Official Book Club Selection (36 page)

From: Woz

Date: April 25, 2008 8:58:00 AM

To: Kathy

Subject: Re: Finally!!!

not married but it’s possible secretly

I’ll have to see the STAR.

From: Kathy

Date: May 9, 2008 2:19:53 PM

To: Woz

Subject: Goodness gracious!

I’m sure youre laughing at the STAR article. Some very funny mistakes, but did want to let you know I did not speak to them and I would never say I’m “glad its over” Hope youre well.

XXOO,

KG

King and Queen of Woz’s charity event, The FurBall.

From: Woz

Date: May 14, 2008 1:30:22 PM

To: Kathy

Subject: Hi, love!

Kathy,

I have to thank you profusely for the great fun you brought into my life, in many ways.

I can also never thank you enough for helping out at the Fur Ball. The Humane Society raised something like $315,000 after expenses, far above what they had expected. You have done a good things for me by helping them out.

missing you,

xoxo………sw

From: Woz

Date: July 1, 2008 6:04:47 PM

To: Kathy

Subject: Fwd: Re: geeksaresexy.net

Hey, so guess who’s going to be on Dancing With The Stars this season?

xoxo steve

BFFs 4-evuh.

I know Barack Obama had an historic 2009. But really, can it top the fact that the world realized I have what has been referred to as a “bangin’ bikini bod”?

I have Paris Hilton to thank for it.

Not many people know this, but Paris Hilton is a genius. She speaks seven languages, including Urdu and I believe Romulan. She’s written countless scholarly works under pseudonyms, because she’s famous enough as it is without being pestered for her intellectual prowess. I heard she just declined a position on the board of directors of the Rand Corporation because she’s too busy advising the Pentagon on delicate international matters. And apparently she’s at the forefront of a gene therapy breakthrough.

Okay, that was fun to write. Really, she’s an idiot. But she’s my idiot, dammit. And here’s why.

For season five of My Life on the D-List we did a whole episode chronicling my harebrained scheme to join Young Hollywood at the tender age of forty-eight. We decided that the quintessential example of living out loud Young Hollywood–style was, of course, Paris Hilton. She really is the generation’s best ambassador. (See, she’s a diplomat!)

When I brought this idea up to her, Paris and I hammered out a trade whereby I agreed to do a day of filming on season two of her MTV show Paris Hilton’s New BFF, and she agreed to do a few hours of taping for My Life on the D-List. Now, in her defense—and I have to admit, it’s killing me to write anything about a celebrity that starts with “in her defense”—Paris was one of the easiest people I’ve ever worked with on my show. She got the drill. The more Paris-y she could be, the sooner we’d be done, so she flicked the switch when the cameras rolled, laughed at my jokes, and generally took it on the chin. I walked away from my day with Paris liking her, and telling her I would think a little longer before being as hard on her in my act. Then I reminded her that it was still my job to put her into the act, and that if she could go to jail one more time but maybe stay a little longer, I would be personally grateful. A moving violation would be nice, but assault and battery would be ideal.

As we taped our first scene for the Young Hollywood episode on trendy Robertson Boulevard, I got younger with every store. We started out at Kitson, and by the time we ended up at Lisa Kline, I was sixteen and a half years old. Of course, it wasn’t just us, but approximately fifty paparazzi photographers. This may have been a little too much for even Team Griffin to handle. I had to roll with an entourage, so of course I brought my twenty-four-year-old assistant and Young Hollywood aficionado Tiffany Rinehart, and beleaguered tour manager and trichotillomania (look it up, freaks) sufferer Tom Vize. They had their marching orders. Tom was in charge of my two eighty-pound, ill-behaved dogs Chance and Pom Pom, and Tiffany was busily Twittering our every move. But I tell ya, it’s hard to focus when everywhere around me were video cameras and flashbulbs going off. I get so angry when I think that someone called the paparazzi photographers and tipped them off. If I ever run into that someone, let’s say a red-haired lady who lives at my house, I’m going to give her what for.

Spending a day like that with Paris, I have to say, was more of an eye-opener than my 2003 upper-lid face work. Those photographers were pushy, noisy, physically aggressive, fighting among each other, shouting, knocking each other over, and generally unapologetic about causing an insanely chaotic scene. But the way she and her security team handled them, and the onlookers and screaming fans and tourists, was impressive. She’d turn to me every so often and say “Hungry tigers!” in her bizarre, yet oddly fascinating baby-voice affect. Really, that voice is younger than a baby’s. It’s fetal. A spot on her mother’s pituitary gland. Plus, she had her tiny dog with her, who was so calm for such a frenzied situation, the dog must have been on some of my mother’s “nervous pills.” I don’t remember the name of the dog, but I just started thinking of her as Little Paula Abdul.

Paris was sporting a bob, which may or may not have been Paris Magic Hair, and a ringed headband, as if she was a hippie from a commune bankrolled by a trust fund. I asked her if she knew what a hippie was, and she just giggled. She also had on high-heel black Ferragamo boots, and a very trendy peasant top and tights—all very fashionable. As for me, my original idea was to get an outfit of Paris’s that she’d recently been photographed in, and wear that. I had a vision of magazines comparing us on a “Who wore it better?” page, and I thought it’d be funny if it was something like, “Paris Hilton 96 percent, Kathy Griffith 4 percent.”

But when I called her office to talk to her stylist, to see if I could wear this ’20s-era tube dress that she wore for her birthday bash in Vegas, it was, “Oh, you’ll never fit into it. She’s much smaller than you.” Ouch.

Well, they wouldn’t send me anything she’d actually worn, but they sent me her own line of clothes, which is ridiculous and must only do well in Asia because it’s all so loud and over-the-top and pink pink pink. True, half of it I couldn’t squeeze into, but I did pick out the most obnoxiously pink, silly outfit, a dress with a full-on ’80s tube top. But because my boobs are real and tend to bounce off my knees, I wore it with an old-lady Maidenform bra—pink, mind you—completely showing. Look, I was going for a joke here, but I’m not that hard up for a laugh that I’m not going to wear a fucking bra.

So we make our way into Kitson past the snapping hordes, and then to Lisa Kline. We hadn’t really planned it, but Paris started faux-shopping for me, and began sifting through Pucci bikinis. She picked out a blue-and-green paisley one for me, and said, “You’d look huge in this.”

This is an actual Paris Hilton dress that she loaned me.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“No, no, I don’t mean you’re huge like that. You know how I used to say, ‘That’s hot’?”

I cautiously said, “Yes?”

“Well, ‘huge’ is the new ‘hot.’ So if I say you’re huge, that’s a good thing!”

“Oh, okay. And just so you know, ‘go fuck yourself’ is still ‘go fuck yourself,’ but I’m sorry I said that.”

Well, she bought the bikini for me, which I thought was nice. Next we were going to go to this trendy hotel called The Avalon and film by the pool, because this is where Young Hollywood grazes. So the show’s producer said to me, “When we shoot this scene with you and Paris hanging by the pool, you’ve got to wear the bikini that she bought you.”

Shit. Now all my weight issues were suddenly bubbling to the surface again, even though I have to say, 2009 has probably been my thinnest year since high school. But I started thinking crazy shit again, like how I was five pounds lighter only a week ago! Plus, it was me next to 6′1,″ super-skinny, super-perfect model-like Paris Hilton, who is a complete stick. How could it not bring up my issues? And in a bikini on top of that?

“I don’t think I’ve even worn a bikini in about fifteen years,” I told the producer.

It’s true. When I go swimming I’m usually in a turtleneck wetsuit. And if that’s not available, I’ll wear a mens’ suit. As in, a three-piece with tie and vest, and maybe an ascot. And a bowler hat. I’ll wear that to take a shower if I’m having a particularly bad body-image day.

And can we discuss my skin for a second? It’s not as if I have pale, alabaster-like-a-baby’s-ass skin like Anne Hathaway. When I say that my skin is white and pale, that’s an understatement. It’s translucent. You can see right through to my veins and organs. I’m really no different from an anatomy figure in biology class.

Now, Paris, in all of her skinny Paris-ness, wouldn’t even agree to wear a bikini without a sarong for the Avalon pool shoot, so I decided me in the tiniest bikini without any cover-up would be good for a few laughs. I just had to suck it up. Maybe I’d make it onto a worst-dressed bikini list. As you may know, I’m a staple of worst-dressed lists, ever since my days on Suddenly Susan when no designer wanted to touch me or loan me anything for awards show appearances or public events. The first time I was ever tagged by one of the magazines for worst dressed—it might have been me in a Betsey Johnson outfit, because those were big in the ’90s and I liked her designs—my initial reaction was this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Then, about ten minutes later, I thought, Wait a minute, this is kind of funny. Such began my many appearances on these lists, usually next to pictures of Margaret Cho in some peacock-feather dress, Paula Abdul in something from her signature QVC line, and Bjork dressed like a swan or goose or some other waterfowl. For the longest time I cut out and laminated these photos and stuck them proudly on my refrigerator.

Paris Hilton getting served, Griffin-bikini-style.

My only real triumph in the fashion area was the year I was asked to be a red carpet correspondent for the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards, interviewing celebrities for the moments going into and out of commercials. Because Vogue was involved, they wanted to pick my outfit for me. They dressed me in this Ralph Lauren Purple Label girl’s tuxedo with Versace heels. Well, Vogue editor Anna Wintour fired me the night of the show because I was so offensive on the red carpet—basically none of my segments were going to be used—but months later Glamour ran a small item on women who wear suits, and they cited me as someone who did it right! I considered it pretty much a Best Dressed award. So, no thanks, but thanks, Vogue! (I stole the outfit, too. Still wear the shoes!)

The hilarious part is, you know what joke provoked Anna to ax me when she heard it in the production booth? I said I was going to try to be a part of the fashion community by going into the bathroom later and doing blow off the Hilton sisters’ asses. Luckily, since then I’ve learned how to talk about celebrities with restraint and grace.

Now here I was with Paris, about to expose to the world my pale 5′3″ form in a silly-small bikini, and those damn pesky paparazzi (grrr, who called them anyway?) had followed us over here to the hotel from Robertson Boulevard. Then I thought about that old helpful “act as if” rule from the Overeaters Anonymous Big Book, the technique that guided me through more than a few downward spirals after binge-eating. Act as if it’s all going to be fine. When it came time to shoot, I just had to say to myself, “Kathy, act as if you have the fucking hottest body there, and every guy in the crew wants to bang you. You are the hottest”—wait, “hugest,” sorry, Paris—“piece of ass ever!”

That night, it all began happening online. There I was in photos next to Paris Hilton, and the consensus from US Weekly’s website to PerezHilton’s seemed to be that I have a “bangin’ bikini bod.” When they drop the “y,” on “body,” it’s like you have something other than a “body.” That “y” was holding me back, it seems.

I say this with humility, but I am now in the infancy of my new career as a semiprofessional bikini model.

The press reaction, for one thing, has been the kind you can’t buy. The National Enquirer featured me on a page of Hottest Beach Bodies. I did a bikini shoot for TV Guide, as well as one for OK magazine, which wrote, “Kathy Griffin’s got a hot body and she isn’t afraid to show it!” They brought bikinis to my house, because at that point I thought the only bikini that existed in the world was the one Paris Hilton bought me. But when you have a “bangin’ bikini bod”—or “bbb,” as I’ll coin now—they come to you with bikinis, and ones that fit, not ones that let your real boobs accidentally slip out so you can trip on them. Did I mention People magazine had a “Bikini Body Showdown” and polled readers on whether I, Lisa Rinna, or Tara Reid had the hottest bikini bod, and I won? And I don’t take steroids or get drunk and fall down in public. Not that they do, of course.

Look, I’m not out to embarrass Gisele Bundchen or Bar Refaeli, or whatever bikini model Leo is or was banging or will bang in the future, and my goal isn’t to make any of these women lose any sleep over the contracts they’re about to miss out on because of me. But I’m clearly not far away from a Bain de Soleil campaign, some beach towel contracts, and the inevitable pleading from Sports Illustrated for a cover shoot and, if the attorneys can work out the details, a tasteful centerfold. Will anyone really be surprised when Tyra Banks simply cuts to the chase next season and stands in front of my bikini-ed self—well, not that close, because she’ll be too self-conscious to be that close to my “bbb”—and says, “Kathy Griffin, congratulations, you are America’s Next Top Model.” I’m ready to change lives here, people. Oprah, you’re going to be trading in Dr. Oz’s scrubs for me in a bikini every Tuesday.

The reality, of course, is that this whole bikini thing has been hilarious and great and bizarre, and it couldn’t have come at a better time when my tireless efforts to get the word out about My Life on the D-List often meant sitting in a room doing twenty-five interviews in a row with places like Wake Up, Tulsa! People magazine would never give me the time of day—wouldn’t cover me going to Walter Reed Army Medical Center—but now that I have a bangin’ bikini bod, I guess it’s all good. If it gets one more viewer to watch The D-List, call me the worst or the hottest, I don’t care. Although a few extra straight guys turning on my show to jerk off to me would be so great. A pretty lady has dreams.