Joan Rivers

Some very sad news yesterday….

Joan Rivers, a pioneering female stand-up comic and the queen of "Can We Talk?" gossip, has died. She was 81. 

Raspy-voiced and brassy, Rivers was always self-deprecating, foul-mouthed and politically incorrect. A master of reinvention, she endured in show business because of her tenacious work ethic — which she credited to her "immigrant mentality." 

No topic was off limits. From Elizabeth Taylor to Queen Elizabeth to even Anne Frank, Rivers loved going after public figures. "I mock everybody, regardless of race, creed or color," she told the Toronto Star in July. "Every joke I make, no matter how tasteless, is there to draw attention to something I really care about." 

A famously hard-working dynamo, she was nowhere near close to retirement. She worked the red carpets for the MTV Video Music Awards and the Emmys near the end of August and had been scheduled to appear at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey, on Aug. 29. She co-hosted "Fashion Police," starred in WE TV's reality series "Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?" and hosted two online shows, "In Bed With Joan" and "Drunken Celebrity Phone Calls."

She has always been one of my favorite comediennes and was someone I tried to watch as often as I could over the years, especially in her earlier days. She slayed me! I even managed to sell her a couple jokes at one point in my life, which was a big personal highlight for me during my acting/writing days.

Regardless of whether you liked her or not, there's no denying that she worked very hard to get to where she ended up in her amazing and, very often, hilariously entertaining career.

She will definitely be missed.