The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation
Melissa Rivers
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 1101903821
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Joan Rivers was known all over the world—from the Palace Theater to Buckingham Palace, from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the footlights of Broadway, from the days of talkies to hosting talk shows. But there was only one person who knew Joan intimately, one person who the authorities would call when she got a little out of hand. Her daughter and best friend, Melissa.
Joan and Melissa Rivers had one of the most celebrated mother-daughter relationships of all time. If you think Joan said some outrageous things to her audiences as a comedian, you won’t believe what she said and did in private. Her love for her daughter knew no bounds—or boundaries, apparently. ("Melissa, I acknowledge that you have boundaries. I just choose to not respect them.") In The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief and Manipulation, Melissa shares stories (like when she was nine months old and her parents delivered her to Johnny Carson as a birthday gift), bon mots (“Missy, is there anything better than seeing a really good looking couple pushing a baby that looks like a Sasquatch who got caught in a house fire?”), and life lessons from growing up in the Rosenberg-Rivers household (“I can do tips and discounts and figure out the number of gay men in an audience to make it a good show. That’s all the math you’ll ever need.”). These were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to life in the family that Melissa describes as more Addams than Cleaver. And at the center of it all was a tiny blond force of nature.
In The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief and Manipulation, Melissa Rivers relates funny, poignant and irreverent observations, thoughts, and tales about the woman who raised her and is the reason she considers valium one of the four basic food groups.
After that, she just sat in the lodge “encouraging” the other skiers with cheers of support like “Get off that bunny hill, you big wuss,” and “Don’t be such a hotdogger!” And that was just to the four-year-olds in the pre-K group. I’m not suggesting that because my mother didn’t like athletics she didn’t take care of herself. She did work out. She walked on the treadmill, she lifted light weights, and she even hired a trainer. Of course, the second the trainer arrived, she’d bamboozle him by
stamp and a picture of a serpent coming out of a vagina on her chest. (I once heard a rumor that former secretary of state Al Haig had the Princeton tiger tattooed on his butt. Whether it was true or not, that image has never left me. I’m just grateful he didn’t go to South Carolina; he’d have had a gamecock on his ass.) When it came to etiquette, my mother was very old-fashioned and old school. She actually collected old Emily Post books to see how manners had changed through the years. Believe
her to work or can be construed as self-serving. For example, you say, “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Here’s your new washer-dryer.” What she hears is “I’m thirty-five, not getting married anytime soon, and have no intention of doing my own laundry.” I learned this the hard way. I once bought my mother a steam iron for Mother’s Day. She thanked me by “allowing” me to sleep in the maid’s room for a week. • Buy something. Making a jewelry box out of Popsicle sticks is adorable—if you’re seven. If
cards from all over the world, discount coupons from stores she would never in a million years shop in, a dry-cleaning ticket from 2006, and so many one-dollar bills that I thought that she was pole dancing at a senior citizens’ home in Great Neck. This entire apparatus was held together by a frayed rubber band. Also in the purse? More loose receipts, hundreds of jokes written on napkins from airline lounges (both paper and cloth), a box of Altoids, eleven loose Altoids, a large makeup bag, a
Americans tunneled in across the border, that all celebrities are drug addicts, shoplifters, or closet cases, or that Noah built his ark with non-union labor. Miss Rivers does, however, believe that anyone who takes anything in this book seriously is an idiot. And she says if anyone has a problem with that they can feel free to call her lawyer, Clarence Darrow. My mother was fearless. I don’t mean she didn’t have any fears. I mean that even though she was only five two, she stood tall and