The Andy Cohen Diaries (6 page)

I got to the show and had so much shit to do beforehand—voice-overs, rehearsals, taping birthday greetings to randoms—all while the game was going on. I was going mental. As detached as I felt about the show, Rachel Maddow and Michael Strahan were great. It was so fun having two professional talk-show hosts on, so easy. I really like her. And I really liked him. In fact I was very surprised how much I liked him. Eli was at the show, which always feels like a celebration these days since he was our original Bravo exec on
WWHL
and we've been
through it
together. To celebrate, he and I went out afterwards like old times to the Cubbyhole and then had a burger at Corner Bistro at 2 a.m. I swore I wasn't going to eat the whole burger. I told myself I was just gonna have a piece. I ate the whole thing and was ready to order another one. I went home and watched Cardinals highlights (we won) and decided to go see the games in St. Louis this weekend. I didn't go to bed until three-thirty.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013

Neicy was here yesterday. I forgot that I'd left the dead bug under my sink for the last four days but I checked and she removed it. Phew. What's the etiquette around leaving insects for the housekeeper?

I taped
Bethenny
and it was kind of surreal to be a guest on her big new talk show. She was asking me about my love life, which I'm more comfortable asking others about than revealing myself, and she asked me how many times I had been in love and I said two and a half. I said how many times do you think you fall in love in a life and she said, “Two and a half times.” Oh well, I guess my goose is cooked after my college love, John Hill, and the one-half time in 1999. Maybe I still have the 50 percent I didn't use ahead of me.
Please, Lord. Give me 50 percent of love.

We married the couple in the Clubhouse tonight. They both had been so excited for so long that I think they somehow blew their wads before the actual show, so it didn't have a ton of energy. It was Giggy's second wedding in the Clubhouse. He was ring bearer. We all decided that the bride wanted a reality show out of it. There were tons of people there, which meant smiling and posing for numerous combinations of photos, so that was a lil irritating. It was also John Jude's birthday, so afterwards I got Sonja Morgan to do an improvised burlesque number singing “Happy Birthday” like Marilyn Monroe a capella, in an insane performance with a cake with twenty candles on it, which made the entire night worth it, and then we partied in the Clubhouse until really late.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2013—NYC–ST. LOUIS

“Delta shuttle. Miss Field?” This morning I woke up and got in the wrong car to go to the airport. I realized it's a car for Sally Field, who is my neighbor, who I guess also had a noon flight but hers was the Delta shuttle. I was on American to St. Louis. The driver was not amused by my desire for him to deliver a simple “hello” message to Miss Sally Field, who I have never once seen in the building. I got in my real car with my driver, a non-English-speaking gentleman of the Asian persuasion. We immediately fell into that inevitable negotiation over which route to take to the airport. The guy said—in broken English—“Midtown Tunnel” and I got the sense he was going to cross at Thirty-fourth Street, which is not the route I prefer. So I said, “You're going to cross downtown, right? Twenty-sixth or Twenty-second?” Frankly, my preference is to cross on Twelfth Street but he had already missed that. I could tell he was just yessing me, saying, “Traffic, traffic. Crossing Midtown.” We crossed at Thirty-sixth Street, so that didn't work out for me. I did a lot of angry muttering under my breath and he did a lot of happily ignoring me.

During my backseat driving, my contact from
Glamour
magazine called to say they had hit some “stumbling blocks” regarding the interview. I said, “Are you calling to tell me you are cutting the Madonna section out of the article?” and he goes, “Well, we did hit some stumbling blocks, but I'm representing the writer, which is you.” And I said, “How do
you
feel? It's your magazine.” He said there was just so much strong material that it was hard to choose from and since it is the Woman of the Year issue it had to have a certain tone. My read of the situation—and I only
think
I know what goes on inside a magazine—is that Gaga's publicist didn't want to include that stuff, or that
Glamour
didn't even want to jeopardize their relationship by asking her. I wasn't surprised, but I wanted the interview to generate some buzz. Then I told him the great thing is that I bet the publicist doesn't even realize we have this stuff about Katy Perry—the “no comment” about her feelings toward her rival. More hemming and hawing and then he said, “Right now that's not in the piece.
I'm representing you, though
. You're the writer. It's challenging. There are space issues and I really want to get her stuff in about artistic freedom and her Bullying Foundation.” I cut him off. “What you're saying to me is that this is a positive article and you need to protect your long-term relationship, so you are telling me this is all out.” He finally capitulated and said, “Yes. None of this stuff is currently in the piece. But I will still fight for it.” I ended it cordially, “OK, then we're done.” So that's that.

My plane was delayed and I passed the time by studying this straight gay man at the gate—with two kids and a wife—who was wearing basically hot pants and a tight polo shirt. He was very built. I would've done it with this guy. I am consistently transfixed by straight gay guys. What is going on in their heads, or anywhere else in their bodies, for that matter? So I was switching between watching him and
Headline News
, where the lady anchor had this big chunky side braid. I felt like that lady was sending me a message. The problem was that I couldn't figure out what she could be trying to say.

I got to St. Louis and had a nice hangout with Blouse, who is always a happy sight. I love coming home on a day when Blouse will be at the house so we can catch up about any number of local (what's going on at my Aunt Judy's) and national (Beyoncé) current events. Blouse didn't like the Clubhouse wedding at all. She thought—among other things—that the guy's tuxedo looked funny, and she was kind of right. Then I told her that I was licensed to marry and I would marry her and Eddie, her boyfriend. She didn't really like that idea and it kind of drove her from the room. Or maybe it was when we were saying my mom should be the bridesmaid at Blouse's wedding. I should've asked her take on leaving that bug for Neicy. I don't think I could leave a bug for Blouse. She's family.

At the game, the Cardinals put us in this suite with Jim Edmonds—a Cardinal legend—and it was so cool being with him. My mom very sweetly—and a little too loudly—whispered to me with half-pursed lips, “Maybe he's on YOUR TEAM!” I knew he wasn't because his last wife tried out to be an OC Housewife. And I doubly knew he wasn't because he was with a hot girl who happens to be the sister of a hot guy I know in NYC. (Hot siblings are the best.) We were seated like twenty-five rows behind Em and Rob, and my mom spent much of the time riding the way that her son-in-law was ineffectively waving his homer hankie. My mom kept saying, “He's PUSHING the RALLY TOWEL. He's not WAVING it. Look at your sister! She doesn't even HAVE a rally towel. WHO DOESN'T TAKE A RALLY TOWEL when they go into the stadium? They're FREE! It's the PLAYOFFS!” Incidentally, I was waving my homer hankie like my life depended on it.

Everybody in St. Louis, all they talk about is how great St. Louis is. The hostess lady in the suite asked me if I lived in LA and I said no, I live in New York, and she said to me very earnestly, “Why, may I ask, would you
ever leave St. Louis
?” She was completely baffled at the idea that someone would leave St. Louis, just stumped. If she didn't get immediately why I might leave St. Louis to live in New York, I wasn't going to be able to explain it to her. I bowed and slowly walked backwards.

With great flourish the dessert cart arrived. I was too into the game to indulge, but my mom was in the suite taking photos of every angle of the damn cart to show me, or whomever. She kept saying, “You can't BELIEVE this thing! You MISSED IT!” When I was ready for dessert a few innings later, they went and got it for me. (I reluctantly conceded to my mother that it actually
was
an amazing dessert cart.) The game was tied back and forth and went into extra innings. My dad hit the wall at the top of the thirteenth—around midnight—when it somehow dawned on him that it could go on forever. He was like, “What's the end game here? When are we going to leave?” and my mom enthused, “When someone CROSSES HOME PLATE, that's when we leave! We are waiting for A RUN TO BE SCORED on either side.” I told her to lay off him; the man is eighty-one and made it to midnight. I asked my father if the conversation could be deferred until the Cardinals batted, and, thankfully, they won the game. I promised Cardinal legend Jim Edmonds he could bartend on
WWHL
in November.

I was supposed to meet reliever Jason Motte for a whiskey but it was 1:00 a.m. and we decided not to. He is a Twitter buddy. The truth is I just want to be friends with baseball players. I am 100 percent in awe of them. Consuelos once told me that baseball player starfuckers are called “green flies”—so I guess I'm one of them. (Maybe I'm a fruit fly?) I was also DMing Motte, who has a beard, asking if he was upset about this guy on the Dodgers who I thought was stealing his look, and he was so nice about it. He said, “Oh, he is a great guy” or something, and here I was trying to instigate a fight with this Dodger.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2013—ST. LOUIS

I realized this morning that the moral of the
Glamour
magazine story is not that they cut all the juicy material for fear of hurting their relationship and promoting positivity, it's that I am a nasty bottom-feeding shit stirrer. Here I am thinking the worthy parts of this article are the parts where she is trash-talking Madonna and dismissing Katy Perry. Am I, in fact, a promoter of negativity among women (an accusation I've heard before) as well as between baseball-playing men? Is this the person I have become?
No!
I'm an enthusiast! I swear I am. A drama-loving enthusiast.

At Game 2 this afternoon, cousin Josh and I were back in Suite 6 with Jim Edmonds. Tony La Russa threw out the first pitch and I texted him and said great job and he said “Oh, are you here? There's something I need to speak to you about and it's a matter of national significance.” I was like whoa, OK … this sounds big, so I replied, “I'm with Jim Edmonds in Suite 6.” He texted back, “I'm on my way.” Wow.
The former GM of the Cardinals needs to speak to me about a matter of national importance at Game 2?
So in walks Tony, past the St. Louis–loving hostess and her bountiful dessert cart, and starts telling me that the issue is that he “and many other people” feel that I should give the Mazel on Sunday to his buddy Howard Schultz, who runs Starbucks.
He and many other people
have an opinion about who gets the Mazel? They are doing a petition to register people's outrage over the government shutdown. And in the middle of showing me the petition, and my wondering when the “national significance” part comes in, he says, “Oh, lemme pause right now because David Freese is about to do something big,” and I turn to the diamond and just like that David Freese hits a double!!! I couldn't believe it. And his response to my bewilderment? “If I know one thing about something, it's baseball.”
How did he know that was about to happen?
It made me feel very inside, but also like the whole thing was fixed. I'm still flummoxed about it. He left and Jim Edmonds started going on a rant about how people should stay out of politics. He's probably right. I won't be giving the Mazel to Howard Schultz—it seems like a total shill for Starbucks. If Howard Schultz actually
ended
the freaking shutdown, I would give him the Mazel. Meanwhile, we won that game and it was a glorious day.

That night I went to Em and Rob's and my folks went to the symphony. I was giving my brother-in-law shit about the way he was pushing the homer hankie, and Em said the reason
she
didn't take a homer hankie was because she knew we were sitting behind her and that Mom would be analyzing her handling of the homer hankie. How smart is that? And so this entire homer-hankie thing reaffirms why I don't live in St. Louis. I would buckle under the pressure.

At the end of the night, I lay at the foot of my parent's bed telling them about my day and the game, like I was ten years old. It was really sweet.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2013—ST. LOUIS–NYC

“I beg you to NEVER GO ON BILL MAHER!” My mother was
pleading
with me at breakfast to never, ever go on Bill Maher's HBO show, which is a curious, bimonthly refrain from her. She thinks I wouldn't be able to keep up and it's her way of being protective, but she's not getting that it's a non-issue because
they ain't asking
.

Guess who was on my flight home? The effeminate dad and his wife and kids. Actually, he was really butching it up. I think he knew I was onto him. We had a
Lord of the Rings
reunion on my show with Ian McKellen and Orlando Bloom that aired directly after the
RHONJ
reunion. Everybody wanted me to talk about the reunion but I had these two huge stars on and I had nothing more to say about
RHONJ
. We need to shake that show up, but I wasn't going to say that publicly. I'm sure our ratings stunk. I don't know that I gave the people what they wanted tonight.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2013

I'm going to call what happened today Playing-Card-Gate. Bravo made playing cards for clients, with each face card featuring a different Bravolebrity (I was the Joker, Lisa Vanderpump was Queen of Diamonds), and the person who designed them (who is young and not American) made NeNe the Queen of Spades. He had no idea that “spade” had any bad connotation. We had them all destroyed, but discovered that they'd been sent out to the talent a couple days before, so they'd arrived in Atlanta. I was the lucky guy who got to call NeNe and let her know what had happened. I felt totally rotten. NeNe was incredibly cool. She said Gregg had noticed, but she was just happy to be a queen. And she is one. Potentially disastrous situation diverted!