MORE GUESSES ON WHAT THE 'FAMOUS LAST WORDS' OF AMERICAN COMEDIAN JOAN RIVERS COULD HAVE BEEN

The following are additional guesses about what the "Famous Last Words" from American comedian Joan Rivers either could have been or might have been or might someday be:

---"I can't decide whether I want to be buried in New York or Los Angeles. It's a toss-up for me. I'm inclined to favor New York, since from my casket I could get more opportunities to savor the aroma of fresh bagels being baked nearby. New York is famous for its bagel-bakery aromas. LA, it's more likely to be tortilla-factory aromas. And I can barely speak a word of Spanish, though I of course know the word 'ch-nga' (obscenity, with the letter 'i' situated between the letter 'h' and the letter 'n') all too well. From a posthumous standpoint, I can't say that I would thrill to the aroma of tortillas being baked. I'm a Jewish 'gringa', you might say."

----"At least I died filthy rich. I can almost see that on my epitaph: 'Joan Rivers died filthy rich!' If you're Jewish, that is one of the finest honors you can possibly achieve in life. 'It sure beats dying filthy poor', as my dear mother used to say."

---"I think I'd be happier being buried in New York, since as a stiff I would definitely enjoy the dramatic variety of seasons that New Yorkers get. In LA, the weather doesn't change all that much, so it could get rather monotonous and boring down there in my casket if I pick a cemetery in southern California. Being buried in LA would be Dullsville, from that standpoint."

---"I wish I could listen again to the uproarious laughter I got from the joke of mine I told one night that inspired the longest continuous and uninterrupted laughter from my audience. That was definitely a peak experience for me. In fact, I asked my agent to get an exact count on how many total consecutive seconds that sustained laughter from my audience lasted. He said it lasted for 200 straight seconds. I then asked my agent to put me in the 'Guinness Book of World Records' for inspiring the longest prolonged laughter by an audience in the entire history of stand-up comedy performances. I wish I had the current edition of that reference book, to find out if I actually made it in there for that great accomplishment of mine."

----"A lot of people called me 'The Smart Blonde', and I think they were very insightful to call me that. I certainly was never a Dumb Blonde type. So maybe someday there will be a new book published that features the Smart Blondes of American History, and maybe I will get profiled in that book. It will make a nice posthumous honor for me that my grandchildren can take pride in."

----"So what is going to happen to all of my great fashionwear? I have told my attorney that I don't want ANY of the wrong persons getting ANY of my finest clothes or jewelry!"

-----"Many people asked me why I didn't do more to serve as a Goodwill Ambassador between the Soviet Union and the United States, since I have Russian ancestry. I think the Kremlin sensed that if I were to visit the Soviet Union and publicly state my actual views on Russia of today, that could trigger a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. So this is probably why I was never asked to model a mink coat at Minsk."

----"Everyone says I'm a snob, and they are probably right. I've even been kicked out of restaurants here in New York because the manager said I was too arrogant and blunt and I demanded too much from my waiter. My reply is that if asking for polite and honest and friendly service is demanding too much, then I plead guilty. But I will NOT tolerate waiters who come up to me at my table and tell me with a sneer on their face that they are very sure it's my fault my dear husband Edgar committed suicide. How dare they make a comment like that at a time when I'm trying to decide which entree to order from the menu!"

----"I still don't feel it was fair when the New York Post dubbed me the 'Queen of Mean'. Have you met some of the other female celebrities of New York or LA? Compared to so many of those other ladies, and I hate to mention any names at this point because I don't want to sound petty on my deathbed, I feel very sure that I would rank among the nicer ones. My daughter says she is very sure I am right on that!"

-----"If I am the 'Queen of Mean', as the New York Post has claimed, does that give them the right to publish an editorial declaring that the 'Wicked Witch Joan Rivers has Finally Flown Away from Here Forever On Her Broomstick'? I was outraged when I learned from my hospital bed that the Post was planning to publish an editorial making that type of outrageous statement about me!"

-----"I don't get embarrassed easily. But I do embarrass others a lot. That was something I enjoyed about doing stand-up comedy. I would look out there and see all those men and women blushing beet red from what I had just said! That is a great feeling, to sense that I had a big emotional impact on them---but yes, it probably does identify me as a sadistic type, if you want to get Freudian about it. I love watching people squirm in their seats when they think I had spied on them earlier that week in order to air their own dirty laundry in public! My jokes hit so close to home that half of the audience come up to me afterward and ask me if I had hired a private detective to help me expose their own scandalous lifestyle practices!"

----"Phyllis Diller had her nightmare hair and wardrobe. I had my nightmare plastic surgery face. It gave each of us something to talk about. Otherwise, I'm sure that each of us would have run out of material when we did our stand-up comedy routines."

----"It's very ironic that I'm not well dressed on my deathbed. Fashion is my forte. But my doctor here gave me orders about how I should be dressed inside this hospital. What the doctor ordered for my garment here would have gotten a big thumbs down on the TV fashion show I'm hosting. But I've never heard of a hospital that lets you wear fashionable clothing as you lie on your deathbed as a patient. So the indignity of dying is compounded here by the indignity of dying unfashionably! I can imagine myself on the 'Worst Dressed List' of People Magazine's next front cover, with their photo of me taken inside this room where I'm looking very distressed in this ridiculous patient garment!"

-----"So many people have asked me what was the funniest joke that anyone ever told me. I have not publicized that memory of mine, because I didn't want to promote the career of a rival in the comedy industry. After all, if I promoted someone else as being funny, the next thing I know I get a pink slip from a TV show producer, saying that they have decided to replace me with this other comedian whom they now find to be funnier than I was. The comedy industry is very ruthless that way!"

----"My daughter told me I should think about my fans when I decide where to get buried. She says I should pick a cemetery that is centrally located in the U.S. so that my fans won't have to spend a lot of money traveling to honor me at my tombstone. Chicago is centrally located, but I don't see the point of being buried there. That's Oprah Winfrey's city, and I'm a nobody there. This is why I tend to favor a cemetery in LA or New York. At least I'm a VIP in those two cities."

-----"Some people have asked me whether I married the wrong man, since he was suicide-prone. I don't have the answer to that. Edgar never told me he was suicide-prone before we crossed the altar, so I had no advance warning on him. Maybe I should have insisted on getting a comprehensive and fully reliable psychological profile on Edgar before I even considered tying the knot with him."

----"Most people assume that comedians have no sense of the tragic side of life. But we do. The fact that I am not immortal, which I have discovered today for the first time, is the biggest tragedy from my own life. If I die today, I won't have the option of shopping at Macy's department store tomorrow! I can't imagine anything more tragic than that!"

----"I am NOT a femme fatale, no matter what everyone else says. I was NOT the one who drove my dear husband Edgar so crazy that he committed suicide!"

----"I wish I had remembered to include a provision in my will that requires everyone who attends my memorial service to refrain from wearing the color black for that. I want everyone to dress up in cheerful colors. That would be the best possible way to celebrate my life as a Fashion Adviser to the entire world."

----"I wanted to make citizens arrests here in New York in my role as a Fashion Police Officer. But my attorney told me I did not have a legal right to arrest anyone for being an eyesore in public."

----"I wish I had not delayed writing my memoirs. I was planning to write those at age 90, when I would have had more leisuretime available for a project like that. I wish I could somehow dictate that entire book from my deathbed today, but I don't have a tape recorder with me. If I had a tape recorder right now, those memoirs could earn me a lot of money and I could make the Times best-seller list in a posthumous sort of way."

----"Everyone expected me to make Suicide Prevention a favorite cause of mine for public-fund-raising events I'd be expected to preside over. Jerry Lewis had his 'Help the Handicapped' campaigns; and I was supposed to help raise funds each year for everyone who wanted to save a loved one of theirs from any risk of their ever contemplating suicide. I probably did disappoint a lot of people when I vetoed that proposed cause for myself. I found it too depressing. Let's face it, I'm a comedian, not a social worker, for God's sake! If someone wants to drop dead, far be it from me to stand in their way!"

----"Many people have told me that I lack compassion. That's not true. I feel lots of sympathy toward myself right now as I lie on this deathbed!"

----"At least I kept a good figure throughout my life. That's more than most New York ladies can say."

----"I wish I had videotaped a greeting that could have been shown to everyone who attends my memorial service. I would try to make it all as funny as I can possibly make it, since I want them to be laughing very hard throughout that entire ceremony."

----"I wish that the people who called me a 'bitch' had asked me whether I agree with them on that. I would have replied, 'You are damn right I'm a bitch, and why did it take you forever to figure that out about me?'"

-----"Here I was planning to do a lot of traveling in my 80s, since there are a lot of places I had wanted to visit but never found the time for. I love the idea of yodeling in the Swiss Alps, but for some reason I never did. I'm an entertainer by nature and I love to make a big scene with lots of noise from me everywhere I go. But I don't know how to yodel, anyway. I would have to take yodeling lessons before I visit the Swiss Alps for a vacation in my 80s. But now that it's come to this, I guess I will have to cancel that plane flight."

---"A lot of people assumed that because I'm filthy rich and Russian in ancestry, I always put caviar on my bagels. That's one of the leading popular misconceptions about me. I was perfectly happy with cream cheese on my bagels. That may sound very, very bland, but so help me God it's the complete truth!"

---"I made it very clear in my will that only 10 specified younger Anglo men I have cited by name, each of them half my age or younger, will ever at any time be permitted to perform posthumous cunnilingus on me at an annual civic event after my dead body is buried in a public cemetery either in LA or New York. I added that provision to my will because I realized that I am obviously an irresistible sex goddess, particularly in my early 80s when I seem to be everyone's favorite pin-up girl. I wanted to officially offer this one annual public cunnilingus ceremony featuring the opening of my casket and disrobing of my body for that one annual X-rated civic event as my way of thanking the younger men I adore the most who have been my leading admirers in recent years!"

----"I did ask in my will that the cemetery they bury me in be one that never gets earthquakes, if at all possible. It could be very stressful to me as a corpse if an earthquake jolt causes my casket to suddenly fall into a crevice and completely vanish from Geiger Counter detection, even with all of the gold jewelry I'll be wearing inside my casket! If that happens, it will be impossible for anyone to dig up my casket in order to hold an annual necrophiliacal cunnilingus public ceremony featuring me as the highlighted celebrity corpse!"

----"Maybe I did do too many boob jokes in my stand-up comedy performances. That may have hurt my public image in some ways. A lot of ladies would come up to me after a performance I did and they would ask me, 'Are you poking fun at me because I just underwent surgery for breast cancer and I lost both of my breasts?' Then I would see how very hurtful my boob jokes can be to some of the ladies in my audience. So I would reply to those ladies by flatly agreeing---and it's very funny that I just used the word 'flatly', since ladies who lose their breasts are obviously FLAT-chested---that losing their breasts is tragic. I would then quickly add, 'My job as a comedian is to find the funny side in tragedy. If I can get you to laugh about the two breasts you just lost from cancer surgery, maybe you will live longer for having laughed about your new life as a beautifully breast-less lady!' When I say that, that always seems to cheer them up!"

----"Some of my friends when they were drunk used to tell me that I should apply for a job with the State Department, since it would be very funny to find out how long I would last if I got a job as a diplomat in a U.S. embassy somewhere. My reply is that I would last two minutes or less, since I would immediately tell that foreign country exactly what I thought of it. And I would probably spit in the face of the leader of that foreign country, to make it very clear that I did not respect his leadership style."

----"Many people have asked me why I didn't agree to be a featured celebrity on display for a 'Facelift Queens Float' at the annual Macy's Parade here. I felt it would not be fair, since the other facelift queens would obviously not be half as pretty as I am. I did not want to humiliate those ladies in public by waving at my fans from the same parade float as themselves."

----"My God, this means that Betty White will still be alive after I am dead! Here I thought she was ancient! But now the 'New York Post' will call her up to ask her how it feels to outlive Joan Rivers! Betty White will offer them a nice juicy quote about how wonderful it feels to outlive one of her arch-rivals in the field of comedy!"

----"No one ever asked me how many pairs of shoes I own. If you had asked me, I would have told you I own exactly twice as many pairs of shoes as Mrs. Marcos of the Philippines did during her family's dictatorship there. If that makes me a dictator at heart, so be it!"

----"I honestly don't want them to re-name any of the streets of New York as 'Joan Rivers Boulevard'. I have given some thought to that, since I'm of course very popular and influential here. But I would not want to be posthumously responsible for any of the fatal traffic accidents that would occur there after Sixth Avenue---the street I assume they would select for the honor on my behalf---gets re-named as Joan Rivers Boulevard. Besides, everyone is used to calling it Sixth Avenue. And think of all the business stationery with 'Sixth Avenue' on it that would have to get discarded because of me! That would be a waste of paper that I cannot justify!"

----"A lot of people compared me to Madonna, since Madonna and I are both famous blonde divas. The primary difference between us is that Madonna is laughable in a ridiculous sort of way, while I myself am funny without ever being laughable or ridiculous. I take myself very seriously, and I'm not an air-head."

-----"I take pride in the fact that media accounts about me this century almost never referred to me as being a widow. I think everyone realized that the term 'widow' did not do justice to me. I was always MUCH MORE than a surviving spouse of Edgar!"

----"Some people assume I want to be buried beside Edgar at a cemetery. But since Edgar divorced me through the act of suicide, I don't feel like being his next-door neighbor after I'm dead. Maybe there should be a special Suicide Leapers Cemetery for people like Edgar. I admit I have lost a lot of respect for him because what he did was self-inflicted homicide. That makes Edgar a murderer, and I do NOT want to have a murderer for a next-door neighbor during the posthumous period of my own life. Having a murderer for a next-door neighbor would give me the creeps as I lie in my casket!"

----"I would prefer that all of the flags be flown at full mast on the day after I'm deceased. But if you must fly the flags at half-mast to honor me, then I won't do anything to stop you. How could I? It's not as if I'll have a cell phone at my disposal when I'm lying there motionless inside my casket! I can't call the city desk editor at the 'New York Post' to demand that all the flags in New York be flown at full mast that day!"

----"People sometimes comment to me that they believe I'm an accomplished author. 'Accomplished?' I will reply. 'All I ever accomplish is I make lots of dough from money-raking projects, some of them involving a deal with a book publisher. The books I put my name on are just a tool I use for making as much money as possible in order to buy more jewelry and more pairs of shoes to add to my collection. Maybe what motivates me is that I secretly want to purchase Marvin Gardens. It's probably the Joanie from my childhood who always wanted to win big in the board game of Monopoly, so I could purchase Marvin Gardens and feel a bit like that famous naked lady Eve in a Garden of Eden somewhere in Manhattan. But god help me, I have no idea where Marvin Gardens are. I've seen some botanical gardens at Central Park, but none of them were called Marvin from what I can recall. So this is why I will never make any money from writing a guide to Manhattan. I don't even know how to give a tourist directions to Marvin Gardens!"

----"Fortunately, I left behind $1 million in my estate to finance the semiannual digging up of my corpse for the sake of obtaining additional forensic medical evidence indicating that during my lifetime I was either medically harmed or murdered by members of the criminal element. All findings from that semiannual forensic exam on me using the finest possible forensic testing technology would then be filed each year with the district attorney's office and the FBI and the county attorney's office, and possibly even one or more municipal police departments or the New York State Police or the U.S. Attorney's Office, to help me achieve the posthumous criminal prosecutions I insist on pursuing in my capacity as the crime victim."

-----"It's odd how all I can think of is the hourglass featured at the start of that television soap opera 'Days of Our Lives', accompanied by the male narrator's dramatic statement: 'Like sands through an hourglass, these are the days of our lives!' To think that I'm down to my last grain or two of sand as I lie on my hospital bed here in New York!"

----"Fortunately for me, I never hid any dark secrets about myself from Melissa. So I don't have anything new to confess to her at this point--she's already heard it all thousands of times over!"

----"I want to keep all of my organs intact, so that the follow-up posthumous forensic medical examinations on me that my estate will be paying for in full can be as thorough as possible in helping me to punish each of my enemies! I define 'enemy' as anyone who attempted to reduce my medical lifespan or harm my medical health----or anyone who deliberately robbed me of my beauty-rest sleep on a frequent basis!"

----"I appreciate the invitations I've had to contribute through my estate toward the establishment of a Great American Comedians Museum that would profile me as one of the finest comedians of American history. It's nice to sense that I can achieve immortality in that way by turning into a first-rate museum exhibit in my honor that will be admired by all future generations."

-----"It's too bad I never joined a 21st Century Algonquin Table group that would have rivaled the one that Dorothy Parker, may she rest in peace, was a famous member of. If I had joined a 21st Century group of that type, we could have videotaped each of our group's wit-filled meetings for the sake of posterity!"

----"Many people have asked me when I first became aware of being very funny and entertaining. I hope my official biographer that my estate will be paying $1 million to for that book project about me will take note of this point: I am very sure it was on my fifth birthday when I first knew for sure that I had a genius for humor. After I blew out all the candles on my birthday cake, I looked around me with a mischievous grin on my face and asked if anyone wanted a blow job from me? I was thrilled to see so many of the party guests blushing beet red, and this proved to me I knew all about humor by age 5. Humor, to me, has always been making comments that cause the listener to turn beet red with embarrassment. That's always been my personal definition of success as a comedy entertainer!"