Joan Rivers: Rest in Eternal Peace ~ Victor Cruz

Jan 31, 2014; New York, NY, USA; Television comedian Joan Rivers walks the red carpet prior to attending the Howard Stern 60th Birthday Bash at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Recently, comedy legend and entertainment icon, Joan Rivers passed away.

Giants Nation, can we talk?

Yes, unfortunately your Brooklyn native daughter is no longer with us… on social media, the Giants superstar wide receiver Victor Cruz took notice of the sad news posting this heartwarming picture on Instagram of the pair together from earlier this year when Cruz was on E!’s – Fashion Police:

Here’s another couple tweets from back in March, which include the original picture from E’s Twitter account::

Looking at those tweets is sad, thinking about all the players like Victor that got to meet and hang out with Joan over the years and years of her careeer, only to find out definitively that Joan Rivers is even funnier in person. What an experience that must have been for these young athletes.

After all, this is Dot Matrix we’re talking about here:

It seems a lot of people mostly remember Joan Rivers from her incredibly funny role in the movie Spaceballs, but she was so much more than that in her day.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen, what you can learn from Joan Rivers death has nothing to do with Hollywood red carpets, loud annoying voices or trashy/classy STD jokes on late night infomercial cable. Or… even Dot Matrix, as amazing as that character was.

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Understand Giants Nation, Joan Rivers was born a long time ago. The Washington Redskins were still the Boston Redskins the year she was born (blame it all on Boston, I say) in 1933. That was a long time ago, looking back to that specific time period… Pearl Harbor was still beautiful in 1933. Think about that, that tragedy didn’t happen until 1941. The point is, this’ a lady that lived quite a long time on Earth and I don’t claim to know her, but it’s obvious her fingerprints are all over the History of Comedy.

You know how going on a late night talk show helps ignite careers for Comedians? Joan Rivers was one of the originals, as she got her break on the Tonight Show in 1965. At 32 years old; she walked on stage and delivered HUGE after doing Comedy in New York City for seven long years.

Now, I don’t claim to know what New York City was like in the ’50s and ’60s, but I do know the world was different and that nowadays going to New York to attempt comedy is challenging. Doing it for seven years is downright impractical… but dammit if Joan Rivers didn’t bullsh!t her way to the top of the business.

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Make no mistake, personally, I’m not a huge Joan Rivers fan, but I feel very strongly that she deserves some respect for what she did for Comedy and Entertainment. She was quick, elegant, hilarious and raunchy before people even admitted to knowing what that was — publicly.

Understand, this is a woman that was given an opportunity by one of the biggest legends in the business, Johnny Carson. When Joan got her own FOX show in 1986 and didn’t tell Johnny about it, Carson “manned” the sh!t out of that situation by never speaking to her again.

She would later say

:

"“I’ve learned from my dealings with Johnny Carson that no matter what kind of friendship you think you have with people you’re working with, when the chips are down, it’s all about business.”"

This is the shell of Joan Rivers we have come to know today, in 1987, her husband of 22 years, Edgar Rosenberg — committed suicide. How do you recover from something like that? Sure, she was still super funny, and she still had her spots, but she was cast as an afterthought, a joke that Johnny Carson didn’t find humorous anymore. From that year on, everything was an uphill climb for Joan whom had multiple procedures done to try to remain looking young. It became a punchline and of course, she was always there to throw the first punch with lines like:

"“I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.”"

It’s true, Joan built herself back up to a certain extent, but the Melissa and Joan annoying fashion stuff you know her for today is not the same ball of hilarity that hit America for two solid decades from the ’60s to ’80s.
 
Regardless Giants Nation, go on YouTube, watch early Joan, compare her to the female Comedians of today. Seriously, Joan Rivers is like the Simpsons of female comedy… you’ll watch and be like, “Oh, Joan did that… and Joan did that too.” But as female comedians learned, from her acidity, Joan still thought of them as competition:

"[on young female comics]: They all come up to me and say, “Without you, I couldn’t be here, the barriers you broke down.” I say, “Get the f*** away from me. I still could take every one of you with one hand behind my back. Outta here. Talk like that at my funeral, but not till then”."

Heck, Joan was even Annie Dubinski on The Simpsons at one point in 2011, because, like we said, “Oh, Joan did that… and Joan did that too.”
 
Exactly like Victor Cruz suggested Miss Joan Rivers, superstar extraordinaire. Rest in Eternal Peace.