Private Parts (37 page)

"YOU'RE A LAMB, JAY, YOU'RE A LAMB!" I jumped up. "Hey, Branford, what about you? You're a team player. What do you think about Arsenio?"

"That's between y'all," Branford said.

"Nobody on this show has a killer instinct. Is it he's a black guy and you're a black guy, Branford? So what? He's out to ruin you."

The audience was howling.

"Let me continue," I quieted them down. "I got a lot on my mind. The amazing thing to me, Jay, is here you're a nice guy, I never heard you say a bad word about anybody. And I tuned in to Arsenio and I see Ed and Doc, who should really have come on this show. 'The Tonight Show' has been pretty good to those guys ... Ed and Doc are two of the biggest loads on two feet...."

The place exploded. Jay hid under his desk.

"Howard has his own agenda
and you sort of follow along."

--
Jay Leno

Here I was on the set of "The Tonight Show" destroying those two phony icons and cleverly complying with Jay's bullshit edict that I not talk about Johnny. But Jay looked worried.

"Hold it a second, Jay. I'm not talking about Johnny, I'm talking about Ed and Doc. Here you got two guys; this Ed, for thirty years he sat on this couch like the big fat blubber that he is, and he's making a great living. What's his problem with Jay? Why would they go on the Arsenio show -- ?"

"They did not talk about me," Jay got defensive.

"And then, Ed comes out and starts kissing Arsenio?" I jumped to my feet. I stared the camera in the face. "Ed?! If you're watching me at home, let me tell you something. You can be nice to this guy, Jay Leno. There's a certain relationship with 'The Tonight Show' that you should have. And Doc? You stood there in pink outfits leading that lousy band and did nothing. Doc? You're a crummy musician! Ed and Doc. Two idiots. The hell with them. You don't need them, Jay. You don't need them."

By now, Jay was fingering me under the desk.
Just kidding.

The camera was on Branford. He was cracking up. The crowd exploded.

"This show is terrific, Jay! I don't care what Ed does. These are

two no-talents that have absolutely nothing on the ball. They were lucky to have jobs here with Johnny. The hell with them. LET THEM GO KISS ARSENIO'S ASS. WE DON'T NEED THEM. SCREW 'EM! SCREW 'EM!"

The roar was deafening. We were making show-biz history. We went to a break and I leaned over to Jay. He looked pale. "How's it going?" I asked, always paranoid about my appearances. I couldn't judge this one, even though the crowd had never gone crazier. I never think I'm doing well, so I just keep pushing it and pushing it. That's why all this shit comes out of me, because I just think people want more. I think I'm not going far enough for them, meanwhile I'm completely over the line. But Jay was sitting there, ashen-faced. "I don't know. I don't know if you should have brought up that stuff about Ed." Can you believe Jay was ambivalent about this stellar appearance? He
should
have been fingering me under the desk. Meanwhile, Helen was brewing a fondue in her pants, she was so ecstatic about this appearance.

We came back from the break and Jay steered me away from Ed and Doc. But I had really knocked him for a loop. For the rest of the show, his timing was off because he kept looking over at me on the couch, figuring he had to deal with me if I exploded. Meanwhile, he was interviewing some actress from a sitcom and I was sitting on the couch with Lyle Lovett, pretending I was making out with him. Then I pretended to snore during this girl's rap. The whole show was off the wall. By the end of the show Jay looked as if he'd been through a war.

"I want to thank my guests, I think," he said. Think? He should have blown and reamed me. He should have fucked and sucked me. After all, I said everything he wanted to say but couldn't.

CHEVY CHASE

This one is a really sad case. Here was a guy who was part of one of the coolest things around, the early "Saturday Night Live" crew. Groundbreaking, irreverent, creative. They would make fun of all the Hollywood establishment people like Cary Grant. And what happened? A little success and they became the very people they made fun of. Chevy Chase is pathetic. He's palling around on golf courses now with Gerald Ford, the doofus president he used to make fun of. Maybe all those painkillers Chevy took from those pratfalls affected

his mind. He sure wasn't thinking straight when he decided to start a feud with me.

It started on Larry King's show. Chevy was a guest and one of my fans called in and said, "Howard Stern." Out of the blue, Chevy attacked me:

CHEVY: Is that that guy Howard Stern? Boy, he's an ass. Can't stand

him. LARRY: Have you seen his show?

CHEVY: I've never seen it, but I've heard him on the radio. LARRY: And? CHEVY: He's a very funny guy -- got the brain of an egg timer.

They went to a break and this Chevy moron continued to obsess about me. It was clear that he was one of those guys who probably listens to me every morning, lying there in bed, beating off to my every word. Probably all of his friends were talking about me and how I had the kind of buzz that Chevy remembers from way back when he started on "Saturday Night Live." But now he was bald and bloated and bitter and jealous. Listen to this guy talking about me when he thought he was off the air:

CHEVY: Boy, that Howard Stern is such an ass. I mean, really a nothing. Just nothing there, nothing. If he was just funny. Makes that Morton Downey look like Joyce Brothers.

Well! My fans called me up and played me the satellite feed of the "Larry King Live" show. And better yet, they called in and gave me Chevy's home phone number. Richard Belzer happened to be my guest at the time and Richard had been an old friend of Chevy's. We decided to call Chevy on the air. A woman with an accent answered the phone. We identified ourselves and asked her to tell Chevy we were on the phone and we wanted to speak to him. I even said "Thank you" at the end of our request, which will be relevant later in the story.

We waited a long time. Belzer and I filled the time working out possible scenarios for the call. Finally the woman came back on. She said that it wasn't Chevy Chase's house. An obvious, bald-faced lie.

"No, it is," I insisted. "What, you had to go figure it out? I don't understand why you're saying that. I know it is and Richard Belzer's

here, his good friend. Can you just please get him?"

Note, I said "please." Again, she was gone. We started riffing on

Chevy and his toupees. "Hey, now everyone in California, when you see Chevy Chase on the street, go up to him and say, 'What's with your toupee, man? Why

don't you take that thing off?'" I suggested. After another interminable wait, I decided this was a job for Baba

Booey. I wasn't going to wait all day for the woman to check to see

if Chevy lived there. Gary dialed again and politely explained to the woman that he had spoken to Chevy at this same number the day before. Gary established that the woman worked there. He asked to speak to Jayni, Chevy's wife, another friend of Belzer's. Within seconds, Chevy was on the line.

"Howard Stern is an ass. He's really a nothing. I can't stand him."

--
Chevy Chase

HOWARD: Chevy, hey, Chevy.

CHEVY: Who is this?

HOWARD: It's Howard and Belzer and we're live on the air.

BELZER: Hey, Chev.

CHEVY: Howard and who?

HOWARD: Belzer, Richard.

CHEVY: Howard Belzer?

BELZER: And Richard Stern.

HOWARD: Howard Stern and Belzer. We're doing a radio show. Trying to talk to you. Why are you bad-mouthing me? CHEVY: Howard who?

HOWARD: Howard Stern and Richard Belzer. We're on the radio. CHEVY: What? Whose radio is on? BELZER: Yours.

HOWARD: Larry King told me to call. Why are you bad-mouthing me? JAYNI: Hello?

CHEVY: I've got it, Jayni, Jayni, hang up the phone! JAYNI: Listen, he's not bad-mouthing you. It's early in the morning. CHEVY: Hey, hey, Jayni, Jayni, get off the phone, please. Get off the phone. I want to deal with this. HOWARD: All right. CHEVY: Jayni, please hang up the phone! Will you please hang up the phone, we're on the radio. JAYNI: I understand that.

CHEVY: Jayni, please.

JAYNI: Why is Howard saying things about you when you're a very

nice person? HOWARD: No, he's a nice guy but he's being real mean to me. JAYNI: He's not being mean to you. HOWARD: Do you want to hear what he said about me on Larry King?

At this point, Chevy was flipping out and did not want his wife involved in this nonsense.

CHEVY: JAYNI, GET OFF THE PHONE!

HOWARD: Chevy, I've always been nice to you.

CHEVY: Hey, Howard is this you?

HOWARD: Hey, we're on the air.

CHEVY: I've got news for you.

HOWARD: What?

CHEVY: I didn't bad-mouth you. But I do have some news for you.

HOWARD: What?

CHEVY: This is my home and I don't like you. Okay? Is that clear?

HOWARD: All right.

CHEVY: So don't call my house again.

HOWARD: Okay, fine.

CHEVY: See you later.

HOWARD: Bye. Who cares.

We hung up. "Did you hear him turn on his own wife because of his deferred anger toward you?" Belzer was amazed. I couldn't believe how much Chevy lacked a sense of humor.

"For someone who's done some of the greatest jokes in public, bad-mouthed executives at important dinners. Then you call him up and here's a chance to have like a great moment and he's the most humorless ..." Belzer was astonished.

We started speculating on why he was so grim. Perhaps it had something to do with the reviews for his
Invisible Man
movie. It probably was because he realized that I was a thousand times more relevant to today's humor scene than he was.

I would have let it rest at that, but then a few days later Chevy went on Arsenio's show and
LIED!

"He called my home early in the morning and berated my housekeeper. A lovely El Salvadoran woman -- beat up on her basically,

over the phone, to get me on live, at a quarter to eight in the morning. I thought that had a lot of class. I guess the guy's basically an egg timer. I'm not fighting with him, I just don't like him. When a guy calls your home and talks to your people that way, you'd be upset."

Oh, so now he's upset because of the way we treated "his people." What's the story here? GET A LIFE! GETASENSE OFHUMOR!

The only good thing about this whole sorry incident is that Chevy is going on the air any day now with his own talk show and if it's still on the air by the time you're reading this chapter, I'm sure his glaring lack of a sense of humor will provide me with lots of material. Oh, and Chevy, say hello to Gerald Ford for me, babe. You old rebel you.

MADONNA

I tried to be nice to Madonna. I really did. In fact, before she became "Madonna" I kind of dug her. I remember back in 19881 even called her up at home when somebody gave me her home phone number and I left a twenty-minute message on her answering machine. I said all kinds of nice things to her:

Hey Madonna, it's Howard Stern. How ya doin'? Don't get mad, somebody gave me your phone number. I heard you were a fan so I figured I'd call. Hey, I love your videos. I even rented
Who's That Girl
and
Shanghai Surprise.
And I'm gonna tell you something, your body looks great from all that running. Hey, we'd love for you to do the show. Tuesday would be a good day because Wednesday's Jessica Hahn and Thursday's Gilligan so tomorrow would be best. Lef s face it -- it would help the ratings and since you like the show, you want to see us get good ratings. I figure you got a good sense of humor. That's why you'll understand this call because if some idiot disc jockey was calling my house I'd be pretty annoyed. But I have to do it because if s my job. I have to be a jerk or people won't listen. Just like you have to wear bras with the metal tips on them like an opera singer. We have so much in common. You have to do stuff for your career and I have to do stuff for mine. I mean, I'm on the radio so I can't have hairy armpits and stuff, I have to do outrageous things that people can
hear,
know what I'm saying? Oh, and that
Penthouse
thing. Forget about it, man. Your body

is so much better now. I didn't think that was a big deal. I thought you handled it real well. You didn't get upset, you didn't threaten to sue. You admitted you did the pictures. Hey, who the hell needs you to show up here? We're talking to you anyway!

Madonna couldn't make it in the next day but it wasn't until she got really big that I really got annoyed with her. So by the time her documentary
Truth or Dare
came out, I had had it with this jerk. If there's a mountain called Egomania, she finally climbed to the top of it with that piece of garbage. Could you believe all the crap in that flick? How about those stupid prayer circles? Imagine if we did a live show again and I said, "Okay, everyone, come into my dressing room and let's form a prayer circle." Robin would have me arrested. And Madonna had
four
prayer sessions in that friggin' movie! Just once I wanted to hear God answer her back: "Hey, sweetheart! This is God! You know, there's like an AIDS epidemic. Don't you think you can stop wasting my time praying about a stupid concert?" I'd rather clean monkey shit in a circus than be in that prayer circle.

And how many ways could she humiliate the people she worked with? That one woman came to her and said that she was in a hotel room drunk and she passed out and she woke up and her ass was bleeding and this cunt face started laughing at her! You'd think Madonna would have the decency to turn off the camera and say, "I can't use this in my film. This is
this
woman's revelation, not mine." What kind of woman allows that to be aired? Meanwhile, Madonna didn't reveal any aspect of her own life that wasn't cunningly calculated. Hey, let me see
her
ass bleed a bit. If she picked her nose and put it in the woman's mouth, I'd say, "At least there's something of Madonna." She had a sore throat -- that's real intimate. You see her go to the doctor's office to get her throat sprayed. Hey, if you're pretending to be intimate, let me see you on a bidet, cleaning yourself out.