The Andy Cohen Diaries (10 page)

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2013—NYC–LOS ANGELES

The Village was a shitshow last night. I was in bed early so I could wake up at the crack of dawn for my flight to LA to do Leno. All night there were throngs of people under my window doing God knows what. It sounded like gang warfare, the Crips and Bloods duking it out over cupcakes in the West Village. I wanted to throw eggs out my window. I can't believe it now but I actually used to do that in the early nineties—throw eggs out my window at the hookers on Horatio and Washington, before it was gentrified. They were some noisy-ass hookers and it was the only thing I could think of to get them to get off my corner. Now I kind of miss that New York. I also miss having eggs in my refrigerator. And hookers on the street!

I've been negotiating with Leno's producers because I want to play “Plead the Fifth” with him backstage for our YouTube channel during his pre-show dressing-room visit. I sent all these questions for him to approve, since his people asked to see them beforehand. After going back and forth for a few days, I got an email late yesterday that they are not into it.

I got a “ride” to LA, which was lucky, because there was a tragic shooting at LAX and traveling was chaos. (Don't get me started on guns.) On the flight I read the Carson biography, the one written by his lawyer who is now spilling all his intimate secrets after Carson's long gone. Riveting.

On the way to Leno I found out they do want him to play “Plead the Fifth”—not backstage, but on the show. I was glad. Leno came in pre-show to visit in the dressing room and I asked him how he felt about leaving and he said he feels totally fine about it. He said that Conan and he are not that far apart in age, ten or fifteen years, and when he watches Jimmy Fallon's show he sees that Jimmy does stuff he can't do, like sing with Justin Timberlake. He said he gets it because it's going to be a different show. Hearing his POV made me even happier for Jimmy because I want it to go well for him. I asked Leno if he was reading the Carson book and he said no. He thought it was so shitty of this lawyer to write it. Meanwhile, I couldn't put it down on the plane, but I kept that to myself.

The show went well but he really is looking over your shoulder at cue cards and time cues for at least half the interview. It's jarring. I got him talking about Letterman and Carson during “Plead the Fifth,” which doesn't happen much. During the break I asked him if Letterman was going to come on his show before he leaves, and he said no, because Letterman never comes to LA. I didn't buy that as an excuse. If he wanted to do the show, he'd come to LA. He went off on Jimmy Kimmel a little bit, saying that Jimmy has been really mean to him. He said Letterman is funny when he's mean, but Kimmel is just mean. Leno asked me who was on my show next week and I could not remember a single person, which is kind of embarrassing. I was on with Melissa McCarthy and the band Empire of the Sun, who are really good but there was some significant body odor happening there. Maybe it was their costumes. Went to dinner at Sunset Tower afterwards and we were molested by Dmtiri the maître d', who the
New York Times
—on
their front page—
called “the Most Discreet Man in Hollywood,” but who actually tells you everyone who is in the restaurant and in the hotel, so the press got that one wrong.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2013—LOS ANGELES–NYC

I finished the Carson book on the plane. It was revealing, but at the end this lawyer has the
gall
to say, “You know, I would like to think that Johnny would have loved this book.” Yeah, he certainly would have loved an entire book telling all his secrets and portraying him as a raging asshole. Simon Baker (
The Mentalist
) was sitting across from me on the flight and I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out if he dyes his (gorgeous) hair. I think he has to, but I just can't picture him reading
People
with foils in his hair. I dunno. I noticed a cute guy across the other aisle, and when I got home that same guy was standing in the lobby of my building talking to Surfin. Turns out he's Sally Field's son. Weird. (No update from Surfin on neighbor upstairs.)

I went to dinner at the Beatrice Inn with Mark and Kelly and turns out that when Mark was leaving for dinner he saw Simon Baker walking into the Crosby Street Hotel. Essentially, we live in Mayberry. With a twist, because Lindsay Lohan was sitting across from us at dinner with a friend and they were both texting the whole time. Unclear if they were texting each other.

I went out with Bill Curtin afterwards on a Hell's Kitchen gay-bar crawl that ended at this place Viva at Forty-eighth and Eleventh. It was so fun and packed and I had three very good guy prospects I was flirting with and I chose instead to go home and fool around with my dog. Leaving three balls in the air for a dog, that's a first. On daylight savings night yet! In my mind I gained an hour of Wacha time.

Before I went to dinner the dog walker showed up with this gorgeous pooch, Neville, who apparently Wacha has been walking with. He came into my apartment looking just like the Target dog. Turns out it's Marc Jacobs's dog, so I kinda feel like Marc Jacobs has been in my apartment. Unclear what he thought of the décor. Basically, Wacha is always either with Neville Jacobs or Kissy Broderick. He has a social life and is running with a glamourpack of dogs! It's a fast crowd, though. I hope they don't get him into drugs or anything. Or worse, what if he gives one of them worms? Something new to worry about.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2013

Wacha can't hang out only with famous dogs—he needs to have some values and learn about real life. So today was all about him and we started at the Union Square dog park, which I discovered is like a massive box of kitty litter. I feel like
I
have kennel cough now, although I really wore him out, so it was half-worth it. Except this woman with a mean dog named Eddie came over to me and wanted to run some “marketing ideas” past me. I was like Lindsay Lohan on her phone, just saying, “I really don't know!” Back at home I gave Wacha his first bath, during which a horrifying quantity of dirt accumulated in the tub. Is there that much dirt spread everywhere in my apartment? It's like that
Dateline
when they come over and expose the filth in your own home.

It was
Atlanta
premiere night and I was so engaged with Kandi and Kenya that it made me wonder if I had been asleep for other episodes.
WWHL
is bursting with extra fun when
Atlanta
is on. Wacha was so exhausted when I got home from the show, he didn't even want to come out of his little house. It's very satisfying when he's worn out.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2013

Tonight Lisa Vanderpump and Whitney Cummings were on and Cardinal legend Jim Edmonds was bartending. After the show, I took Lisa and Jim and posse to the Cubbyhole, which was really fun and not too packed with ladies. Now I literally can talk dogs endlessly with Lisa, so that's good. Though it was amusing watching La Vanderpump holding court in the middle of my neighborhood lesbian dive bar. I put her in her car around 1 a.m. and the rest of us stayed. Somehow Jim Edmonds was controlling the jukebox from his phone and kept playing country music. I need to get that app.

At around two-thirty in the morning I went around the corner and got Wacha and brought him to the Cubbyhole. So now Wacha has been to a gay bar. Suffice to say he was very popular.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2013

Tonight I had two guests who didn't know who the other was, and did not particularly care to, Reza from
Shahs of Sunset
and the actor Zachary Levi. I felt very codependent trying to make sure both of them were OK, because frankly, I got the feeling they each thought the other was a loser and would've rather been on with anyone else. After the show I met Jim Edmonds and his group at 675 Bar for a quick tequila. Once a month I'll get approached at a club or a party by someone overweight who's involved in a NetJets-type operation, trying to sell me a share in a private plane, and it happened again tonight. No sure what that's about. They all were disappointed that Wacha wasn't there. Now I'm no good unless I bring the dog.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2013

Wacha threw up and ate it. So that's great. After all the agonizing about the intro lines for
NY Housewives
, I finally heard them all together in the intro and I think they are funny, but Shari Levine said it looks to her like an
SNL
sketch. So now I'm second-guessing myself. De Blasio was elected mayor and I think Cynthia Nixon deserves a lot of the credit. (And I'm starting to second-guess myself on him too.)

I had fights with two TVs in two different cabs. As much as I love TV, I do not want to watch it in a cab. Ever. Even if I'm on it.

After nine years of twice-yearly offsites sitting in hotel suites brainstorming and planning the future of the network, today was my last Bravo offsite. Nobody knew about my new deal, so I sat there feeling bittersweet all day.

LinkedIn is doing some “Take your parents to work day” promotion, and they sent me this huge blowup of my parents. The first thing I thought was, “How am I going to throw this out? How do I throw out my parents?” So I sent a picture of it to my mother and she goes, “How are you going to throw THAT out? THAT'S THROWING OUT YOUR PARENTS!” And I said, “I had the exact same thought.” But she's thrown away plenty of blowups of me. By the way, LinkedIn bugs the fuck out of me.

I had Katey Sagal and Giada De Laurentiis on the show. Katey Sagal has Bitchy Resting Face, so I kept thinking she was mad or not having a good time, but she just has a severe case of BRF and once I figured that out, I loved her. I asked Katey to give me one word to describe Christina Applegate and she's thinking and then this woman in the front row goes, “Spiritual,” and her equally mouthy friend next to her yells out, “Strong,” and I looked at them and said, “You don't know Christina Applegate and I'm pretty sure Katey Sagal will be able to find the answer. And you're not
in
the show.” OK, I just thought it. But I wish I'd said it out loud. People are nuts.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

SJP joined Twitter and I've been coaching her, which has been funny. She's been concerned about appearing to be shilling (which she is not) and was gun-shy to jump off the cliff and just start, but she's doing well. But now she's having guilt about not responding to everybody, which I am trying to explain is essentially impossible. But she's as sparkly in a tweet as she is in life, sprinkling them with “xx sj” at the end. Who doesn't love that?

I went to see the B-52s at the Brooklyn Bowl with Grac and Neal and Jeanne and Fred. You bowl and a band plays, but we stopped bowling when they went on, because who
actually
wants to bowl while the band is on? Before the show I was thinking, “I don't know if I have it in me tonight. I'm so old.” And then I was looking around at the crowd, which felt equally old—the B's are like the greatest party band ever, and they're all now hovering around sixty and the audience has aged with them but the music hasn't aged at all.

They sounded perfect but Kate's face resembles that of a Real Housewife of, I don't even know where, outer space? A space-aged Real Housewife. Cindy has sort of let herself go but the two of them sound so tight and harmonious and they did some songs I wasn't expecting, like “Legal Tender” and “Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland.” It filled me with joy and love to dance with Grac and Jeanne and let go. And I
did
have it in me.

Afterwards we said hi to Fred Schneider and he said, “You danced on the risers for us?” I was glad he remembered Grac and my memorable stint as go-go dancers. “Yes, I did!” And I met Kate again and I've got a whole Susan Lucci thing with her. I don't know what to say to these women. I'm like jelly. Mercifully none of them seem to know what Bravo is or who I am, which in my mind is how it should be.

When they walked offstage I was thinking to myself, “I wonder if I'll ever see them again, because as good as they sound, they are getting older. How much longer will they perform?” And then, sure enough, Fred says they have five more performances in the area and then he thinks they're done. After years of shows in countless cities, that may have been the last time that I see the B-52s. I was standing by Cindy, waiting for her to end a conversation so I could just be a fan, but the convo was not ending and these guys were coming up to me to get their photo taken with me. I left without talking to her. Cindy renders me powerless.

Then we had The Wanted on my show and I felt like a perv asking them about their sexploits. After that, I got a two-hour massage and Wacha barked when he heard someone coming down the hall. I was bragging to my masseur about what a good protector he is and the masseuse goes, “Yeah. You wouldn't want to live in a building like this without any protection.” Everyone's a comedian.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2013

In August I did a favor for Cynthia Rowley and she was wearing a denim jumpsuit at the time and when she said, “I owe you,” I told her she didn't, but she kept saying it. So I told her to get me a denim jumpsuit like she was wearing. And she declared, “I will make you one.” For the longest time I really didn't think she was going to make me that jumpsuit and I started to really want one. I was wondering where the hell I was going to get a denim jumpsuit. Then a few days ago I got this call: “Your jumpsuit is ready for a fitting.” So today I had a denim jumpsuit fitting. Glorious.

I talked to Bill Carter from the
New York Times
about my deal. I started to tell people at Bravo. This is feeling very real and I am feeling scared and excited; I am officially cutting the cord from the security of a day job.