The Andy Cohen Diaries (27 page)

I went back to the hotel to press my cream suit, which Bryan advised I could wear to the wedding because it's officially spring. (I am a season jumper and have worn white tuxedoes at the wrong time of year several times, including Oscar night a couple years ago, when Valentino told me I looked “very Côte d'Azur” and Graydon Carter said he confused me with a waiter. Oh, the shaaaaade, hunty.)

Suit pressed, I met the kid for tea. He answered all my questions—we talked about cheering and his ex-boyfriend and his dad coming out and the dad's boyfriend. And we took selfies. And what I really wanted to be doing, while legal, would certainly be frowned upon by his
dads that are my age
. And I had to get dressed for the wedding.

The wedding was packed with people I love from TRIO and Bravo—from Magical Elves Dan and Jane to LZ and my beloved old assistant Thierry, who now lives in Australia. It was in a beautiful old church across from Soniat House and when it was over a band led us dancing around the block and right into a perfect reception, which was more like a choose-your-own-adventure party. There were two bands and a DJ, food by John Besh, a photobooth with props, a hashtag for Instagramming pictures (it's #loridavelove—look it up!), and lots of booze. A guest insisted on going through every person with the last name Cohen that she knows in New York City to see if I knew them or am related and would not hear my plea that there are too many Cohens for this exercise to be worthwhile. Sometimes people hear what they want to hear. Around 10 p.m. someone slipped me half an Adderall and the night was perfect. Love, love, love.

SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 2014—NEW ORLEANS–NYC

I decided to go to Montana next weekend, then Miami. I think it'll be a fun adventure.

Landed back in NYC to a gorgeous day. I can feel spring. I took Wacha on a massive shopping trek around the West Village. Every store in the neighborhood has dog treats and I was trying to get him to show off by having him lie down for a treat and he failed every time. Had a great wander around Three Lives Bookstore on Tenth Street and couldn't help but wonder how long until it gets driven out by a greedy landlord. The state of this city is really depressing. Fantastic independent neighborhood staples are closing one after the other.
Do we need another Duane Reade???
Can the human beings of Manhattan suddenly not maintain their life systems without a freaking drugstore and ATM on their block?

Dinner celebrating Aries birthdays of SJP, Amy Sedaris, and Bruce at Betony on Fifty-seventh Street—we were trying to get out of our box, so we went to Midtown. I was playing with my rings and lost one and it became a huge scene with flashlights involved. SJP, bless her, was determined to find it. At the last minute she found it under her scarf on her jacket. Weird. And phew.

The Lady Gaga video for “G.U.Y.” was posted tonight and I got a flood of tweets from her Little Monsters. We posted our response video tonight too. Who knows.

SUNDAY, MARCH 23, 2014

Wacha and I had a rough day. He was nipping at me in bed last night, so I put him in his crate and this morning he was driving me completely nuts, barking at nothing, hyper, the whole nine yards. I actually think the dog trainer is making him crazy. My bed is like a dog-toy showroom. Oh, and he won't shit. Meanwhile it is a tundra again outside and I'm really dizzy. Feeling defeated by it all.

Also I had orientation in the private dog run Marc Jacobs had told me about last fall. There are many rules and I feel like one wrong move by me or the WachStar will get us kicked out. It was a little terrifying. And windy.

Bruce had a birthday thing at Atlas Social Club (wanna see gay boys lose their shit? Bring DVF to a gay bar) and then dinner at Añejo. I was showing Anderson, Hamilton, and Michael how Tinder works and Barry took my phone and started swiping “yes” to a bunch of “nos”—one of whom looks like Diana Ross but is a man (which given my love for Ms. Ross you might consider a positive for me, but is in fact not)—which then matched me with them. I felt like I was watching a runaway train. He freaking
owns Tinder
, so he knew exactly what he was doing. Lovely! I guess I can block them. I might add that everyone else thought it was hilarious. I had to leave early to go to the show.

The Gaga video got me a lot of respect from the kids at
WWHL
. They think it is a super-big deal. So now I know for sure.

MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014

Of course I woke up to a Tinder message from Male Diana Ross. Thank you, Barry Diller. I don't want to block the guy and offend him but I also don't want to engage. So I decided just to leave it hanging. Meanwhile someone I had been talking to blocked
me
, so who the hell do I think I am?

The day was cold and I'm still in a foul mood. I wasn't the only one. Walking Wacha this morning, I turned the corner from Horatio onto Greenwich and an old lady looked me up and down and snarled, “Oh,
give me a break
.” She just kept going. I didn't want to let her off the hook, though. I yelled at her as she crossed the street, “Give you a break about
what
?
What's your problem?
” She never looked back.

Sean was eliminated from
DWTS
. They kept Billy Dee Williams, who can barely walk, and got rid of him. I'm outraged! I want to start tweeting people to boycott the show, but NeNe is on it, so I won't.

I had two pitch meetings about new shows, during which Brandi called to ask if I would come buy a pie from her for a
Celebrity Apprentice
challenge. Thankfully, she and Kenya are on the same team. Otherwise I would've had to go to two different pie stores.

The show was Uma and Dominic Monaghan; Gaga called in and explained her video eloquently: “In the story, where I am beginning as the Phoenix, rising from the ashes, I go to the Hearst Castle in order to be brought back to life. As the people from the planet Venus dunk me into the Neptune pool, I am snapped back into reality by reality television. We wanted you to play Zeus or God in the sky because I feel as though reality TV and reality media really runs our lives. It's really an image of how I think pop culture is today.” Smart …

After all the Zeus talk and my posting a throwback paparazzi pic of Uma and me on the beach in St. Tropez, I got a text from Mom saying, “Reunion was really good. They r giving it to Lisa! Ur show was good. Like Uma. Gaga good. Aftershow short. Lay off urself for a while. Getting too self-centered:). Love mom.”

I spent most of the two hours of my post-show massage pondering how a talk-show host can
not
become a totally self-obsessed monster, and whether I had gone to the dark side already. People, fans of the show, keep sending in paintings of me and I asked Deirdre to put them up in the control room because I didn't know what to do with them myself. Suddenly I wondered if that was megalomaniacal of me. Is everyone laughing behind my back? While I in the meantime am a tornado of self-promotion, Instagramming endlessly, blathering on Twitter, windbagging on television, and
publishing a diary
(!) about essentially
nothing.
Is it too late for me? Can I go bartend on an island and find myself, or am I past the point of no return? The massage was
not
relaxing.

TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014

Wacha took three shits on his morning walk. Consecutively. I marveled.

After the gym I ran over to Union Square in my sweats to support Kenya and Brandi at the
Celebrity Apprentice
challenge. I didn't give any thought to the number of cameras and press that would be there, so showing up in gym clothes might have been dumb. (Or maybe, just maybe, I was keeping it real because I am
not a monster.
) Leeza Gibbons gave me a pie. Vivica A. Fox rang me up. Apparently Kate Gosselin was there but I didn't recognize her, I guess, which is a good thing because I have talked a lot of shit on Twitter about what an awful person she is. Also I made a mean joke on camera about Brandi not being able to add and I feel bad.

The dog trainer came and told me Wacha is mouthy and easily aroused. I wanted to say, “Stop talking about
me
and tell me about my
dog
!” (I'm here all week, folks.…)

We taped a show with the Long Island Medium and she did a spontaneous reading on Marc, our Deadhead cameraman, that blew his and everyone's minds. I asked for a few minutes with her afterwards to see if Natasha would come through; she didn't, so it was a lot of fishing.

Bethenny and Ramona were on and Ramona texted me earlier in the day to confirm that I would not be asking about her divorce from Mario. I confirmed with her that I
would
be asking about her divorce from Mario. So we went back and forth on that a few times. And on the show of course I asked. The bartender was a zookeeper from San Diego. There was something hot about him.

I ate the
Celebrity Apprentice
chicken pie when I got home at one. It was gross.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2014—NYC–ATLANTA

Big article in the
Times
today about how all the bookstores in NYC are basically closed because of rents. So I was right to be worried the other day. Theresa Caputo's manager called Deirdre and said she feels terrible that she didn't give me a good reading and wants to do it over, a polite offer that I refused. Tash was either going to come through or not. Flew to Atlanta and went straight to a production meeting for the reunion tomorrow. There was last-minute drama involving whether Mama Joyce would come, but she's in and all else seems fine. (Which of course means we should be very worried.) Had dinner at Optimist with Lindsay Denman, who I see once a year when I come to Atlanta for a reunion, and forced him to take me to Swinging Richards, which is an amazing all-dude strip joint. Why is there no Swinging Richards in New York City? No bookstores and no strip joints, but plenty of Chipotles and Bank of Americas. It's not the city I moved to twenty-four years ago.

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2014—ATLANTA

The day started off great—I shared a Four Seasons elevator with four Portland Trail Blazers. I gazed up at them (while pretending not to gaze up at them) and wondered why I wasn't dating a pro basketball player, at which point I remembered that I am a forty-something-year-old short(ish) Jewish dude.
That's why I'm not dating a pro basketball player.
Also they are straight, to the best of my knowledge. So I nixed that fantasy.

I don't even know how to describe the reunion today. Messy, how's that? Kenya brought a scepter and a bullhorn (I
used to
love props because I'd viewed them as comedy) and she was waving both in Porsha's face, and Porsha just snapped. She stood up and got in Kenya's face. I stood to break them up and as soon as I did they somehow wound up on the floor with Porsha pulling Kenya's hair. It was ugly. I was upset—everybody was. My gut reaction was that we had to send Porsha home, and that she was not emotionally ready to handle going back into the verbal firing line with these women. Meanwhile she was worried she'd ended her whole “career” in the course of ten seconds. It was a bad look for the show and the women. Kenya filed a police report against Porsha, and the other women felt that Kenya had it coming because of the props.

It was just a weird, bad day. And I found out that NeNe was apparently pissed at me because I didn't seat her next to me when Paula Patton was on the show with her a few months ago. That's why she kept turning down requests to come back on. Seating is very important. This is the kind of advice I can offer the world.

John Mayer texted (during hour nine of shooting) asking if I wanna shoot guns this weekend. I said I thought so but I didn't want to shoot anything living. He said, “Not even gophers? They're terrible and we'd do a service to nature.” I said we would discuss it. And I did think about guns and gophers for much of the time that the husbands (who were clearly pre-gaming backstage before they came out) were imparting their wisdom. I don't think I wanna shoot anything.

We wrapped around twelve-thirty, at which point I lunged for a cocktail.

FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2014—ATLANTA–MONTANA

I got invited to play in the MLB celebrity softball game the day before the All-Star Game in Minneapolis this summer and I am really tempted to do it. On the one hand, I am so uncoordinated and it's pinging every bad memory of the three nasty words Dad used to taunt me with after dinner (“wanna,” “play,” “catch”) and the indignity of my horrible, sad Little League career. On the other hand, I'm stronger and older now; I
have
to be able to get through a game of softball at this point in my evolution as a human being, right? They say Jon Hamm is playing, which is alternately tempting and terrifying. He's on my show in a few weeks and I'm gonna ask him about it.

When I forwarded my parents the invitation, my dad emailed “wow” and my mom said, “This looks dumb to me.” I also sent it to Consuelos to see if he wanted to do it with me. (He thinks he's gonna be shooting his show.) My flight attendant on the way to Montana was an Edie McClurg twin who was getting in my face and exaggerating everything loudly with a southern drawl steeped in kindness (“Want more IIIIICE?”) but with undertones of rage and hatred. She might be worse than #BabyJaneFlightAttendant, I can't decide. I would barely look at her and didn't have lunch to spite her (but wound up being really hungry, so that backfired). As we were landing she went row by row: “It was SO NICE GETTING TO KNOW YOU!!!!!!” I gave her such side eye. “Although you didn't let me SERVE YOU ENOUGH! I hope you'll COME BACK TO DELTA and let me SERVE YOU!!!!” I swear that's what she said to me. I know it
seems
like I have a big problem with flight attendants but I really don't. It's just the ones who smother me with their big personalities.