The Late Joan Rivers: 'Does this urn make my ash look fat?' — Page 17

"Courteney Act with Joan Rivers and Bette Midler." BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME!


I got home to watch all 16:38 of the first Graham Norton clip and it didn't answer any of the questions I have raised… is there any reason to watch the second one? For me… I mean. Others may enjoy it.

---

Updated On: 9/2/14 at 09:11 PM

I can't imagine it has been easy going through life looking at the world and the mirror through Joan Rivers's eyes.

It's not easy going through life looking at the world and the mirror through anyone's. Even yours, for all anyone knows. Life is hard, and as Joan said in those memes I posted, it doesn't get better. You get better...maybe...and if you do, you're lucky.

So we all do, as best as we can, for as long as we can.

But let's talk about Edgar's suicide. I don't think we talk about Edgar's suicide enough when we talk about the evolution of Joan's humor.

Some of us don't get better. Bad things happen, sometimes TO you, and sometimes you're the cause of them. Either way, some of us end up looking at the world and the mirror through the fog of a deep, thick, hopeless depression. Those people begin to believe that the world and their loved ones would be better off if they were dead. And sometimes they leave their loved ones looking at the world and the mirror and wondering "Why? Why. Why. Why."

I think the turning point, for Joan, had to have been Edgar's suicide. Suicide survivors, so I have learned, bounce back in different ways, if they bounce back at all. Some don't bounce back, because suicide ideation has been found to "infect" the spouses and families of people who give in to suicide, the word "ideation" implying an idea of an idea: the sudden and inescapable thought that suicide is possible, whereas hitherto it had been unthinkable.

The suicide of a spouse is one of those things that is too horrible to believe can ever happen. Once it does happen, the spouse who remains has to process that impossibility. Some survivors experience free-floating anger, some become depressed to the point of isolation, some go into tremendous denial, and some become overwhelmingly bitter. The ones who survive are the ones who find ways to escape the suicide ideation.

Before Edgar's suicide, especially in the 1960s, Joan's humor was almost entirely self-deprecating--as was the humor of many other pioneering female comedians. But as the women's movement moved on, these self-deprecating comedians like Joan and Phyllis Diller and Totie Fields were faced with a challenge: Even though their trail-blazing in the 1960s man's-world of nightclubs and stand-up comedy had given them ur-feminist credentials, time and women were evolving, baby, and the they had to change their I'm-so-fat/I'm-so-ugly/I'm-so-flat-chested routines or see their careers end.

It is possible that, without planning to, Joan transformed her bitterness into insult comedy, out of a combination of a defensive reaction to Edgar's suicide and the necessity of changing her act.

And what resulted was a kind of insult comedy that had edges too rough for someone of your delicate sensibilities, and she needed to take it to the level where you feel revulsion, because she needed to make humor out of things that were unthinkable: calling a sacred cow a fat cow, laughing in the face of horror, spitting in the face of suicide.

This post needs a punchline.

---

Updated On: 9/2/14 at 11:37 PM

The holiday video has been seen by 2,500 people in 48 hours.

But that's nothing compared the picture Liza posted of Joan on her FB page, asking her fans to pray for Joan. Her web guy says that a good post is seen by 75,000 and if there is a mention of Judy Garland it can approach 200,000.

The Joan post got over 800,000.

---

Actually what this moment MOST reminds me of is the great line in "Caroline, or Change" after the Kennedy assassination when the black characters refer to JFK as "our almost-friend."

That's ultimately what I think of Joan. She was the gay (mostly male) community's almost-friend who was really mean but because the American Survivor Narrative is so important to some people, they have built her up into something else from what she was. And that's fine. We all need good mythology, I suppose.

Better Joan than that Bailey/Barbato-foisted Tammy Faye "was a gay icon" BS that far too many queens bought.

---

Updated On: 9/3/14 at 12:30 AM

Found this which has some explanations.
Comedian Joan Rivers remained on life support on Tuesday after being hospitalized in serious condition due to cardiac arrest last week, her daughter Melissa said.

Rivers, 81, was hospitalized in New York after she stopped breathing during outpatient surgery on her vocal cords at a Manhattan clinic.
Rivers, an actress and stand-up comedian known for her acerbic brand of humour, has been at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan since Thursday.

Life support is provided to a patient to keep vital organs such as the brain, heart, lungs, liver and kidneys working. It can involve medications or devices to keep the heart pumping or a ventilator to help with breathing.

"Most often when a doctor puts a patient on life support, I would imagine that means they are on a ventilator and possibly some other combination for the support for the heart and the kidneys," Dr. Steven Simpson, a critical care specialist at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, said in an interview.

Although Rivers is 81, he added that age is not as important as the care given immediately after cardiac arrest.

"What makes much more of a difference is the duration of the arrest and the success or failure of the initial resuscitation," he said. "Statistically age just doesn't weigh as heavily as you might think."
A doctor will gradually wean a patient off life support as the condition improves.
Rivers, who once described herself as the "plastic surgery poster girl" and joked about her numerous procedures, stopped breathing after suffering cardiac arrest.

A representative for the comedian said media reports that her family was planning to sue the endoscopy clinic where she was treated were not true.


from Reuters.

The lawsuit sounds like baloney to me as well. When you go in for these procedures you have to sign all these papers that basically say that if something happens the patient assumes all risks.

---

If she recovers, I'm bringing Namo to her next show at the Laurie Beechman. Who else is in?

---

Namo: I challenge you to attend with us when Joan recovers--AND NOT LAUGH!

---

My point has never been that she doesn't make me laugh. I always give credit where it's due like with the AIDS bit in A Piece of Work. I hope she recovers and performs, even if it's in a wheelchair. Totie Fields didn't stop just because she lost a leg. She showed Joan how it can be done. Totie never did any "Don'tchya HATE one-legged people?" jokes though.

---

So are you in, Namo?

---

My work schedule is out of my control until the end of December… but if I happened to be free. Speaking of free, I really wouldn't want to pay for the ticket because that's just encouraging her.

---

Joan once called me a "cheapskate," so I would be delighted for you to attend as my guest.

Ya big cheapskate!

---

I'm in!