The Andy Cohen Diaries (18 page)

Who greeted me as I walked on board my flight to LA this morning but #BabyJaneFlightAttendant. “
Well, there you are again!
Can I help you get
settled
?!” What is it with this woman helping me get
settled
? And what does she think that entails? I figured out that the more words you give her, the more she comes back with, so I became a robot for five hours. For instance, when she said, “The beef is
so good today
!!!
And I'm not a meat eater!
So then, is that what you want, the beef???” I replied, “No.” I drowned my sorrows with four episodes of
Vanderpump Rules
on the plane in preparation for the reunion. It's so good it's criminal. And I don't condone violence but Jax had that punch coming! I no longer find him attractive after his inability to feel remorse for sleeping with the girlfriend of his best friend
of ten years
! I stopped into Bravo and then went to the Tower and for ninety minutes sat and contemplated going to the gym, and ultimately decided to take a bath instead. With my phone. (My phone loves a hot bath.) I had dinner at this Moroccan restaurant, Acabar, with Bryan, Bruce, Hamilton, and Kevin Huvane. At the table next to us was the one Moroccan person on the planet who I have had sex with. I guess now I know where to find him. After dinner I had ice-cream sundaes at the Tower with Allison, Ricky, John Mayer, and B. J. Novak, who I had never met but who seemed nice. Man, those sundaes would've gone down a whole lot better with some whiskey. I am still sobes, though—or
not drinking
, as Bruce keeps pointing out. Dave began his month of sobriety today and we're going to be sober buddies. (Well,
not-drinking
buddies, I guess.) Dmitri, who remains
not
the most discreet maître d' in Hollywood, was trying to bring over a relative of Camilla Parker Bowles to meet John. The truth is that I barely want to meet Camilla Parker Bowles herself, so the idea of meeting her
relative
was a nonstarter and I surmised couldn't have been that appealing to John or anybody else. I shut that down.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2014—LOS ANGELES

Wall-to-wall tears and wild absurdity all day long at the
Vanderpump Rules
reunion. This group of servers (they are
servers
!) is a crazy combination of ego, emotion, beauty, ugly, stupidity, humor, and fearlessness that makes for perfect reality TV. Jax continues to have no remorse about sleeping with his best friend's girlfriend, which baffles me. During lunch Lisa and I walked up to the construction site of her new gay bar, Pump. She knows what she's doing. We started filming the reunion at ten and ended around five-thirty, so it was a ton of drama and talk, and by the time I got back to the Tower to change for the night I was totally spent.

I ran into Seth Meyers in the lobby and the convo was about whether he should have a band for his new show or a DJ or what. He says he hasn't decided and he better get cracking because he's got like five weeks. Walking away, I felt better about all the decisions I haven't made.

I had to hustle it to the opening of the “DVF: Journey of a Dress” exhibit at LACMA—I was co-hosting the live stream with Coco Rocha. DVF took me through the exhibit as they were about to open the doors and it blew me away—wrap dresses on mannequins everywhere, DVF colors and patterns on the floors and ceilings, and a Studio 54 Room and a room of all art of DVF. Insane. The live stream was not my favorite thing in the world to do. They were bringing people over to me who I hadn't a clue about and I was interviewing them trying to act like I did; it was awks, as Ja'mie would say. Robin Wright came with her daughter and introduced her by name, which I forgot by the time Coco threw the live stream back to me (a total of seven seconds), and I said, “I'm here with Robin Wright and her daughter.” So I am sure they both hate me. I also interviewed Seth and Allison and Rachel Zoe. Every single woman there was wearing DVF, so it was an army of wrap dresses. And Kathy Hilton brought Paris over and she did her demure paparazzi stance even in person, in a DVF long dress, and I loved it. And speaking of paparazzi, I tried to give serious beard-face in the photo line but I am sure I will wind up looking constipated. Everyone was there—fifteen hundred people to be exact—Uma, Demi, Gwyneth, lots of one-named women.

We had dinner with a big group at Tortilla Republic (next to Sur) and then all wound up at Revolver. Anderson and I were last to leave. He and I were waiting for his car at the restaurant valet when these drunk girls came up asking to take a picture with us. One of them kept yelling at us, “I don't know who you are!
Who are you?
Tell me!” It went on and on until she was begging us to tell her who we are, which is essentially the number-one-with-a-bullet irritating thing to say to someone. Who cares then? If you don't know who we are, and we don't know who you are, then let's all call it a draw and move on. Anyway, we took a pic with the friends of the girl who didn't know us and then the drunk girl herself loudly demanded a photo. “Why do you want a picture if you don't know who we are?” I asked, using reason on someone who had none. She got indignant and the friend said, “Are you really not gonna take a picture with her?” at which point I was ready to just do it, but now the vexing one was all over Anderson, yelling in his face. So he told her to leave. And she did. Joy! (Anyone who is excited to take a picture with me because they like something about me is exempt from this rant.)

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2014—LOS ANGELES–NYC

Where has the Chili's gone at the American terminal in LAX? It's all “fancy” food now! They used to have a great chicken sandwich at that Chili's. Damn, if it's not stuff closing in the West Village it's the gentrification of LAX. I can't blame Bloomberg for the Chili's closing, though. By the way, that paper store on Eighth and Horatio is closing next week. I actually don't know how it's stayed open so long. They may still have “Typewriter” in the name of the store. Anyway, it's a final sale and the other day I bought some cheap wrapping paper that I'll never use and got really emo with the storekeeper; I acted like we had a deep neighborly relationship, but in actuality I had potentially never met him. Still, I don't like seeing local stores closing. And so now the Chili's is gone, which is my way of saying I flew back at the crack of dawn this morning. I could've stayed in LA to hang out and go to parties but I wanted to see Wacha. And on that note, I was supposed to have dinner with Mark and Kelly but wound up staying home with the doggy, who has five weeks of recovery looming after surgery Monday. We watched the
Downton Abbey
premiere finally and I just want to know if the dude who plays Molesley has nekkid pics of Julian Fellowes, because
nobody cares about Molesley
, and there was a whole lot of him. So that was a little exhausting. I'd rather watch Mrs. Patmore wrestle with that electric mixer for an hour than endure another minute with Poor Mr. Molesley. Oh, and somebody tweeted me that all the restaurants at LAX are now from California-based companies, so I get it and that's cool. Plus you can't really compare Chili's to a mom-and-pop store anyway. I just miss that pre-flight chicken sandwich is all.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 12, 2014

Wacha woke up unaware that he is being cut open tomorrow, and I felt so bad for the oblivious pooch that I decided to pretend it was his birthday and go balls to the wall. We went on a really long walk around the West Village, then went over to Hickey's and hung out, then to my gym, where he watched the Ninj and me box for six rounds, then got doggy treats at Marc Jacobs
and
Jack Spade, and then I gave him a bath that he did not hate. I conditioned his hair with this Kiehl's doggy potion that my mom gave me and his coat is silky and shiny. During his bath I realized I haven't had one of those fucking chicken sandwiches at LAX for like five years, so why am I even romanticizing it?

Watched the Globes at Joe's with Hickey and Wacha. It was fun for the first twenty minutes, then boring. Which is essentially every awards show there is. Oh, and watching an awards show sober is an experience I hope never to repeat. NeNe was on
WWHL
, so I kind of felt like I had the night off. She was great.

MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2014

I felt like a daddy and got a little emo when I dropped Wacha off at the hospital for his hip surgery. I thought I had time to kill before going to co-host
The View
, so I stopped by 30 Rock to putter around my office and go through a mound of stuff that had accumulated over the holidays. Turns out I puttered too long and wound up being late to the hosts' meeting before the show. This is the famous (in my world) meeting where the ladies sit around the makeup room and decide what the Hot Topics for the day are going to be; it's a hotbed of emotion and sometimes pre-show bitching. Though I had co-hosted a couple times before, I certainly did
not
want to miss today, because it was my first time on the show with Barbara Walters, aka the High Priestess of TV Journalism and someone who has set the agenda for my TV news viewing for my entire bloody life.

I walked into the makeup room and the meeting was already in progress. I took a seat and Sherri very sweetly asked how my dog was and I explained what was going on, at which point a half-made-up Barbara Walters (
this
was also one of the things I didn't want to miss) asked what hospital he was at and then informed me that she is on the board of that hospital should I need anything. How nice!

Hot Topics were debated and opinions were bandied about. BW said she didn't have a clue about A-Rod so someone would have to fill her in if we discussed it; Whoopi said she'd skipped the Golden Globes the night before, and turned to me and said under her breath, “Why should I kill a good high?”; Jenny wanted to talk about my complaint about Seacrest taking credit for introducing her and Donnie; and everyone agreed we had to talk about Woody Allen and the tweets about him during the show from Mia Farrow and Ronan.

After the meeting Whoopi and I were talking about
The Butler
and it seemed like BW was trying to get in on the conversation. I told her that Dan was on the show recently and spoke well of her. She said she was one of only a few people to defend him at the end of his run with CBS. Then she pulled me close and asked if she could speak with me pwivately, and as she did, she leaned back and I realized she was about to get her hair washed and I was about to see her with wet hair, which was really amazing. I saw the whole thing: the hair getting wet and then her looking back up at me, a wet Barbara Walters asking in a hushed tone if I had heard anything about Tom Brokaw having cancer. I told her I knew nothing but would research it. She said she was concerned and please do. I was trying to figure out why she thought I knew anything about Brokaw and I realized she probably assumed I knew him since I was being a bragasaurus about being friends with Dan.

I then spent a half hour with Whoopi—in my room and then hers—talking about innovations in pot (vapes and candy and e-cigs) and her telling me what life was like at the show. Suffice to say that the Oscar-winning lady does not appear to be the happiest camper at that table every day. I loved every second of it.

Hot Topics was going pretty well until
American Hustle
came up and Barbara said she didn't understand it. Suddenly I heard my mom in my head saying that she and her friends hadn't understood it, and I suggested to Barbara Walters on live TV that perhaps it was a “generational thing” that she hadn't understood this movie. As the words came out of my mouth and I turned to look at Barbara, who was next to Sherri Shepherd (I was in the middle of the henpack), I knew that this was
exactly the most wrong thing to say on live television to Barbara Walters
. The conversation moved on and the very
second
the camera started swooping to the applauding audience and the announcer teased what was coming up later in the show, a furious Barbara Walters turned to me and screamed, “Thank you for INSULTING me on MY OWN SHOW! THANK YOU!”

As the steadicam swooped back around the Hot Topics table to get a final cutaway of the group before cutting to commercial, it picked up me
pleading
, “I am sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!!!!” But I was apologizing to her fucking
hand,
which was raised to my face. Jenny's hand squeezed my leg as I, terrified, tried to explain about my mother, and how much I respected BW and how I would never insult her on her own show. She yelled at me some more. I turned to Jenny and asked her what the fuck to do. Did I need to apologize when we came back from commercial break? She said to hang tight and it would roll off Barbara's back quickly. Sherri said, “Welcome to
The View
.” Whoopi looked at me, nodded, and did her eye-bulgey/forehead move.

I felt like I was drowning. Someone with a headset came over to me and grabbed my shoulder: “You're doing great. Forget that. It never happened.
We need you back
. Energy high. Get back in the game.
That didn't happen
.” Good advice. I took it.

We were back and talking about Jacqueline Bisset and I said I loved that she was aging naturally and hadn't touched her face. I blanched for a second wondering if Barbara was going to call the hospital on the air and have them pull the plug on Wacha. She has connections there! But she didn't seem to care. We moved on. I felt like I was in the clear.

During the next commercial break, she was back in my face. “I
created
this show to be about people from different
generations
with different points of
view
. Understand? Different
generations
!”

“
I know! And it is the most brilliant format!!! But everyone wants to know:
Who is going to replace Joy!?!?!
You still have an open spot!
Who will it be!?!?
” I was desperately trying to change the topic.