Here's to the queen of comedy!

Yesterday afternoon I received a text. 

It was from the beau and it simply said "your joan rivers died." 

While Joan Rivers was far from being solely mine, the news of her death did, in fact, hit me hard.

I never met her but I felt like I knew her. 

Thanks to her trailblazing stand-up comedy routines, her outrageous red carpet antics (she made the red carpet what it is today - before her, it was literally just a carpet), her hilarious (and touching) reality series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?, the insightful documentary about her life fittingly dubbed a Piece of Work, her biting Fashion Police quips and, of course, her salacious In Bed with Joan web chat show, I came to know one of the funniest, and hardest-working, women in showbiz.

And if the most important thing to be able to laugh at is yourself, then she was definitely a pro at that as well:

   comedy central roast of joan rivers

Interestingly enough, I came to "know" Joan through one of her greatest critics: my gal Chelsea Handler. While the two had a well-publicized feud due to the fact that Joan accused Chelsea of sleeping her way to the top and being a "drunk whore," it is thanks to one biatch that I got to know the other biatch.

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Like most comedians, Joan did not have an easy life. A crippling sense of insecurity (hello plastic surgery!), a marriage that ended when her husband committed suicide after their television show got cancelled and a fraught mother-daughter relationship all contributed to what made Joan who, and how funny, she was.

Watching her documentary was a real eye-opener for me. 

In it, she talks about being fearful of being unemployed and deemed "irrelevant." This from a woman who won wrote 10 books, appeared in nine films and over 60 television shows and sold "$750 million worth of jewellery on the TV shopping channel QVC," according to The Telegraph.  

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She also unleashes "the card catalog," a catalog of every joke she has ever written.

 the serious business of comedy

If Joan, the woman who "just wanted to be liked" was here today, she would see that she was more than just liked. 

She was loved. 

And she will be missed.   

Oh, and also, this explains a lot:

may the lady with the peace pipe rest in peace!