a matter of fact, my career is at such a low point that I’m writing this with the burnt end of a match in a bus terminal where I’m waiting for the 2:17 to Kalamazoo where I’m the opening act for a retrospective slide show on Tiny Tim. What did my parents do wrong?

OCTOBER 8

Dear Diary:

Lying in bed feeling very sorry for myself. On my way back from the club date in Kalamazoo the bus let me off on Kissena Boulevard to do a “personal appearance” in Queens. (A personal appearance is when a celebrity is paid to show up at an event and has to pretend that he or she cares about the people, the cause or the event itself.) I don’t mind doing personal appearances for charities. As a matter of fact, every Christmas I do a benefit to raise money for gifts for lonely hookers whose johns are spending the holiday with their families. It’s called Toys for Twats. I also am involved with a charity very similar to Meals on Wheels. We visit older men who take Viagra but are housebound. We just ring their doorbell and jerk them off. Ours is called Feels on Wheels. Anyway, I was at a banquet for some sick-kid thing and it was very upsetting. I thought, “This is so stupid. Why are they paying me when they could use this money for the sick kids?” It bothered me so much that I took all the money they gave me and did what any decent, empathetic person would do: went to Bergdorf and bought six Hermès bags. It made me feel better immediately.

Oh, I forgot to mention that as I was leaving the event, I heard lots of loud, terrible barking. My first thought was, “What’s Susan Boyle doing in Queens?” but then I looked around and saw a couple of teenaged boys walking pit bulls. At least I think they were pit bulls. I’m not sure as neither one of the dogs had a baby in its mouth. I said to thug-in-training number one, “Why do you have an unneutered male pit bull?” He said, “It’s an attack dog.” I said, “You live in Forest Hills. Not the Serengeti. Who’s going to attack you, the Widow Feinstein?”

OCTOBER 9

Dear Diary:

Speaking of dogs, here is a sad afterthought: As I was going out, I met my neighbor carrying her little girl Fiona’s dead puppy, Chuckles, all wrapped in newspaper. She was dumping Chuckles in the garbage and she was very upset, as she didn’t know which bin to put the stiff, rotting corpse in—paper, plastic or recyclable. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “He’s dead and he’s wrapped in paper, but his collar is plastic.” “Easy peasey,” I said. “The people next door are Korean. Put Chuckles in the recycling bin and call it a day; #18B does it all the time with semi-dead kittens.” We spent the next couple of hours figuring out how to tell Fiona that Chuckles wasn’t chuckling anymore. I told her about the way my parents broke the news to me when my best pal, my closest companion, whathisname died. They took my favorite toy and ripped it to shreds. Then they called me and said, “Joan, Joan, look what your dog did!” I said, “Oh, oh, I wish he were dead.” My mother smiled and said, “Good news, honey. He is!”

Unfortunately Fiona didn’t have a favorite toy but she
did
have a brother no one in the neighborhood liked. No one’s spotted Little Jimmy since 9 a.m.—and frankly, no one in the neighborhood cares. (He was unpopular and so ugly that he was even turned down at a petting zoo.)

Losing a pet is tough. A pet is one of the only two things in the world that gives you unconditional love. The other being your vibrator. I’ve always been a big animal lover but only lately have I begun to appreciate cats. I always found them annoying and too aloof, always thinking they were better than I was, just like my cousin Bernice. But I’m coming around because I realize they make great fur coats (as the children of my cousin Bernice with her hairy ass will someday find out). As a child I remember telling my mother, “I hate cats; I hate cats.” And she said, “Fine. Then eat around it.”

OCTOBER 10

Dear Diary:

It’s 11 p.m. and I just got home from a poetry reading at a hipster café in the Village called Café a-Go-Go, and after listening for an hour to bad poetry, I was upset that I hadn’t left the Go-Go and Gone-Gone. Anything up to and including being stoned to death by angry rebels in Tahrir Square would be a lot more fun than listening to some Jesse Jackson wannabe complain about “the man” in an ABAB rhyme.

“I hate you mister ’cause you fucked a sister.” Yeah, yeah, boring—we heard it already on
Dr. Phil
.

Poetry is bullshit. For openers, all those rhyme-crazy morons—Yeats, John Donne, e.e. cummings and Wads-worth, just to name a few—were just fairy boys who sold a gullible public on the fact that poetry is terrific. Poetry is just stories being told in a short form by “poets,” who are people who got rhyming dictionaries for their birthdays and who can’t punctuate or write in complete sentences. Think about the “greatest poets” of all time—T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg. If they were so great, how come you couldn’t pick them out of a police lineup even if your life depended on it? I could pick out Gotti, and I could identify Larry King’s testicles while blindfolded before I could tell the difference between the faces of Longfellow, Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson.
*

I’m going to bed. I need my beauty sleep. I plan to wake up in 2037.

OCTOBER 11

Dear Diary:

Went to visit my friend Flower, who recently moved to Brooklyn. Flower kept telling me, “Oh, Joan, you’ve
got
to come over; Brooklyn is the new New York.” On my way to her house I saw three hookers, two rapists and a crack-whore pushing her kid in a baby stroller while the baby daddy rode shotgun. Flower is right.

OCTOBER 12

Dear Diary:

Just had my morning coffee and checked my calendar. It’s Hugh Jackman’s birthday and I don’t know what to get him. It’s hard to shop for very rich people because whatever they want they already have, or they can buy it themselves. Or worse yet, someone else will buy them a better, more expensive version of whatever I buy, and I’ll have to smile and feign amusement, and then follow them home and kill them.

Hugh and I aren’t “friends” friends; we don’t hang out, or go Rollerblading or carpool to bukkake parties; we usually just run into each other at movie openings or in restaurants, and he always comes over to me and says, “Joan, you look beautiful tonight—for you.” Then we exchange air kisses and move on. I like Hugh Jackman; he can sing and dance and act, but the main, big reason I like him is because he’s a survivor. In Nazi Germany, Elie Wiesel may have survived three years in Dachau, but in
Les Miz
, Hugh Jackman survived nine months filming with Anne Hathaway. THAT’S a hero.

Not one honest emotion ever comes out of Miss Anorexia 2013. After winning the Academy Award she looked directly into the camera and had the nerve to say, “I’m so happy tonight, I’m going to celebrate by eating a tomato
and
a baked potato.” That’s celebrating? It’s like having an innocent man get out of prison after thirty-five years and to celebrate, the first woman he chooses to fuck is me.

I think I’ll call Patti LuPone; maybe she can give me some tips as to what I should buy Hugh for his birthday. Be right back.

Later . . .

I’m back and Patti is brilliant. She said that since Hugh was “of the theater” I should get him something old and theatrical. So I went to Angela Lansbury’s house and gift-wrapped her. Actually, I went to the Drama Book Shop on Fortieth Street and got him a book. Their selection was great and I went back and forth between
How to Close a Show
by Sarah Brightman,
I Won’t Fix My Teeth Even Though I Have the Money
by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and
Your Arms Are Too Short to Box with Anyone
by Kristin Chenoweth. Eventually I decided to buy Hugh a rare collector’s item called
Famous Heterosexual Stage Actors.
It’s only three pages long but it’s riveting, I tell you.

OCTOBER 13

Dear Diary:

Hugh Jackman called. Said he
loved
the book, especially the foreword by Cary Grant. I love making people happy. I just hope someday I can make Melissa happy. Of course if I do, I won’t be here to see it . . .

Off to QVC, and another opportunity to sell well-made dry goods and pretty shmatas to women in Iowa who have no idea what dry goods are or what “shmata” means. I love America.

OCTOBER 14

Dear Diary:

What a weird day. My former agent, Sensitive Steve Levine, called and said, “Get up, Fatso. Margaret Cho just got sick and they’re desperate for anybody so I think I can get it for you.” It was a private party on a yacht for some rich Arab and his wives. This billionaire sheik (which I recently learned is pronounced “shake,” so I now assume that Michael J. Fox suffers the “sheiks”) was throwing a seventeenth birthday party for Wife #9, a petite, sloe-eyed girl from Abu Dhabi named Pashmasubraminium.

This club date was the worst experience of my life (if you don’t count childbirth, conception, the closing of B. Altman’s department store and that horrific poetry reading last Thursday). From the minute I got onstage to the minute I left, there was dead silence. They laughed at nothing. It was the worst show I’ve ever done and I’m not sure if it was me or if it was the Arabs, but in hindsight I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have opened with “Shabbat shalom.” And my jokes about “How many Arabs does it take to change a light bulb” didn’t go over well.
*
They stared at me the way Mohammad Atta stared at tall buildings. Live and learn. At least the check will clear because it was made out to “Jew Pig,” so I know I won’t have any trouble cashing it.

OCTOBER 15

Dear Diary:

On the plane back to L.A. I hate it when people carry on carry-on bags that are
so
big that they can’t be carried on by a team of oxen. I’m sitting here in 2A, minding my business, silently passing judgment on the people heading to coach, when some schmuck comes waddling down the aisle dragging a steamer trunk that’s big enough for either circus folk or Carnie Wilson’s lunch. Unless he’s carrying emergency medical supplies or really good jewelry, there’s no excuse for anyone to be that inconsiderate. Not only will there be no room in the overhead for other people’s luggage, there’ll be no room in the overhead for the bratty six-year-old in 4D, which is where I’m going to stuff that motherfucker if he doesn’t stop whining.

OCTOBER 16

Dear Diary:

Took Cooper and his friends out for Mexican food tonight. I ordered a taco and Cooper and his friends ordered burritos, tortillas and quesadillas. Turns out all four dishes are made out of the same exact ingredients—meat, onions and cheese—they’re just cut into different shapes. Mexican food is like bowel movements: each one may look a little different but it’s all the same shit.

OCTOBER 17

Dear Diary:

Valerie Harper was on
Dancing with the Stars
. Valerie has brain cancer and she goes on
Dancing with the Stars
? I’m in perfect health and can’t get off the couch. What’s wrong with this picture? I love Rhoda and along with the rest of America I’m so proud of her. I felt terrible when she had to withdraw halfway through her cha-cha because due to health reasons she could only cha. I truly pray she’s still alive when this book comes out so she can sue me for every dime I have.

I’ve known Valerie for years and I truly like her a lot, but right now I’m jealous as hell. When Big Val announced she had terminal cancer she
immediately
got the covers of
People
magazine,
Us Weekly
,
Star
and the
Enquirer
. I hate that. I’ve had rickets, scurvy, cradle cap, rosacea and irritable bowel syndrome and I still have to go down on Anna Wintour just to get a below-the-fold blind item on page 178 of European
Vogue
.

OCTOBER 18

Dear Diary:

Very depressed. Still thinking about Valerie and her magazine covers. I just can’t seem to get any free publicity these days. Michael Vick aced me out of the dog- beating stuff; Lance Armstrong owns the performing-while-under-major-drugs stuff; Helena Bonham Carter absolutely wins the ugly with talent award; and Amanda Bynes has a copyright on the mad-as-a-fucking-hatter matter. I’m pissed. I called my PR girl (and I use the term loosely; she hasn’t seen a tampon in twenty years, not even to wash bottles with), Peggy Katz, and asked, “Why, why, why?” Peggy said, “Face it, thunder-thighs. You’re not a compelling story. We milked the husband’s suicide like an old cow with one teat left. Unless Melissa pushes you off a cliff we haven’t got a compelling story.”