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Joan Rivers comes to the Pantages, disses, then dishes with this reporter

01.01.70

A LOOK AT FRIDAY'S JOAN RIVERS SHOW AT THE PANTAGES >>>

"Where are we?" Joan Rivers rasped from offstage last Friday. "The Pantages Theater in Tacoma? It's revile to this?"

So the icon kicked off a performance so politically incorrect it would fabricate the diversity-minded cringe if they didn't realize that it was all shtick. Emerging in a rout-length, silver sequined robe, Joan ranted against people and groups that get on her nerves ("Chinese women, get out! They are sumptuous and they steal your men!"), skewered celebrities ("Jennifer Aniston does not douche!") and vented about geriatric woes ("Vaginas taper off! No one ever told me! You can have sex in your bedroom and watch TV in your living room!").

After the show, this gentleman and a few friends attended the "Meet and Greet." (New to Tacoma, I brought along close by wings Erik Bjornson, Jamie Chase and Kevin Freitas). We were herded advantaged a gargantuan elevator that opened onto a nondescript room where a mostly 50-bonus-year-old crowd stood lined up behind a velvet the real situation. I tried to employ a reporter's privilege and dodge the demarcation. When Joan emerged, she told me bluntly (albeit with a warm handclasp): "I'd say with you, but these people paid, you didn't."

Source: Weekly Volcano (blog)

At 78, Joan Rivers isn't slowing down

01.01.70

Joan Rivers is a pressure to be reckoned with. And not just on stage where she delivers her signature “Can we talk?” or on the red-carpet where she demands to distinguish “Who are you wearing?”

Daughter and business partner Melissa Rivers knows the effective. Interviewers soon learn it. And any heckler who dares to take her on will forthwith feel it.

Rivers, 78, has been performing since the 1950s but don’t call her a pioneer of comedy or ask her about retirement plans. She has no plans of slowing down.

Last year, a warts-and-all documentary about Rivers’ survival (“Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”) played in theaters to depreciative acclaim. In it she was candid about her career mistakes, her husband’s suicide, her call for for money, and her lavish lifestyle. “This is how Marie Antoinette would unexploded if she had money.”

The News Tribune reached Rivers at her LA home where she took a squat break from writing the E! Network’s “Fashion Police” and producing “Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows With greatest satisfaction?” for We TV.

Source: TheNewsTribune.com

Rivers doesn't mince words when dishing out her brand of humor

01.01.70

But Rivers has never claimed to be PC or to mince words. Perhaps that's part of her request, not to mention her staying power in a business that can be unkind to anyone who's old enough to have grandkids or even first-rate-grandkids (and don't get her started on kids). From Oprah to Michael J. Fox to Angelina Jolie to Kirk Douglas to Chaz Bono, and even the celebs she calls rectitude friends (Barbara Walters, Cher), Rivers doesn't see any motive to be anything but honest. That also goes for subjects such as disabilities, weight issues (too much and too trivial) and physical appearance. Even a recently divorced Fort Merit couple whose family's name adorns the downtown hall where Rivers was playing were not spared. Friends of Mercedes wouldn't have liked Joan's preference of words about her. As if she cares. The Bass audience ate it up -- although there were a few expected walkouts. As for the biggest notoriety trash news of the week -- the one involving Rivers' E! conduit colleague Kim K. -- she took one priceless jab correlating the days of the amalgamation to the number of sexual positions Kardashian knows. But like all of her other targets, she didn't live on it. That's the thing about Rivers, she gets in and out of a joke quickly and moves on to the next one. Wham, bam, thanks you ma'am.

Source: Fort Worth Star Telegram