Free Diary of a Mad Diva by Joan Rivers Page B

the easiest holiday to dress correctly for. I don’t have to do anything. I simply emphasize my pasty white old lady legs by wearing short shorts, and then add a touch of red with my red spider veins and a smidgen of blue with my big varicose numbers. It’s great! I can just fall out of bed and be ready to march with the Old Veteran Geezers. If I sit on a float and kick my legs fast enough they’ll think it’s a flag.
    Just had my coffee and Restylane and I opened the paper and what do I see? There, on the front page, is a picture of the Pope . . . in his red outfit. And on Memorial Day! And you wonder why people are leaving the Church. Pedophilia’s one thing, but there’s no excuse for bad fashion. The man spends half the year wearing white out of season and then, on the first day he’s allowed to wear white, should wear white, he’s in a scarlet gown with matching tam and slippers. I’d say, “There is no God,” but I believe there is. I just believe he either doesn’t have any fashion sense or he has his priorities fucked up, and he’s mistakenly more interested in saving children than in dressing for the season.
    I love the new Pope, Francis. I was there when they were naming him. I was worried because the man is not an American and I was scared some jokester cardinal would opt for the name Sandusky. I should cut the Pope a little slack; he’s new at Poping, and with the old Pope hanging around the Vatican looking over his shoulder, counting the jewelry, maybe he’s too nervous to pay attention to detail. A lot of people don’t realize how hard it is to be a Pope. It’s not all just good times and wearing fabulous rings and waving to no one in particular. So I made a list of potential papal troubles:
     
Those snappy hats cause baldness.
There are no pockets in the vestments. Where does he keep his Altoids? No one needs a pontiff with altar boy on his breath.
He always makes the sign of the cross with his right arm, which means the left one has no muscle tone and it just lies there doing nothing, like Katie Holmes’s vagina on her wedding night.
He’s constantly saying “bless you” to people. What does he say when somebody sneezes? “Bless you, bless you”? He can’t say, “Jesus Christ, you got snot on my scepter!”
    MAY 28
    Dear Diary:
    Just got back from doing a benefit for U.S. war veterans and I’m exhausted. Once a year I try to entertain our wounded warriors, but frankly I feel the government is inflating the numbers a bit. I know all about Photoshopping. It’s like Princess Diana walking through the land mines. Yeah, right. I knew her. The only time that bitch left Kensington Palace was to bang her Arab boyfriends in the back of their cars. If she was really walking through mines, how come she never got blown up? It’s not like she was so careful; she wore heels. Diana was never in peril and died as an oversexed, drug-addled princess should—decently, in a tunnel in Paris.
    I spent forty-five minutes at the Old Soldiers’ Home trying to explain RuPaul’s Drag Race to a bunch of shaky old men who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. All of them spent the entire show hiding under their wheelchairs because my voice reminded them of the Vietcong Tabernacle Choir.
    Seriously, I truly believe Memorial Day is important. It reminds me of how great America is, and that it’s well worth putting other people’s lives on the line to protect and defend it. If it weren’t for America, Mexicans would have to tunnel to Japan to find day labor picking fruit or trimming hedges or saying “You finish?” to customers in restaurants who appear to be in no way done with their meals. (How often I want to say to these guys, “Back up, Jose, I’m not even chewing yet.”)
    MAY 29
    Dear Diary:
    I did something I’ve never done before because of Memorial Day weekend. I bought a mattress and box spring half off. I love holiday sales because nothing reminds me of what Memorial Day truly