The Andy Cohen Diaries (31 page)

Indeed the food at the Seinfelds' shiva was to die, so to speak. I ate like a pig. No, I ate like a Jew at a shiva. There is a difference. Part of the routine of the shiva, and of mourning, is to eat and have a chat about the person who passed away. And I am typing this trying to justify the two bagels, lox, rugelach, turkey, cheese, crackers, cookies, and more bagels.
I had to because I am Jewish.

There was a game but the Cardinals wives came back to the Clubhouse instead for the Cameron Diaz/Leslie Mann taping, so that's where their priorities are and I kind of can't blame them, although if
my husband
was playing I'd like to think I'd be at the game. But that's me. I asked Cameron the best and worst thing about dating a baseball player (I thought this was an incredibly genius way to talk about A-Rod without talking about A-Rod directly). She said, “The schedule and the schedule.” The Cardinals wives nodded. “
Mmm-hmm
, sister! Tell it!” (They didn't say that.) From where I sit, the schedule would suit me, because mine is fucked too. So the time we spend together is great and the rest of it we deal with. That's how me and my slugger, or m'slugger, look at it.

Had a long chat with Kenya today; this reunion and altercation has turned into a shitstorm for all involved, including myself. Did I send the wrong person home? What is permissible and what is not? Should we have aired what we aired? It's an inundation on social media, in the press, and at work.

Brought Liza to the opening of Joe's play
Casa Valentina
, which was beautiful and funny. Saw Anna Deavere Smith and told her I'd recently learned that Wacha plays with her pooch, Memphis Deavere Smith. (Wacha likes show folk.) Valerie Harper was there looking very well, so that made me happy. Rhoda is alive and well.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2014

The
Southern Charm
reunion this morning was refreshing because it was a discussion—no fighting—with emotion and fun.

Bruce and I went to the Mets-Cardinals day game and had seats directly behind home plate, which gave us an opportunity to ogle the Mets catcher Anthony Recker, who we thought just had an incredible ass but then we got a look at the equally incredible face. He was a beauty. In the fifth inning the Mets wives found me. They heard that the Cardinals wives had been to my show and wanted to come. I asked them if their men want sex when they hit a home run. Two of them sighed. One said, “My husband never hits home runs—he's the pitcher.” I turned to David Wright's wife. “Mine does.” She said what I was thinking with a smile. Then we had them bring over the catcher's wife, who was pretty but nowhere near as pretty as the guy. (Who would be?) Man, is she lucky. I am going to start living
The Secret
and though I don't 100 percent understand what that actually entails, I will
will
this baseball wife thing to happen.

Wacha has been having issues with his afternoon walk for the past couple months. He intermittently either doesn't want to go or gets growly and potentially a little threatening (but he hasn't actually bit) with his walker, and the coterie of walker's assistants who are trying to figure out why he hates this sweet walker. So today I sent him to doggy day care at Sherman's house in Brooklyn and he loved it—played with a dog called Whiskey all day (I play with a dog called Whiskey every night but that's another story)—and he was completely crashed out all night. Amazing.

Dinner with Troy Roberts and Lynn—in town from San Fran crashing a piece for
20/20—
and Bruce. We went to Perla, where if you cancel you have to pay fifty bucks a head, and where they have wineglasses with pour lines because maybe they don't trust their bartenders or they want to completely rape you of having any casual enjoyment over a meal? The topics were the end of the world, climate change, the revolution to come, and home invasions. It was quite uplifting. I have total understanding that I am moving into this duplex and at some point in my lifetime the water will come to the building, there will be no power, and I will be an old man stuck in a once-chic West Village twelfth-floor walk-up duplex. Not hot.

FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2014—NYC–SAG HARBOR

Drove to Sag Harbor and it took forever. Had dinner at the Palm with Sandy and Bruce. Met a very handsome dude there, a surfer/finance guy. Perfect, but has a boyfriend of three years. Still, I have more of a shot at a surfer/finance guy than at someone in the major leagues.

SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 2014—SAG HARBOR

Lunch at Sandy's, where Wacha ran like a rocket. Echoing his thoughts about me losing weight in November, today Sandy was schooling me about not letting Wacha get fat. And he's right. I do not want a fat dog. Speaking of fat, Bruce, Sandy, Joe and I had a glorious dinner at Sam's, where I killed a medium mushroom and onion.

SUNDAY, APRIL 27, 2014—SAG HARBOR–NYC

There is nothing more boring than hearing someone's dreams, but last night's was a doozy—John Mayer and I were houseguests at Barbra Streisand's and she had a huge mausoleum. John seemed to know his way around and was my guide. It was
South Park
–ian.

Part 2 of the reunion aired and I said my piece on
WWHL
.

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

I closed on the apartment, and you want the closing to feel really great and ceremonial but it's a bunch of strangers sitting in a room signing a ton of papers that make zero sense even though the lawyer is next to you explaining each one. There was a lovely lady, very heavy, from the bank who turned out to be pregnant and I was so happy I didn't ask her when she was due before I knew for sure, because that scenario has never played out well for me. I got an email from someone with Clay Aiken telling me they wanted me to speak for thirty minutes at his benefit tomorrow and I said there's been a horrible misunderstanding, I can't go. So they weren't happy with me. What would I say for thirty minutes about anything other than Wacha?

Spent the afternoon at Bravo, where, among other things, we tried to figure out which Atlanta Housewives to bring back from
Atlanta Housewives
and what to pay them. I am so far not thrilled with the new casting, so we rejected the latest bunch and are going to dig deeper.

Ran downtown to pick up Sarah Jessica for the New York Pops tribute to Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. As we were pulling up to Carnegie Hall, I noticed everyone was wearing black tie and I froze. SJP said she thought that I knew but that I looked great (in my
light denim suit and plaid shirt
). I had to tell every single person we talked to before the show that I didn't know it was black tie. How boring. But I was surprisingly (given how high my threshold can be) mortified.

The show itself was wonderful and among other things reinforced how truly talented Marc and Scott are—it was Martin Short, Patti LuPone, Matt Morrison, Jane Krakowski, and more singing songs from
Smash
,
When Harry Met Sally
,
Catch Me If You Can
, and
Sleepless in Seattle.
I was completely done in when the original cast of
Hairspray
got together at the end and sang “You Can't Stop the Beat” (they couldn't!), because it brought me back to that great time in the not-too-distant past (okay, a full twelve years ago) when I was young and madly in love and everything felt possible. Almost every night at 10:35 p.m., I would sneak in the back of the theater (with the other “
Hairspray
Husbands,” as we called ourselves then) to watch that amazing cast try to stop the beat (they couldn't then either) and then I'd go backstage to get John, and he and I would go out and frolic until all hours of the night. It was complete waterworks for me watching this crew doing the same choreography—they were the happiest tears, though.

We went to the dinner at the Mandarin Oriental, me in my light denim tux in a sea of black, and sat with Marc, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, and Nathan Lane. Listening to those classics try to one-up each other further filled my heart. Everybody wound up in the thirty-fifth-floor bar and I quizzed Martin Short on every aspect of his career—well, mainly
SCTV
and
SNL.
Queen Latifah showed up randomly late in the evening wearing a tan Adidas sweat suit, and that's pretty much really what I want Queen Latifah to show up wearing whenever and wherever I run into her in the future. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Miss Dana Owens, wearing Adidas, to the stage of the Mandarin Oriental.…

TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2014

Man, was I hungover this morning. I sweated a pound of whiskey out at the gym and almost puked twice in the process.

I interviewed another architect at the apartment, which is quickly becoming my least favorite activity. I'm having dinner with Bill and Joanna tomorrow and I told them I would go uptown because it's supposed to rain but they want to try this Thai place on Spring Street. I hope I'm like that when I'm eighty-two. I hope I make it to eighty-two.

We taped Julie Andrews and Idina Menzel today. Ms. Andrews was lovely. As perfect as you would want her to be. She drank tea. I kept the tea bag and put it on the shelf next to Lohan's cigarette butt.

Before the show I stopped by a sixtieth birthday dinner for Jerry Seinfeld, who doesn't look at all sixty. Typically, Jewish men don't age well, but he's breaking that mold, which I am hoping is a good sign for me (I'm getting a lot of signs about how to be older from Jewish men today). Hugh Jackman was there with a beard. I wonder if he has a mean bone in his body. I gorged—cheese, pasta, meat. I will pay for it tomorrow.

Grumpy Cat was our bartender, there shilling Friskies, and her owner has a great backstory. She'd been a waitress at Red Lobster, her boyfriend died, she needed money, and the cat suddenly became famous on Reddit and essentially saved her life. Wacha has already kind of saved my life—not really that dramatic but he's opened me up a lot—but I am ready for him to start bringing in some
coin
like Grumpy Cat!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2014

Pouring rain, like an apocalypse. Taped a one-on-one with Porsha. Met Bill and Joanna at the Thai place, Uncle Boons, on Spring Street. Bill was in rare form. He was explaining why he doesn't get upset when there's a tragedy in Mississippi and Texas. He couldn't read the check, so he gave it to Joanna and said, “Tip well, I'm known for it.” I had a driver but they preferred to take the subway uptown. I'm forty years younger and I don't prefer to take the subway uptown. After dinner Bill and I stood waiting for Joanna under the awning, watching the monsoon, and a handsome man in a yellow raincoat got my attention. Since I was with Bill, it seemed awkward to initiate a flirt but there was a connection and many long glances as Bill and I continued our conversation. I got in my car and gave him one last look. I know we will meet again. I feel it in my bones.

The show was kinda blah tonight, but snuggling with Wacha turned my mood around. He sleeps with me every night now and is perfect in bed: quiet, compact, doesn't get up until I am ready to get up, and extra cute in the morning. Tonight he was a little scared of the apocalyptic storm outside but we made it through. He has 28k followers on Instagram; maybe that helped him fall asleep.

THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2014—NYC–LOS ANGELES

Of course on the first actually beautiful, 70-degree day in Manhattan, I was on a plane to Los Angeles to enjoy their 95-degree weather. Thankfully, I haven't seen the #BabyJaneFlightAttendant in months and feel like I'm overdue, but instead I got Candice Bergen, who was neither Baby Jane–esque nor my flight attendant. She was just a passenger with dreams, like me. I was thinking on the plane that I should've given Yellow Raincoat Guy my number. Will he find me on Facebook? Then I started wondering what happened to that guy I saw on Madonna's plane who spends half his time in my building in New York. Men are slipping through my fingers.

I landed and went straight to host a panel about
Top Chef
for Emmy voters at the TV Academy with Tom, Padma, Gail, and some
TC
alums, during which I revealed that we play a game while watching the taping in video village where we count the amount of times Padma says “in my mouth” during each Judges' Table. Little did I know she, to this day, had no idea that we did this. She thought it was funny, but I felt busted. For some reason, Ron Jeremy was there and I met him at the after party. Padma had no idea who he was. Good for her. I then had what I thought was going to be a date with this guy I'd met over Oscar weekend; we had been corresponding for a few months and I'd been wondering if he was one of those extra-handsome LA gay flakes or a real person. I determined very quickly that he was the former, bailed out, and met my Bravo friends for more cocktails. I felt quietly victorious (and mildly disappointed) about figuring the guy out so quickly. I think he liked the idea that I'm on TV, but it ended there.

FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2014—LOS ANGELES–NYC

On my plane home was a man with extensive plastic surgery who seemed to know me very well but I couldn't place him and still can't. It's killing me. He greeted me like a long-lost friend. He is between my age and sixty-five—I can never tell with all the face stuff because it ages you so badly. Also I saw a muscly flight attendant who used to be a staple of my 2011 Los Angeles–NYC round trips; he's on the Vegas route in coach now, he said. I don't know what he did to get demoted but he seemed a little dejected.

Had dinner with Bruce, Wes, and Michael at Rocking Horse, followed by FroYo. On the walk home Bruce and I started talking to a man on Eighth Avenue with abnormally large hands—they were like mitts—and it turns out he's an ironworker, which seemed perfect. I asked him if he had an abnormally large peen but he wouldn't say. I can't stop thinking of those mitts. He should get into massage therapy if he gets sick of ironworking.