I’ve been reading about Joan Rivers’ memorial service, which sounds perfect. The entertainment featured Audra McDonald, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus and Hugh Jackman, and the speakers included Melissa Rivers, Cindy Adams and Howard Stern. This mix seems just right, since it embodies talent, irreverence and show biz, all at their finest. After Robin Williams died, the world grieved for both a life cut short and a human being in such terrible despair. Because Joan was 81, and because she’d lived a rough, boisterous and ultimately triumphant life, the mood has been more celebratory. Joan Rivers was the antidote to every mealy-mouthed self-help book ever written, because she tended to blast through each defeat, in a blaze of diamonds, cosmetic surgery and wisecracks. She didn’t hide her heartache; she transformed it.
It’s also been especially fun to watch all the clips of Joan at work, as she crafted her onstage persona. When you read some of Joan’s material, it can seem daunting, but the minute you hear the same joke being brayed in Joan’s inimitable New York honk, everything’s funny – even when she said, “If I found Yoko Ono in my pool, I’d punish my dog.”
Here’s Joan’s glorious return to the Tonight Show earlier this year. You can feel the audience’s delighted eagerness, and since Joan’s first jokes involve Nazis and vagina rings, she doesn’t disappoint.
I’ve just realized something: Joan Rivers is the first celebrity I can picture in heaven, reading the comments on her own funeral, and judging what everyone was wearing. Watch out.
