Remembering Joan Rivers

I know this will be hard to believe, but back in the day I was on an episode of Bill Mahr’s TV show with Joan Rivers (and Joan Collins… brrrrrr!). In fact, I sat right next to Ms. Rivers – and I mean barely inches away from her.

Needless to say, we’d never met and she had no idea who I was. On the other hand, I had an idea who she was, but I was wrong. Though, of course she was tiny, wearing a perfectly tailored wool outfit, perfect helmet hair and a ton of perfect make up. She smelled good too.

But these things are “givens” about Joan Rivers. The first things I actually noticed about her were that she was concentrating on something totally invisible to me and she was vibrating like a tuning fork. The latter so much so, that about 3 minutes into the show I had picked up a contact vibe. I looked down to check for seat belts—hey, it was Bill Mahr’s show, who knows?—and saw that Ms. Rivers was holding a yellow lined legal pad under the table in a death grip. It was completely covered with large cursive scrawls and vibrating in rhythm with her knees.

I had no idea what that was about, but was afraid to ask. Why? 2 reasons: I was a bit intimidated—duh! And I was afraid, if I broke her concentration—on whatever it was that was out there in “Joan Rivers’ World”—she just might spontaneously combust. During the first commercial break Bill Mahr leaned over and teasingly informed her that I had painted her portrait and put it up on the streets of major cities around the country in posters titled, “Women With Teeth.” And what did she think of that? Ms. Rivers stared straight into space and said, “Any publicity is good publicity!”

She was very funny on the show, by the way. I said just about nothing. But during the next commercial break—emboldened by her brand new knowledge of my existence— I politely asked her about the nature of that yellow legal pad and its large scribbles. Looking straight at me for the first time, she smiled like a community elder schooling a wayward child and said, “It’s jokes, Dummy!”

I must have inadvertently raised an eyebrow or something, because, after a beat, she almost smiled again, patted the top of my head and said, “Oh, grow up!” Right then and there, I fell in love.

Rest in peace, Joan.

September 9, 2014 at 8:32 pm | Robbie's Rants