The Andy Cohen Diaries (44 page)

FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2014—LOS ANGELES–SAG HARBOR

I had a panic attack on the plane, convincing myself we were going to crash, this after reading every word in the
New York Times
about the Malaysia Airlines tragedy. If you really sit there and think about hurtling through the sky, powerless, in a tube, you can really lose your shit. Needless to say, we made it, and I had poor Daryn pick up Wacha and my car and meet me at 6 p.m. at JFK, where she handed me my keys and took my driver back to the city, thereby saving me several hours and getting me out to the beach in two hours at peak travel time. Now I'm suddenly
that guy
who sends his assistant with his dog and car to get him at the airport? I guess I am and I like it! But I'll tell you what guy I will never be—I don't have her place my calls. I am decidedly not
that
guy. By the way, everybody
else
is that guy, because I am the only one on either coast placing my own calls. Went over to Jimmy and Nancy's for nosh and Fresquila; I swear when I pull up in the driveway Nancy has the best Pavlovian response—she pours a jumbo bag of nacho cheese Doritos in a bowl and I go to town for hours as we talk. Wacha and Gary Fallon are in
love
but I think their roughhousing completely freaks Jimmy out. This from a man who loves roughhousing himself, but Jimmy encourages them to have little time-outs. We talked about TV and music for four hours and I went home and slept like a baby.

SATURDAY, JULY 19, 2014—SAG HARBOR

Cloudy day. Went to breakfast at Sandy's, then wandered around East Hampton and bought a new pair of shoes and two terry-cloth hoody sweatshirts at Scoop. I am obsessed with them and wore one out of the store. Terry cloth is so seventies beachy.

On Skype with my parents, my dad said, “Who knew that you would turn into a ballplayer?” I said that was an overstatement and my mom put it more simply: “Oh, get a GRIP, LOU!” The subject changed to “Did the WORLD need Anderson to tell them you're a TOP?”

Hung out with Dr. Kyle.

Mark and Kelly picked me up for dinner at Janie Buffett's (Jimmy was singing in Boston). Janie—the coolest woman on Long Island—told me she's in Warhol's diary. Will Arnett and I talked about late night TV for a long time. He said he and Letterman always wind up talking about sobriety when he's on that show, and I told him about my chip line falling flat last December. He and Amy Poehler have uncoupled perfectly. And he showed me his underwear (just the top) because I wanted to know if
he
was still rocking the Björn Borgs. (Affirmative.) Molly Sims was there—she's cool. There was fantastic vaporizer action floating around at the Buffetts', so it was that kinda night.

SUNDAY, JULY 20, 2014—SAG HARBOR–NYC

Worked out at Tracy Anderson—my hip flexors will never be the same. Ow.

Met Kelly's parents for the first time after all these years. It's always a trip seeing your friends in the light of their parents. I loved how Kelly's dad talked about her. We took a helicopter back to the city and I was terrified that Wacha would jump out the window. I tried in vain to put the headphones on him and succeeded at the end, but he didn't need them—he was an absolute champ! I fell a little bit more in love with him.

Hickey is back from purgatory (shooting
Manhattan
in Santa Fe) for exactly twenty-four hours and we had a quick dinner at Good. I showed him the plans for my apartment and decided that right now they're designed too much for resale value, and I need to make them more about me.

Before I left for the show I looked for Janie Buffett in the
Warhol Diaries
, and there she is, hosting yearly New Year's Eve parties in Aspen that people like Barry, Diana Ross, Jack Nicholson, and Angelica were at. Warhol chose Janie's party over Cathy Lee Crosby's fete for Sonny Bono's wedding, which seems smart given it
wasn't
to Cher. And because Janie throws a great party.

MONDAY, JULY 21, 2014

Felt happy, grateful, and lucky all day—spurred on by a morning meeting with Eric Hughes to go over plans for my apartment. He had some great ideas and it was the first time I could totally visualize the new place. From there it was seven rounds of boxing and kicking with the Ninj, a quick lunch with Bruce, screening
RHONJ
, two conference calls, a nap, and two shows. Took Wacha for a walk before work, and the restaurant that used to be Focaccia (with the incredible Christmas tree during the holidays), then became Tremont (not so great), is now a diner-type place with a soda fountain. I think it'll be a big success. You won't be able to get in on weekends. How they'll pay their astronomical rent serving burgers I don't know, but I am praying they make it. Mxyplyzyk is still vacant, by the way, over a year later. So that's a greedy landlord with a large helping of karma. On the walk some woman was pretending not to be taking pictures of me picking up Wacha's poop, but she was. Benny Medina invited me to a dinner for JLo's birthday Thursday night in the Hamptons. Random. I'm there.

My aunt Gisela was at the show tonight and she keeps saying she hates to impose on me for tickets, and I keep trying to explain that there's no such thing as imposing on me for tickets to my own show. It's always so fun to see her. We taped Kate Hudson and Zach Braff; she was wearing a midriff and has great abs (Kate, not my aunt Gisela). She said it was the most fun she's had on a show. She had a high pony and answered a ton of Goldie questions exactly as you'd want her to.

My heart wasn't in it for tonight's live show. It was one of the Americans from
Ladies of London
and Lizzie from
RHOOC
but I was checked out, so much so that I went into the control room during commercial breaks, which has happened on only one other show. But the first time was for a reason—to give John Jude shit for giving me exasperated time cues during the show that are tantamount to him whispering in my ear, “
Ugh
—3:30 left in the act … [
sigh
] … I can barely stay awake.…
The control room is bored.
” The good news is that some woman in the audience brought me a bag of gifts that included a first-edition copy of the
I Love Lucy
book that I repeatedly checked out of the local library growing up, and was probably my mom's first sign that I might be gay. The woman had read about it in
Most Talkative
and brought me the book. And dog treats. And whiskey. Very thoughtful. After the show I got an email from SJ and Matthew, out at the beach, saying “Tell me the truth, could you concentrate on tonight's guests?” So I guess the gig was up. And Evelyn's text came in a minute later: “Don't like this show. No energy.” So she got that right.

TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2014

Woke up wondering what in the hell I bring JLo as a birthday present. Got a text from Bethenny saying she was pleasantly surprised with Bravo's offer after fighting with us about money for so many years. This thing is either going to close quickly or not at all.

Did weights with the Ninj today. I feel fat again—gonna weigh myself tomorrow. Went and spoke to NBCUniversal's summer interns—I do this every year because I believe that children are our future—teach them well and let them lead the way. OK, I am half serious, half paying tribute to Whitney. I do it because I figure if these kids are the chosen few that have managed to get these coveted internships, I owe it to them to pay it forward and give them whatever advice that might help them along—it's an incredibly competitive job market for these kids. But the questions ranged from “What's your favorite snack?” (dark chocolate, Doritos) to “What's one thing we wouldn't know about you from looking on the Internet?” (I said that I'm a stoner, but that's probably online and I am sure the Comcast HR people were
thrilled
I shared that)—so all in all I am not sure what I was able to impart to them in terms of wisdom.

I somehow said yes to a spread in Rachael Ray's magazine that I thought was just a Q&A but it turned out to require me to actually
cook
something, which ain't going to happen, so I made Daryn come over and do the cooking and then take pictures of me posing with the ingredients. It was orange glazed salmon over spinach and it was delicious. I took credit for it after I ate it. Am I
that guy
too? It was, after all, my kitchen. Two points for that?

We taped Gayle King and Kristin Chenoweth and it was perfect. We got talking about the swirl, and Gayle says she's never been with a white guy, and Kristin has never been with a black guy. (I said I'm the UN.) They were taking pictures together after and Gayle said they look like Michael Strahan and Kelly, which was both hilarious and true. Met Bruce and Liza for dinner at Morandi—Wacha joined too—and it was our last meal with Liza as a single girl—she gets married in ten days. We gotta write our toast! I feel like she's famous right now (on account of being a bride) and everybody wants to get to her. Michael and Wes showed up and were seated at the table next to us with Nate Berkus and his husband, Jeremiah. I got snippy, we went to the show, which was on in prime time tonight, and for a variety of reasons there was chaos until we went on. It was #legGate night and Aviva's leg flying through Le Cirque seemed to dominate Twitter. I hope the ratings are great. Bruce bartended and I plugged his Instagram. Liza, Bryan, and Hammy were in the audience, and after we went next door to the Ear Inn and sat outside. Bruce said he ran into Martha Stewart the other night and she told him I sent her black flowers and she was wondering if there was something she should be reading into that. I thought I sent her a white orchid to thank her for surprising me on my anniversary show. Gotta ask Daryn what we sent! (Black flowers do sound super-chic, though.)

I've been listening to inordinate amounts of Bob Marley lately. I am back on the reggae train and highly recommend it.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2014

Bruce got two thousand followers overnight. He's at 10k. Meanwhile Wacha is at 59k. They both got juice.

Got robocalled
again
by Newt Gingrich. I keep telling them to lose my damn number. I stayed on the line after Newt's important message about America's future and told the lady—again—to lose my number. I said, “Didn't he cheat on his wife and lie about it?” and she said, “What man in America hasn't?” and hung up on me. Lovely. Went to the Ninj and hit the scale—165. My new normal. I see a medium Sam's pizza in my future.

Hung out with Jackie for a couple hours, met Liza to help her finalize placement for her wedding tables.

I was the inaugural speaker at PMK's new series for their employees, spearheaded by Cindi Berger. They're a huge PR firm and I want all their clients on
WWHL
, so maybe this speaking gig will help. She interviewed me about my career, and when it was over gave me an incredible gift bag. (I will say I have received so many Beats by Dre headsets in the last few months that I could open a Beats franchise out of my apartment.) They also gave me an Audi with a driver for the day (way cooler than the headphones) and I got chummy with the man behind the wheel—Jay—who was a NYFD fireman at one time. He confirmed that there are plenty of gay firemen. I told him to get to work for me. We went to pick up Jeremy, who was in town looking at colleges. I'd gotten intel that he might like to go to Clyde Frazier's restaurant and on the way I revealed to him that I don't actually know who Mr. Frazier is, which became a big “let's laugh at Andy's stupidity” moment between him and Jay the driver. I'm happy to give my nephew the opportunity to laugh at me. And I might add that the fajitas at Mr. Frazier's suck. The basketball court is cool, though.

WWHL
was the
Million Dollar Listing: Miami
people. I made it through fine. I finally had a moment with Straight Pat before the show and said I was glad to hear he is actually Gay Pat and that I'm a little embarrassed to have been calling him Straight Pat and am sorry if I caused him any trauma. He was cool. The artist Mr. Brainwash was the bartender. He was the subject of the Banksy doc
Exit Through the Gift Shop
and we told people that he'd be painting live on the show, but it turned out that he couldn't because his painting is actually spray painting and the fumes and the cameras' aversion to spray paint made that impossible so it was kind of a bust, but he did make me a few prints that combined me with Warhol's image of Marilyn. It's scary and cool and derivative and weird all at once. I read some stuff on the Internet after the show that says he's a total fraud and doesn't do his own stuff at all, so now I'm wondering what the real story is, and need to find out if it's actually worth anything.

After the show I had a Tinder date, my first in a while, with someone completely age inappropriate. I can't even write the number down because I will hate myself while I type it. He is very handsome but laughs quite loudly at the end of sixty-five percent of his sentences. (That's a high rate of shrill laughter per sentence.) But two drinks in we were having a lively conversation about trends in fitness (Barry's, SoulCycle, Tracy Anderson, CrossFit—2014 is an exciting time for fitness!) and we had an intense goodbye on the street. Even so, unclear if we shall ever meet again.

THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2014—NYC–SAG HARBOR

The Bethenny deal is closed. I can't believe it. We're trying to keep a lid on it for as long as possible. We'll see how long that lasts. As of right now, only five people at Bravo know. Page Six says this dinner for JLo tonight is not a dinner, but a party at a restaurant. So that means you don't bring a gift, right?

My weeklong speaking tour about my career continued with a morning stop at the RCA Records off-site. I did it because they represent half the music industry and I also want their clients on
WWHL.