Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture, Andy Cohen [the best books to read txt] 📗

jumpsuit that Graciela found in her mom’s closet and wearing my hair down (when it was long). The jumpsuit was passed between Graciela and me for a period of ten years.

Elroy Jetson after realizing he’s gay—This was in the same family as the above Greg Brady costume, and it didn’t dawn on me that high-concept costumes with long explanations didn’t really work. Graciela found some sort of unitard with the Jetsons on it. I added a blue Speedo and became Elroy.

Foxy Brown—Used the Greg Brady jumpsuit for this one, with an Afro wig. It was as close to drag as I’ve ever come.

Elvis—While working at TRIO, my best pal Bruce Bozzi and I dressed as Elvis and appeared on behalf of the channel in the NYC Halloween parade. Once the parade started, we realized that people expected us to perform as Elvis, but we had no act. We sang the same refrain from “Viva Las Vegas” all night and were booed and gay-bashed all along the route. It was a miserable experience, but we made it onto the WCBS eleven o’clock newscast.

Austin Powers—I had a really cheap store-bought costume and wore it to a party full of hot gay dudes who were wearing next to nothing. Needless to say, I went home alone.

Yellow Sequined Tails—I’ve thrown this jacket over street clothes countless times when I’m costumeless, and the sheer strength of the sequins has made it a crowd favorite.

Baseball Player—I wore the Cardinals jersey I had from throwing out the first pitch (you’ll hear that story later) and might have enjoyed wearing my tight baseball pants more than I was supposed to.

Giggy—I’ll explain when I tell you about the Housewives.

Guess who’s taking my picture?

WILL YOU BE MY DADDY?

I sometimes wonder if Oklahoma City precipitated a shift in the nature of American news; as our world became more somber—and scary—the news got lighter. Fluffier. More vapid. Over time, Paris the city would become less newsworthy than Paris the Hilton. You probably think I, of all people, snorted up this change like a line of fine Colombian cocaine, but I hate cocaine, and this shift had a downside for me. As someone who covered—and loved—both entertainment and news, I felt caught in the middle.

I was approaching thirty and I felt like I’d grown up at CBS This Morning. I was light-years away from the ponytailed smart-ass intern I once was, but the work was still challenging and exciting. At CBS, I had learned much of what I know now about producing live segments, getting the most out of only a few minutes of TV time, booking guests, writing scripts on a tight deadline, and the art of the interview. And yet the show itself had no energy. It wasn’t very good. Ownership of CBS changed several times during that period, and we worked amid constant rumors of anchor shake-ups and staff changes. I remember one week when every single day at least one paper, sometimes two, featured calls for the cancellation of the show, ending on Friday with the New York Post saying we were “unnecessary and unwatchable.”

So, what did we do while the world either laughed at us or ignored us? We had FUN! We were a merry band of lovable losers. One day I taught the entire morning editorial meeting the game where you figure out what your name would be if you were a porn star. In the version I knew, you take your middle name, you make it your first name, and for your porn last name you use the name of the street you grew up on. (Or the name of your street now. I gave everybody a choice to make it more fun and because the street that I grew up on was boring.) According to the modified formula, my porn name was Joey Horatio, which I enjoyed because it sounded like rough trade. As we were all cracking ourselves up figuring out our alter egos, Andy Rooney came in and said, “Is this a party? What in the world is going on in here?” And so we figured out Andy Rooney’s porn-star name: Aitken Partridge. Not porny at all, may God rest his soul.

Paula Zahn came in next. “What is this?” she demanded. Turns out Paula’s name would be Ann Jennifer. Which is one sadly sexless name for a porn star. Stick to the news, Ann Jennifer.

Come to think of it, that little game revealed a lot about our problems: We had no heat. There was never any energy surrounding anything we put on the air, guests didn’t come to our show first, and America didn’t fall in love with our anchor team. Mention CBS This Morning today and you won’t initiate any trip down TV’s Memory Lane. Mention the Today show with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, or Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel, and it’s all gushing and rhapsodizing.

One of the lowest points of CBS This Morning’s history came when we decided to zig when others zagged. We couldn’t compete with Katie and her window looking out over her devoted fans on Rockefeller Plaza, so we added a studio audience. Which sounds not bad, until you realize this audience has to be there at 6:30 in the morning and watch boring stuff live. Nevertheless, I came down with Lucy Ricardo Syndrome, the symptoms of which include a sudden desperation to be a part of the show. I didn’t care that I wouldn’t be on-camera. I volunteered to do the audience warm-up every day, thinking that getting myself in front of a crowd would eventually pay off in some way. Plus nobody else wanted to do it.

I had no routine—only blind confidence, which had worked pretty well for me at times in the past but had also effed me royally on more than one occasion. So, I made “jokes” about how early it was, though there was nothing funny about how early it was to these people. I made “jokes” about Paula