Poor Catherine Zeta!

Well, I only read People Magazine when I'm visiting my dear friend Kathy Griffin -- usually, I try to read Backstage or Variety so I can keep up with the showbiz news. Or, I'll plow through the Economist so that when one of my political friends calls me to get an endorsement or advice on dresses, I can be up on the issues.

But with Kathy, it's People and US Weekly and all the other trashy tabloid star magazines. She has such a wicked sense of humor -- luckily, we have an agreement that I won't ever be in her act, and in return, I won't have my Secret Service agents kill her! (ha ha, of course they won't do that -- they're such nice boys! But, what Kathy doesn't know. . .)

Anyhow, we're over at Kathy's house, and she's reading US Weekly, and I'm paging through People, and my goodness if I don't see that poor Catherine Zeta Jones has checked herself into a lunatic asylum, or whatever they're calling them these days.

Well, it was inevitable. You don't take a dirty little Welsh peasant and turn her into a movie star without there being some sort of consequences. I think we proved that with Vivian Leigh!

I'm rooting for Catherine. I had a cocktail party for her and Michael when they got married -- just a small affair, although I remember that Shannon Doherty and Bob Dole got into an argument about NAFTA, and I had to send them out to the garage with Larry King, who is wonderful at getting people to apologize to one another.

Anyhow, even then Catherine Zeta seemed wounded, but up for anything. Catherine, if you're reading this, remember -- being famous is better than being crazy, so get well and get back to work on the studio lot!

RIP Liz Taylor

I just had to post about the death of my dearest friend, Liz Taylor. We grew apart in later years, mostly because she was getting so fat. It's hard for fat women to be friends with attractive women like me. I remember watching Liz at the wrap party for "Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf," downing one velvety ham sandwich after another, drinking a milkshake out of Rock Hudson's shoe, and pretending like the world would love her forever. That was 1966, the year that Ronnie was elected Governor of California. I remember looking at Liz and thinking, "This may be the peak of your showbiz career, Liz, but it's just the beginning of mine!"

Ronnie and Liz stopped talking because of the whole AIDS business. I like to think that despite that, Liz and I stayed friends to the end. Every year, on her birthday, I had a gallon of Haagen Daz shipped to her in dry ice. Because I loved her, I would always include a note: "Eat just a little bit at a time, Liz! There's LOTS of servings in here!! NO NEED TO EAT THE WHOLE GALLON ALL At ONCE!!!"

I like the picture I have here. It reminds me that even as Liz was getting fat, people still didn't mind being around her and showing her a good time.