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walking out the door to get the massage after filming a response to the Britney “Work Bitch” video, someone hands me a shot and I just did it and left. So I have become this splayed-out bloated person with Jäger breath thinking about pandas. When do I start being an adult? When Ron Swanson arrives?
    THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2013
    I woke up to a bunch of tweets saying Good Morning America is ripping off your Panda Cam gag. So that put me in a foul mood, although I don’t know if we were the first anyway. It does seem like someone at GMA is watching our show, because I get tweets all the time from people saying they’re ripping off our bits. It’s one thing for my show to be as stupid as it is, but that show (produced by ABC News) has turned into a dumber version of Entertainment Tonight . And people love it, so the joke is on America. Ha!
    Zarena, the lady from See Spot Rescued, came by and interviewed me and did an “apartment inspection.” Oh, and did I mention she needs three references? Halfway through I thought maybe she misinterpreted me and thought I was adopting a kid , but no, it’s all about a dog. We talked a lot about dog psychology, where to put his crate, and on and on. And I have to feed it. Oh Lord. I hope he likes takeout. But I decided that I am just meeting him, I don’t have to walk out with him. I made that very clear to her, too.
    In the cab to work, we were stuck on the left side of Sixth Avenue and the traffic seemed to be moving well in the right two lanes, which was making me crazy. I couldn’t contain myself. I finally said to the guy, “Can you get in the right lane?” And he started going off on how broken America is and nothing could fix it, and then he wouldn’t get in the right lane. I was sitting there wondering if somehow in his mind the right wing, or the right side of the government, was screwing things up, which he was correlating to changing into the right lane. Whatever the reason was, he would not change lanes. I was beside myself. When we pulled up to 30 Rock, I said, “Not for nothing, America may be broken but I do think we would’ve gotten here faster in the right lane.”
    I had a frustrating conference call with our WWHL bookers today. There is a mind-numbing pecking order among talk shows, meaning that each has a rule about which others they will and will not “follow.” You can’t book a guest on us, for example, before that person goes on Letterman . Letterman won’t allow it. But shows that used to be fine following us will no longer, and are making publicists cancel appearances on us in order to preserve bookings on bigger shows. And these bookers are trashing us. On the one hand they are saying we’re an inconsequential little show, and on the other they’re upset about us going first. It’s ultimately a symptom of the show doing well, but booking is a maddening process.
    Tonight I had dinner with Bruce and Bryan and little Ava. Bruce said the lady from the rescue place was intensely thorough on his reference interview. I wanna make my goddaughter my dog’s godmother—does that work? Ava seems into it. Then we went to that FroYo place where you weigh your yogurt. I don’t usually go to FroYo but I might need to start: FroYo is fun! Plus it was a celebration, because with Bryan’s (and CAA’s) help, my deal closed today, so after almost two years of running development at Bravo and simultaneously hosting WWHL five nights a week, and nine months of negotiation, this is finally happening. It’s a new deal for my show with a two-year pickup, and also I’m starting a production company with a first-look deal with Bravo/NBCUniversal. Plus I’m staying as an EP of all the Housewives and continuing to host specials on Bravo. In three months, I’ll no longer be an executive at Bravo. Now watch me become the low-rent, Jewish, now-fat-and-old,