The Andy Cohen Diaries (46 page)

Here are some things Erin wanted to know:

•
Why don't I have a boyfriend? (I went through all the reasons and tried to keep it positive because there was a sadness in her voice.)

•
Do the Housewives feel pressure to get plastic surgery? (I said it's really fillers and injections we're looking at and they might feel pressure from each other.)

•
Is it hard firing them? (I said sometimes yes, sometimes no.)

•
Did you always want to be a celebrity? (I said I always wanted to be myself on TV.)

•
Is this the happiest I've ever been? (I told her I am by nature a happy person, so it's hard to assess. But that I'm pretty damn happy.)

•
She asked if being around narcissistic famous people all the time feeds into my own narcissism. (I said I'm around narcissistic non-famous people all the time too. So, no.)

They shot me walking Wacha and getting dressed for
The Tonight Show
. When I got to 30 Rock I schmoozed with Marcy Engleman and Julia Roberts in her dressing room in attempt number three to get her on
WWHL.
As we were talking, Daryn was leading my parents into my dressing room and I called them in and suddenly they were face-to-face with a huge movie star. “This is more than I bargained for,” my dad said in his best approximation of a former President. My mom was perky, then five minutes later announced in the safety of my own dressing room that she thought Barkin was better in
The Normal Heart
onstage than Roberts was in the film. Thank you for keeping it real, Evelyn. Oh, and she figured out who the boy band is at their hotel: “It's FIVE DEGREES OF SUMMER!” She meant, of course, 5 Seconds of Summer but who cares. Nancy Fallon redid Jimmy's dressing rooms and they are phenomenal. Dave, my parents, Daryn, Ryan, and Anthony from
WWHL
were all with me in the Adirondack Room. No one was carrying on about them, but
these
are the best dressing rooms in late night, and I wasn't envious because I just was happy to
finally
be rolling deep with a large posse. I left an Andy bobblehead on the faux fireplace as a housewarming gift for the dressing room. Jimmy came in and was sweet to my parents. I'd say my performance on the show was fair, but I was ebullient that they played the
What's Happening
theme song as my intro music. I wasn't bad, I just wasn't too great. And Jimmy was super nice about
WWHL
and plugging all m'crap. Generous. Julia called me back into her room again after we were both done and said she was nervous to go on Jimmy as she is usually a Dave girl. I said, “Will you please do my show?” and she said yes, next time. I believe it. (I'm always on the hunt, which can make me feel like a whore.) I raced downtown and met Hickey, who is finally back for good from shooting
Manhattan
, and who did we run into on the street but that catcher for the Mets that Bruce and I ogled from behind home plate a few months ago, Anthony Vito Recker! He is impossibly hot in person. Took pics of him and Wacha but Wacha wanted nothing to do with him. He's a Cardinals fan, what do we expect? Bruce and I had dinner at Good, then joined Liza's rehearsal dinner at the Palm for dessert—we were the late-night cameo. “Ricki Lake's husband turned me into a POTHEAD!” was how my mom greeted me. Apparently she got an earful about the uses of cannabis at dinner. It's about time she came to the dark side, although it'll never happen. She let everyone know that Dad would be wearing his “Box Suit” at the wedding tomorrow—a comment which is grotesque to all who hear it. Bruce put Liza's Brian up on the wall of the Palm and I gave her the wedding greeting from Valerie Cherish—both cherries on top of their best night ever, until tomorrow. Came home and hung with Lynn and Wacha and was in bed early. Well, 1 a.m., which ain't bad.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2014

Liza's wedding day! Hickey and I took Wacha to the dog run and he couldn't be bothered with his friends. He was handing out side eye and general indifference to all. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad raided Uniqlo for the third time this year—they think because everything is so cheap that they need to buy it all. Their fascination with that place knows no bounds.

Met Surfin's brother from Ohio; his name is also Surfin! Watch, I'll forget that. Em told me there's been much chatter in St. Louis about the fact that I didn't know who Clyde Frazier was when I took Jeremy to that restaurant, so I texted my nephew and asked him to name two Madonna songs. A couple hours later he texted back, “Like a Prayer and Holiday,” and I replied with several over-the-top emoticons. I was genuinely excited that he knew them! SJ's mani-pedi lady, Gina, texted me that she was in my neighborhood (I later found out she was servicing the paws of Miss Liv Tyler) in case I wanted some buffin' on my nails. I did and while I was soaking in it, Bruce and I hashed out our toast for tonight. We built on Bruce's Smothers Brothers idea, where he is my shy brother and I keep setting him up for one-word answers. It's either gonna be great or sink, like so many things. Lynn got home and we got dressed in a flurry. Liza—consummate producer—had warned everyone that traffic on a Friday to Thirty-first Street and Twelfth Avenue would be rotten and she was right. Everyone arrived acting as though they had to travel through Afghanistan to get there. I hadn't expected to get emotional during the ceremony, but the sight of my friend of twenty years—a friend who in my mind has been perennially stuck at age seventeen (in the best way)—walking down the aisle calmly looking her guests in the eye with all the composure of, dare I say,
a grown woman
, just did me in. Waterworks. The sobbing was paused by the divine Mary Matthews, who led the ceremony and began with a nod to Liza and her culty Web series: “Welcome to the finale of
39 Second Single
, brought to you by
Match.com
”—laughs! (They indeed met on
Match.com
.) They wrote their own vows and they were lovely, especially Brian's. I thought Jamie was going to faint but if I was Liza's twin I would've too. Hell, I'm not her twin and I felt a little faint. I didn't expect it all to touch me so much. During cocktail hour I brought my mom over to Joan Rivers and facilitated an open mic during which I threw out topics and Joan went to town about Streisand (so many stories about coming up together—she imitated her waving with a finger across a room), Heidi Abromowitz (a fictional name based on a real person), Woody Allen (she loves him, but still tells Soon-Yi jokes), Nancy Reagan (will forever be grateful she sent a plane to pick up Edgar after he committed suicide), and Barbara Bush (Joan confirmed she and Nancy hated each other). Two topics on which they did
not
need my help were Israel (they both were going
off
on what's going on there) and Bill Maher. Joan agrees with my mom that I shouldn't do the show. She says she doesn't know if
she
would do it because it's very serious and you gotta know your stuff. So it's official: if they ever
do
call, I'm out. I took a pic of Joan and my mom that's a perfect juxtaposition of a natural and unnatural face. Joan and I were talking about the
Warhol Diaries
and I told her about my own. She said that I better include some good dirt and told me that her good friend Roddy McDowall had incredible diaries but made a stupid decision: in his will he says they can't be published until 2050. “My grandson will be sixty then and
he
won't even care! Who's gonna care about Danny Kaye's sex life in 2050!?” So true. And how do I get ahold of those diaries?

Old friends everywhere: Ricki had great hair, Amanda was in fine form and her chemistry with my dad was off the charts as always (stepmother Amanda? Oy!), Troy looked amazing—vintage Troy from 1990—Bill was the perfect proud dad, Joanna was gorgeous, and most importantly Liza, who has the most consistently positive and celebratory energy of anyone I know, was present, poised, and so in love with Brian. Our toast killed. (It was surreal doing a
routine
in front of Joan.) Near the end of dinner, Joan—seated across from me—took an empty Ziploc from her purse and tidily filled it with meat for her dogs. At some point in the night Alexandra ran over to everyone and glitterbombed them, which would be irritating at anyone's wedding but Liza's, who is the Queen of Glitter. (Liza keeps the glitter industry robust.) So we all had faces full of it. Dancing with Kelly to a fifteen-minute version of “Last Dance” was a top three moment of our friendship. If there has ever been a moment when two people were feeling a song, it was then. Oh, and I danced with my mom to “I like big butts and I cannot lie” and that Icona Pop song “I Love It.” Bruce's shirt came off on the dance floor, which is just what happens at this point. Someone took Hickey's suit jacket and so he left wearing a stranger's suit jacket. Went to Barracuda for a nightcap with Mark, Kelly, Hickey, and Bruce and ran into Keith Kuhl, who was the one who'd taken Hickey's jacket by mistake! As mentioned, I live in Mayberry. Bruce, Hickey, and I stumbled—and I mean stumbled home—down Eighth Avenue and it was one of those New York City nights where everyone on the street is a supermodel. In front of my building Bruce drunkenly convinced me to bag going to Sag tomorrow. The countdown is on for his move back to LA and we need to maximize our time together. As I was going to bed, I saw that I had a message. It was from the bride, she just wanted me to know she was wearing a Mazel thong under her wedding dress. All was right with the world. Good night, NYC.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2014

Woke up to rain, wondering in bed if Jeremy really knew the names of those Madonna songs. He could've Googled them. Or asked someone. Chilled out with Lynn and wedding debriefed.

Bill Persky called and we had a lovefest. He said, “I love the friendship you have with your mom—it's a relationship but also a friendship. And your dad is so elegant and just lets it happen. But you need to play catch with the man once in a while.” The
Daily Mail
's online site, not a reputable source for much of anything, cobbled together my and Kelly and Mark's Instagram pics from the wedding and did a breathless piece about Kelly at her “best friend's” wedding, claiming that
Bruce
was the groom. Went with Bruce and Ava to Liza and Brian's roof for more wedding debriefing. Mary Matthews says the
Daily Mail
is “Instagram journalism”—I like it! Billy Eichner came and we shared an Uber home with the dog. Got in bed so early it was a record—ten-thirty—and checked into a
Designing Women
marathon. It's so 1990: they all look like drag queens, first of all, and they just sit around spouting about feminism. I was transfixed by Julia Sugarbaker's enormous eyeglasses. Each half hour is like a play. They could do it now and call it
Golden Designing Women
. I still got it.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 2014

Bruce says
Designing Women
was kinda
Housewives
-esque and that's an interesting concept. Anderson is heading to Israel. Poor guy. Mellow day. Did work at home and got sucked into
The Wiz
on HBO Family. It's simultaneously awful and kinda great, featuring every huge black star from 1978 and Diana Ross—at thirty-four—playing Dorothy; the acting is, um, not amazing. It's sporadically inventive, though, and feels huge, and when Diana sings “Home” at the end, all is completely forgiven. It's worth it for that song and “Ease on Down the Road” and the scene where they kill Mabel King the wicked witch
by pulling the fire alarm.

Brought Wacha over to Bruce's, where Barkin was cooking spaghetti and meatballs, and ran into Isaac Mizrahi in front of the building. He was wearing all black on an August summer day and was ready with a (good) show idea for us to produce together and a proclamation about his new “most chic Housewife” (Shannon Beador). I love him. The daft doorman wasn't there and the sub knew who I was and sent me right up. Makes a difference! Barkin put me in a food coma with her spaghetti. We were live tonight at nine and after that dinner, I was schlumped in the backseat of Ray's car on the way to the studio. It was Melissa and Joe, so I didn't have to work too hard, but the audience was dead and I literally forgot what I was going to say mid-sentence at one point, which is never a pretty look on live TV and feels like forever even though it's only a few seconds. I was in bed by eleven-thirty. Breaking a lot of early-bedtime records this week.

MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 2014

The
Sunday Morning
crew came to shoot me boxing with the Ninj this morning. I was kind of showing off for them and coming out of the gate hitting really hard and by the time they left, after three rounds, I was completely pooped. I limped through three more. Met Bruce and Liza at his house (temp doorman, sent me right up) and had our final wedding rehash (the three of us can rehash endlessly) before sending Liza off for her Hawaii honeymoon. The next big goodbye is going to be to Bruce in a couple weeks and I almost can't handle it already. Come fall my life is going to be a whole lot lonelier. (Maybe that will push me into a boyfriend situation?) The show was
RHOOC
Shannon and Elisabeth Moss. I was stumbling all over words, but completely sober. Mom texted after we went off air: “Pretty good.”

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014

Liza called from her Hawaiian Airlines plane, excited to be in first class. I had an incredibly boring (almost fell asleep midway through it) workout today and wandered home feeling trapped in a web of monotony, feeling like I do the same thing every day and just blah. My languid spell was broken when I walked into my lobby and the sweet elderly lady from down the hall (who I overheard crying and pleading on the phone a few weeks ago) approached me. She was shaky, in a state.
“I need a witness,”
she almost begged, holding out a piece of paper. I agreed immediately and we walked over to Surfin's perch, where I saw that I was about to sign her living will. My mind was racing, wondering what brought about this suddenly urgent situation. The moment felt simultaneously so personal yet completely anonymous. She looked on helplessly, and in the flash of a pen, it was over and I was in the elevator as Surfin provided her second signature. I had a quiet lunch in my apartment thinking about time, how fleeting it is. You see people in your building every day. You watch them age, their kids grow, change, and you see little things start to happen to us all. Then they are gone. You don't see them again. The wonderful Italian couple down the hall who loved each other so much. He went first; she held on a few years, then disappeared. Now there's a cute young couple in there. My current apartment belonged to a beloved woman who lived in this building for thirty years. Now I'm here, and I'm expanding into the apartment of the man upstairs, whom I never knew but was here for half a lifetime. Apartment living is at once intimate and impersonal, with moments like today that you can't forget. Sometimes I wish I was Wacha.