Official Book Club Selection (32 page)

That “young lady” part was better than anything I could have come up with. Calling a ten-year-old a “lady”? How much would I have laughed if I was ten and everyone called me a “terrific young lady”!

Also, I was so thrilled that somebody as powerful as Steven Spielberg knew who I was. I thought, This is great! Seriously, that was a career high. But I think this means I would not do well in a Mafia situation, because if a hit were put out on me I’d be too excited. I’d just be walking around saying, “The Gottis know my name! The Gottis know my name! Woo-hoo!” As blood came gushing out of the hole in my head.

Well, E! didn’t fire me right away, but when it came time for me to cover the Academy Awards for them, they stuck me on what they called the “media bridge”—a bridge that hovered over the red carpet by several dozen feet, and in my case was a euphemism for “you’re not getting anywhere near those fucking celebrities”—and eventually after the Oscars I was replaced by Giuliana Rancic née DiPandi.

But I did live off that brouhaha for quite a while. There was a funny moment at a gift suite for the Golden Globes—back when doling out free shit to famous people was respectable, and none of it was taxed—when a woman came up to me as I was getting my free under-eye cream and said, “You know, you upset Dakota Fanning so much that she couldn’t leave her bedroom for days, and she wouldn’t let anyone open the curtains.”

I just looked at her like she was batshit. “What are you talking about?”

She said, “She cried and cried for days in her room.”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure you’re making that up,” I said, and walked away.

Someone who saw all this said to me, “That’s someone from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.” The group who chooses who wins Golden Globes.

“Well, I don’t care. I think that was someone from the Fucking Crazy Association.”

Big deal. Spielberg won’t let me star in any of his movies, and I won’t win any Golden Globes for the Spielberg movies I’m not in. I’ll take my celebrity rehab jokes any day, thank you very much.

And by the way, I have nothing against Dakota Fanning, who’s obviously a very gifted and talented young actress. I mean, lady. But I would like a muffin basket from all the Lohans, because it would have been so much easier to make that joke, and nobody would have flinched.

As a side note, I’ll tell you just how vicious Hollywood really is. One of my agents actually said to me, “You know, if you had just made that joke about Haley Joel Osment or Jonathan Lipnicki, it would have been fine. Because they’re not hot anymore.”

Ouch. Can I just say, that is way more harsh than any fucking Dakota Fanning joke I could make. That Hollywood would have given me the stamp of approval if I had just picked on a kid whose “career” had cooled instead of a kid who was behind a giant blockbuster where they could all make money, was really an eye-opener. So for the record, my apologies are to Jonathan Lipnicki and Haley Joel Osment. Stay off the smack, boys.

Since people often ask me whether I pay the price for my offending celebrities, I will reveal that I did have an interesting run-in two years later regarding the Dakota Fanning incident. I was working in Las Vegas on a Friday night at Mandalay Bay and the next night Jerry Seinfeld was performing at Caesar’s. I wanted to go see him, so I put in the call to his people and asked if it would be possible to say hi. I was told to come by backstage before the show. Although friends had come with me on this trip, I was nervous about dragging them to see a superstar, so when it came to seeing Jerry one-on-one, I just went by myself.

Big mistake.

I head to Le Celine Dion lounge—I will always call it Le Celine Dion lounge, no matter who’s playing there—and see a table full of people. And at that table is, of all people, Steven “I Will Protect Dakota Fanning At All Costs” Spielberg. I walk in and it’s literally just me, and a circle of them sitting at a table eating. So I immediately head to the farthest corner of the room, like I’m a second grader in timeout, and quickly vowed to myself never to go to any Hollywood backstage area, green room, party, or even casual costume fitting alone again for the rest of my life.

Of course, it seemed like Jerry was taking forever to come back and say hi, but he was preparing for his show, which I understood. I just kept talking to the bartender, ordering Diet Cokes and making chitchat. How was his day? Where did he live? What a nice shirt! I probably looked like a meth addict the way I was furiously babbling at him.

My plan was, let Jerry come in and have his private conversation with Spielberg, and then the Spielberg posse will leave, and I’ll be able to say hi, and what the fuck was I thinking and this is what I fucking get and great, I have fucking ass-crack sweat now, and God, why can’t I keep my big fucking mouth shut. I’m regretting this whole thing. Really, I’m regretting my whole career at this point. I’m about to pay the piper, and his name is Steven Spielberg.

Sure enough, Jerry comes in and he’s got his suit on, and everyone’s excited to see him. He deals with the Spielberg party first, as he should, but I knew he’d seen me. Well, it seemed like they were talking for what felt like forever. No one else was there, remember. Then, suddenly, Jerry starts to wave me over. “Kathy, come on over!” he says.

I’m gesturing like a lunatic, “Oh no, I’m okay over here! Heh heh! This Diet Coke won’t drink itself! Heh heh! I’ll be right here! Come find me when you’re done!”

Then he talked to the Spielberg group some more, and again he called out to me. “Kathy, come on! I know how you like celebrities! Don’t you want to meet Steven Spielberg?”

“Oh, you guys probably want to catch up! Don’t let me … [gulp] … get in the … heh heh … way, I mean … [gulp] … I would … never want to … impose!”

I knew Steven Spielberg knew it was me. And I knew he knew I was nervous. There had to be a part of him that was loving this.

It got to the point where it was going to be weird if I said no anymore, so I walked over, and it was that horrible timing where the minute I approached Jerry, Spielberg stood up and Jerry started a brand-new story. So there’s Spielberg to his right, Jerry in the middle, and me to his left, and I just kept looking at Jerry, nervously focusing on his tie so as to avoid even being in Spielberg’s line of vision. I’m sure that made me look even more normal, right? Everybody was laughing, and I was, too, but probably at all the wrong moments, looking like I was trying to join the in crowd, when I clearly had no membership qualifications, whatsoever.

Finally, Jerry says, “Well, Kathy, this must be an exciting moment for you, because I know how much you love meeting famous people. So, Kathy Griffin, Steven Spielberg! Steven Spielberg, Kathy Griffin!”

I just thought, Here we go. I looked at him and chuckled, trying to acknowledge that I’d been busted. “It’s so nice to meet you,” I said with a little giggle.

He looked at me, and with a very serious tone said, “Nice to meet you, too.”

And that was it. He wasn’t a jerk. He could have said, “You were out of line,” but instead he looked at me in a way that my dad would look at me when I came home late from a beer bash, and I don’t even drink. It was the look of someone grounding me. I felt like one of the “Peanuts” characters whenever they’re nervous and have a squiggle for a mouth. I was shaking and squiggle-smiling at the same time. And Jerry was so proud of himself, thinking he was doing me this big favor by getting me face time with Spielberg.

Finally it was time for him to do his show, and he said, “Come with me.” He said good-bye to the Spielberg party, and then I followed him to his dressing room. We sat down and I just went off on him. “What the hell are you doing introducing me to Steven Spielberg? Don’t you know he actually issued a press statement against me? Didn’t you remember that thing where I made that joke about Dakota Fanning? How could you drag me over to make me say hi to him? Were you fucking with me? Is that it? This is so typical!”

And then Jerry, in his best Seinfeldian rant mode, was throwing it right back: “How am I supposed to keep track of who Kathy Griffin gets along with in Hollywood? You have so many fights with people, how am I supposed to know? You get along with this person one day! You make fun of somebody else the next! Am I supposed to have a chart of the people who can’t stand you in Hollywood?”

This got us laughing, especially Jerry thinking that my little fight with Spielberg would possibly be on his radar in a million years. Of course it wasn’t. You could even argue that unwittingly Jerry had gotten me back for talking shit about him in my special all those years ago. But if it had to happen, I’m glad it was with Jerry, somebody I could laugh about it with afterward. By the way, Jerry told me that he and his wife watch every episode of My Life on the D-List. Take that, Fanning.

Did the humiliation end, though? No way. Sure enough, when it came time to take my seat for Jerry’s show, guess who was sitting behind me?

Spielberg.

You know that bottleneck that always happens in the aisle after a packed show ends? Well, now I had to trudge my way out of the theater with Spielberg right next to me. So I turned to my friend Todd, who came with me to the show, and said “Go! Go! Hurry up!” But what I forgot was that Todd legitimately knew Steven Spielberg, because he’d been a consultant on War of the Worlds. So suddenly Spielberg turns and says, “Todd?”

Poor Todd looked over and said, “Oh, hi, Steven!”

But I nipped that in the bud and just pushed my friend Todd up three stairs, practically knocking him over, and out of the theater. I explained it all to him later, but basically I robbed my good friend of having a normal friendly conversation with Steven Spielberg. Because when it comes to me paying the piper, it will not last any longer than it absolutely has to, come hell or high water. Sorry, Todd.

Woz with his passion, and I mean the Segway polo, not me.

In the summer of 2007, I was on tour, going through my emails, when a woman named Kris Gunderson contacted me through my publicist. She said she was a friend of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, she had seen my act live, and based on that, decided he and I would be a good match. That was all I needed. Soon afterward, when the New York Post put to me the question what kind of guy asks Kathy Griffin out, I got a little ahead of myself and blurted out, “Steve Wozniak is in love with me!” Oh boy.

Below is a condensed version of our relationship via cyberspace, and when I say “condensed,” I mean that I had to take a meat cleaver to some of Woz’s emails. Sorry, Mac heads, but I had to consider readers who may not be able to take seventeen pages in a row about his Segway polo match stats, or dozens of recollections detailing his golden age of laser-pointer pranks. And if the rest of you still can’t hack reading what he’s got to say, that’s because you’re no billionaire computer genius, are you? As for the spelling errors, I left in all his and mine, because that’s how I roll. Okay, here we go …

From: Kathy

Date: August 18, 2007 10:30:56 AM

To: Kris Gunderson

Subject: Oh dear god!

Please pass on to Steve:

How are you enjoying our love affair? Ok, here’s what happened. I did an interview last week and one of the questions was “What kind of guys ask you out?” That’s it. I don’t know where the Post got the details. Hope you’re not too bothered by all this. XXOO, Kathy G

From: Woz

Date: August 18, 2007 9:06 PM

To: Kathy

Subject: Re: Oh dear god! From Kathy Griffin

You are really ridiculous.

I assumed it was all very deliberate comedy and I loved it so much. Now you tell me it was accidental. I’m all bummed out.

It took me a day to respond to this email because I’m currently hosting a Camp Woz at my home. Some young kids, 13 to 17, from a New Jersey social program, are being treated to a special camp. Most of them have been badly abused in various ways.

They create their own music and do their own choreography and have a big record deal now and do N-Sync like dancing and singing and work with Justin Timberland.

Hope to hear from you,

Steve

From: Kathy

Date: August 20, 2007 5:37:44 PM

To: Woz

Subject: Re: Oh dear god! From Kathy Griffin

Steve-you’re what they call a “wierdo,” correct?

Wired.com is reporting that were not Dating anymore WTF??? I was planning our Life magazine “At home with Kathy and Steve” pictorial. oh right, Life magazine doesnt exist anymore the photos would be 1) me holding a ladle of my home made soup up for you to taste 2) me on stage with a stand up mike and you watching me from the audience with your arms akimbo, like I’ve just said something very outrageous 3) the two of us in your living room counting your money.

P.S. Its Justin TimberLAKE grandMA!

From: Woz

Date: August 23, 2007 6:45:52 PM

To: Kathy

Subject: Re: Oh dear god! From Kathy Griffin

help!!!

You are a hero of mine. I’m afraid to talk to you. It’s like my fear of talking with heroes like Bill Hewlett of Hewlett and Packard. My long standing philosophy is that the best measure of life is smiles minus frowns. I once was being inducted as the first member into my High School’s Hall of Fame and I gave the students my formula H = F cubed, meaning Happiness is Food, Fun and Friends. The kids started laughing and I had to admit that there might be a 4th F. (Family?). I heard in later years that the school administration did not like my speech because I talked of the smartest students being rebels and why I refused to say the pledge of allegiance, etc.

Anyway, your jokes have made me laugh and laugh so you are truly a hero in my book. The good medicine is better than other effects, like PC stuff. I don’t think you are PC. I really see you as a Macintosh person. Oh, wrong PC.

hasta whenever,

Woz

From: Kathy

Date: August 30, 2007 8:59:10 PM

To: Woz

Subject: Better than the lnar eclipse

Steve-I’m so thrilled you’re going to the EMMYS with me. The EMMY is an award given out to various television shows. Television is a new and exciting way of transmitting entertaining images in to the homes of humans. You should watch one some day. XXOO, KG