Diary of a Mad Diva (22 page)

NOVEMBER 16

Dear Diary:

Trying to diet, but it’s so hard. I’ll eat anything. I floss with fettuccine. My friends in California say I should increase the fiber in my diet. So when I finish writing this diary, I plan to eat it.

Here’s how I know it’s time to diet:

• I stepped on a scale and it said, “Come back when you’re alone.”
  
• Last night I ate what I thought was a potato chip and two minutes later Cooper came in screaming, “Where’s my turtle?”
  
• If I want to shed ten pounds fast, I drop my cat.
  

I’ve tried different diets, like the Rihanna diet. You date Chris Brown and he slaps the pounds off of you.

I love the Jewish American Princess diet. You never swallow. Then there’s the Hollywood Starlet diet: Nothing goes in your mouth unless there’s money involved.

I know, I know, diets just don’t work. I have to change the way I eat. The only woman who ever lost twenty pounds and kept it off was Marie Antoinette.

NOVEMBER 17

Dear Diary:

As I am having lunch today with Matt Lauer, I tried to catch up on the important news of the day by reading
People
,
Us Weekly
,
TV Guide
and
Tiger Beat
. I accidentally picked up the
New York Times
—and I mean accidentally; the headlines were all about Cyria. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about Ciria. It bores me so much I’m not even sure how to spell Syrya. It’s not like
Fashion Police
is big in Damascus (there are only so many ways to accessorize a burka), and amidst the dull, useless stories about government budgets, Wall Street offerings and world famine, was a full-page ad that said, “Meeting Temple Grandin Is an Experience!” A woman who’s studying “library science” at Texas Christian University wrote the ad.

First of all, anyone who majors in library science is in major trouble. Libraries are over. Whispering is not a science. Show me where there’s a ground-breaking for a library that doesn’t have a president’s name on it and a gift shop in the lobby. No one goes to the library anymore except to buy Christmas gifts for people they hate: nothing like giving people you hate decks of cards with drawings of famous literary giants on the back—Words-worth, Sandburg, Whitman . . . Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a two of clubs with Sylvia Plath’s head in the oven on the back.

Face it, we don’t need libraries; we have the Internet. Libraries are as over as Tony Orlando, with or without Dawn, and this kills me, as I’ll miss the guys masturbating in the stacks, and the sound of people ripping out pages that they planned to copy for their term papers.

Back to the Temple Grandin ad. What kind of an “experience” could it be meeting Temple Grandin? She looks like a deranged, middle-aged cowgirl with few social skills and mild flapping issues. Never mind “experience,” I think the ad should be more specific, like “Meet Temple Grandin. Watch her ignore you as she rocks back and forth and beats her head on a wall while she eats her cereal.”

FYI, some people say Temple Grandin should fix her teeth. I say, why? It’s not like she’s husband hunting. I say, “As long as they can chop, leave them alone.”

NOVEMBER 18

Dear Diary:

Landmark New York buildings are like beautiful old ladies—and like most old ladies they have an ugly asshole. I live in a landmark building and boy, does it have a huge asshole. She lives two flights above me and she’s a deadbeat and a troublemaker and these are just her good points. She’s the world’s worst neighbor. Living next to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, would have been better; other than the urine smell and occasional ticking from inside his shack, I hear that Teddy was a relatively pleasant fella.

Anyhow, she owes the building $200,000 in condo fees and the board is trying to get her out, but New York City’s housing laws are so tight it was easier getting those thirty-three Chilean miners out of the ground than it will be to get this bitch out of her apartment.

NOVEMBER 19

Dear Diary:

Got a new dog! Just like Britney Spears, he’s a rescue dog. He was found wandering around Lake Tahoe, looking for food, shelter and street-grade crystal meth. He’s a Japanese Chin. He came home last night and he fit in immediately; I’m sure he’s gay. Instead of humping my leg, he measured it and suggested I lengthen my hem and not be locked into black for a leash as my go-to color.

NOVEMBER 20

Dear Diary:

I’m starting to prepare for my big Thanksgiving dinner. It’s my favorite holiday. Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful. Every year I throw a big catered dinner for family, friends and people who can either advance my career or destroy those of my competitors.

The hard part is the seating chart. Some people are fascinating, some people are engaging and some are so boring that even if they accidentally brushed up against a candle and set themselves on fire they couldn’t hold your attention. When I first started having these holiday dinners I combined the groups and mixed the fascinatos in with the dullos, thinking that each part of the table would have at least one interesting person sitting in it. I no longer do this. I sit all the bores together because it turns out bores don’t know they’re boring, which explains how Dr. Phil and Ann Curry seem to have so much fun interviewing each other while all of their viewers are slipping into a coma.

NOVEMBER 21

Dear Diary:

I love my new dog, but I hate his name. It’s Teegan. Sounds like a drunken Irishman. If I wanted a dog named after a drunken Irishman I’d call him Colin Farrell. I’d like to change his name but he answers to Teegan and I don’t know if, or how long, it would take for him to adapt to a new name. It took my cousin Shirley years to adapt to her new name, Elliott. It took him longer to adapt to the name than the sex change. For years, if we wanted any response out of him we had to say, “Elliott! Shirley! One of you! Zip up your pants, your schlong is showing.”

The only celebrity dog I know who changed his name was Rin Tin Tin. He was born Randy Tinowitz but he thought it sounded too Jewish for the business so he changed it. History will attest it worked like a charm and Little Rinny worked till the day he died. He even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! Six-pointed, but still, as I said to my rabbi the other day, a star’s a star!

NOVEMBER 22

Dear Diary:

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, and all the postmenopausal women and residents of nursing homes are talking about is where he or she was when Kennedy was shot. I remember that morning like it was yesterday. Hard to believe, but I was in a coffee shop in Dallas, Texas, having breakfast with Lee Harvey Oswald! I had met him at an NRA breakfast. (Guess what the menu was? Bangers and mash!) He shot me a sexy look—actually he shot me three sexy looks in less than 4.9 seconds. How’d he do it? We clicked immediately. We found we both loved travel, books, suppositories and depositories (ha-ha) and felt pink tweed was wrong for November. Lee’s first words to me were, “Don’t Cubans make you laugh?” That morning we were making small talk (how to mow grassy knolls) when suddenly he jumped up and said, “Joanie, baby, I gotta run.” I said, “Leelee, where to?” He replied, “I’ve got a thing downtown, and then maybe an afternoon movie.” Then he took off and the rest is history. Now, all these years later, knowing what I know, when I reflect back on that fateful day, I
still
cannot believe what happened. That bastard. That sonuvabitch. That motherfucker. He left me with the check!

NOVEMBER 23

Dear Diary:

Going to the dentist today. Nothing wrong with my teeth, but at my age it’s the only chance I get for a man to tell me to “open wide.”

NOVEMBER 24:

Dear Diary:

It’s holiday season so I have to start getting my credit cards ready. Chanukah starts in three days, which is a huge pain in the ass because holiday sales don’t usually start until
after
Thanksgiving. The Jewish holidays work off the Hebrew calendar, which is very confusing. They’re just like the hip-breaking grannies in the Mt. Hebron Nursing Home—they fall at different times.

NOVEMBER 25

Dear Diary:

Off to QVC to hawk my baubles, bangles and beads. I love having my own line and I love being on QVC. But the TV pitchperson field is getting too crowded. At first there were just a few schmatte mongers on TV, but now every big star, minor celebrity and desperate has-been is on TV selling something. My favorite is Suzanne Somers. Suzanne fascinates me because there’s nothing she can’t and doesn’t sell, and there’s nothing she’s not an expert on. If you want smooth thighs, fun recipes, tips on aging or cures for cancer, hunger and AIDS, Suzanne’s your gal. Who would’ve thunk that Chrissy from
Three’s Company
would become the Einstein of her generation? I’m so jealous of her energy; she makes Martha Stewart look like a paraplegic who mixes her cakes with a spoon held in her mouth.

NOVEMBER 26

Dear Diary:

Went out to dinner tonight with a couple of my theater friends (and when I say “theater friends” I mean two old queens whose scrotums are so wrinkled and brown you want to serve them with sour cream). We wound up sitting at a table near P. Diddy. We’d never met so I wasn’t sure whether to call him Diddy, Mr. Diddy, P, or PP. I walked right over to him and said, “What do I call you? Puffy? Puff Daddy? I’m Jew-Mommy.”

I’m confused. So many rappers have nicknames, like P. Diddy and T.I. and Ray J, but those stupid nicknames really help sell records. I’m going to call my BFF Celine Dion and tell her she could hit the charts again if she gave herself a rap name. Knowing Celine, I’m going to suggest C. Unty.

NOVEMBER 27

Dear Diary:

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and Cooper asked me who I liked better, the Pilgrims or the Indians. No contest. The Pilgrims. No disrespect to the Indians (and notice I call them Indians, even though I should be politically correct and call them Native Americans or Previous Owners)—if not for them I’d be broke and Cooper would be having Thanksgiving dinner at a bus station with a couple of hobos and Wesley Snipes.

I play a lot of Indian Casinos and every day I thank God General Custer was a bad shot and left a few of those Red Fellows alive,
*
or I’d be broke. (I make a lot of wampum off of them.) Not once in all these years have I been hired to play a Pilgrim casino. But for me, if I had to choose, as I said, it would be the Pilgrims. You see, fashion trumps fairness and even though the Pilgrims stampeded and marauded the Indians, Cochise and his idiot pals
always
wore flats—not a good look for formal events or red carpets—and the two biggest Indian exports—blankets and turquoise—have zero market value on QVC.

The Pilgrims on the other hand are an absolutely untapped gold mine. When, since Plymouth Rock, other than in costume dramas or on
Sister Wives
, have you ever seen a non-retarded person wear buckle shoes? Never! Even Payless doesn’t carry them, and they sell footwear made out of cardboard and luncheon meat. I look at Pilgrim-wear as a whole new division of the Joan Rivers line. In fact, I’m going to call my designer first thing Monday morning and have him start working on buckles, aprons, ill-fitting black hats and dowdy bonnets. I don’t care if Halle Berry herself wore them, they make any wearer unfuckable, and I think there is a huge untapped market for People Who Want to Look Unfuckable: Muslim women during Ramadan, girls who date rich lepers, and Jewish wives who have just had their hair done.

NOVEMBER 28

Dear Diary:

Don’t have much time to write. It’s Thanksgiving and I barely have time today to get a massage, do my hair, put on makeup, get a brow lift and microchip all the help before my relatives and hanger-ons arrive. Bon appétit. Or should I say, knowing the guest list, gobble-gobble?

NOVEMBER 29

Dear Diary:

Last night was a huge success. The table looked beautiful, the food was delicious and my recipe for braised parakeet eyeball was a big hit, until they found out it wasn’t caviar they were spooning onto their crackers. The highlight of my Thanksgiving dinner is always at the end of the meal when we go around the table and everyone gets up and says what they’re thankful for. Most people mention their families or friends or health. Last night my favorite was when Jon Hamm’s ex-girlfriend stood up and said she was grateful for padded chairs and vaginal rejuvenation surgery. Perfect end to a perfect evening.

NOVEMBER 30

Dear Diary:

I am still feeling so stuffed and bloated and huge from that great Thanksgiving dinner, so I’m spending the entire day today in bed, watching movies. I’m going to watch
Precious
,
Fatso
and
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
I should feel better about myself in the morning.