The Late Joan Rivers: 'Does this urn make my ash look fat?'- Page 3

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:04pm

She's inspired me to write a play: "Only We Who Truly Loathe Ourselves Enjoy the Profits of Cruelty." A tightly shrink-wrapped skeleton waits in limbo to hear a decision on her eternal fate. She and her close Hollywood friends Ron and Nancy teach nursery rhymes to civilian child casualties of war.

Updated On: 8/28/14 at 11:04 PM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:09pm

I hope the twist is that God is Elizabeth Taylor and she ain't playing.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:11pm

That's one of the twists now!

[Luscious]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:14pm

Joan ain't going nowhere. She'll be back doing Fashion Police in two weeks.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:16pm

She's living proof that only the good die young. Oh! You don't know!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:17pm

I love this picture of Joan and her grandson, Cooper

He calls her "Nana New Face" because everytime he sees her...

(And, no--that's not a joke! He really does!)

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:20pm

The first picture is the face that made Edgar kill himself.




The second is the one that's gonna make him wish he could die again when they run into each other in hell. JOKE. You're talking about her. Any publicity is good publicity.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:22pm

You son of a bitch. Don't you tell ME. My mother had a grandson.

Updated On: 8/29/14 at 11:22 PM

[Luscious]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:22pm

Enough already. You really have taken it a bit too far, don't you think?

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:23pm

ANYONE who wishes her ill is by far worse than any joke she could make because you are actually wishing harm to come to a person. Her comedy has always been shocking and you are entitled to not care for a joke or think it's "too far" but to say she is a "nasty bitch" is clearly by someone who knows nothing about her, her life, or her career. Read ANY of her biographies, talk to anyone who's actually met the women, read about how much money and actual time she's given to charity. She is a kind and generous woman even if a joke (or a political opinion) now and then may be in poor taste. She has always made fun of herself first, and is a true pioneer in comedy, period, let alone for a woman.

I wish her a quick and easy recovery.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:25pm

Ohhhhhhhjh. Everybody's toooooooo PC nowadays. It's a JOKE you son of a bitch. -- Joan Rivers.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:26pm

We are not wishing her ill. Namo and I are also comediennes.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:28pm

We aren't wishing her ill. She is ill. We're laughing to get through this difficult time. We're survivors. Don't you tell us.

[Luscious]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:32pm

I don't know...maybe it's me. Or maybe my mother just raised me right.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:33pm

I found this picture of her, but it don't know what it's from. Law and Order? I've never seen Law and Order but I think it must be Law and Order.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:34pm

Classic Joan Rivers on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1967

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:38pm

She looked great in a recent episode of Tyra!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:45pm

Joan on Johnny Carson in 1986, when they were still friends. She had been appearing on his show for 21 years, and they often joked that she was his "Jewish daughter."

Shortly after this appearance, her husband and manager arranged for her to host a competitive show and told her he had squared everything with Carson. He had not and Carson banned her from appearing on the show ever again and refused to speak to her for the rest of his life. Her show failed and her husband committed suicide. Everyone thought her life and career were over, but she came back. Her humor turned a bit more acidic, which sometimes happens to suicide survivors, and some people began to take offense at her routines.

But this appearance was the comedy before the storm.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/28/14 at 11:55pm

Joan never let the haters get to her. To Joan it was all part of the tradition of transgressive comedy, a tradition that she inherited from other 1960s Jewish comedians like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl and Mel Brooks, and a tradition that she bequeathed to the generations of women comedians like Roseanne Barr and Kathy Griffin and Sarah Sliverman, who recognized that what Joan accomplished in the 1960s had been accomplished by few women in show business before.

Before the talk show was canceled, one of Joan's guests was the young Patti Lupone, recently back from doing Les Mis in London--and with very 1987 hair!

Updated On: 8/29/14 at 11:55 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/29/14 at 12:04am

A few years after the Carson debacle and Edgar's suicide, Joan came back with another talk show, this one on daytime TV and this one a success.

It was now the 1990s, and Joan, who had always had a strong gay following and was a brave early voice of support to the New York City HIV community, featured some very transgressive queer guests on her talk show.

In this amazing show after "Paris Is Burning" came out, she had Jennie Livingston, the films director along with Dorian Corey, Pepper Labieja, Willi Ninja and Freddie Pendavis.

Long before RuPaul's Drag Race, Joan had trans people discussing "realness."

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/29/14 at 12:06am

To be fair, Edgar's not here to verify that he said anything about clearing it with Carson but I completely understand the way we construct narratives to help us live with our consciences.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/29/14 at 12:07am

I mean, where else but the Joan Rivers Show could you get 9 minutes and 52 seconds of Mis Grace F*CKing Jones?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/29/14 at 12:12am

Joan's show put Dame Edna on American television for the first time, sparring nicely with Joan Collins.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/29/14 at 12:15am

Of course, not everyone likes Joan. In this interview at the Friar's Club, Jerry Lewis speaks for the Joan Haters.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/29/14 at 12:30am

I remember in early '82 US magazine did a heart-wrenching feature on AIDS. Of course it was tinged with homophobia the way articles about AIDS were in Jann Wenner publications before he came out. There were sad stories of gay men in their deathbeds saying they'd go straight and never have sex with men again if it meant they'd get better. And there was Joan proudly saying she would visit her dying friends although she was quick to point out that she was a doctor's daughter so there was "no kissing, no touching." It was very daring at the time since she had recently come out as a Republican.