Anyone vaguely familiar with the Disaster Sisters knows that Jimmy Fallon is one of our top BFSSs...you know, Boyfriends of Stage and Screen. You also know we're a bit boy-crazy and have several BFSSs, but JImmy's definitely in the top five. Anyhoo, we decided to post our 10 favorite Fallon moments of 2014 as a year-end treat but, in typical Disaster Sisters fashion, we're posting it during the second week of 2015. Plus, we had a really hard time narrowing it down to 10, so we decided on 14 for '14. Here you have it: our top 14 favorite Fallon moments of 2014.

14. We were all about that bass this year. And we were all about Jimmy Fallon, Meghan Trainor, and The Roots singing “All About That Bass” with Classroom Instruments (9/4/14).

13. Another of our BFSSs is Bradley Cooper. We don't know if they were high or what, but watching them in the throes of uncontrollable laughter made us laugh, too...and fall deeper in love with both (10/18/14). 

12. Obviously Brad Pitt is another BFSS. We love that he's not only ridiculously hot, but silly, too. Please to enjoy “Breakdance Conversation” with Jimmy Fallon & Brad Pitt (10/15/14).

12A. Our beloved Brad first showed us his funny business in this clip from 6/18/13. Fun Fact: Disaster Sisters' ridonculously talented friend Spiff Wiegand provides the yodel!

10. One of our favorite things about Jimmy is that he's visibly amazed by how fortunate he is to meet his idols. We believe that he's as excited by hanging out with U2 as we would be. So, you know, NBD, just U2 singing "Ordinary Love" on his sofa (2/18/14). 

9.  Speaking of meeting your idols, we'd be thrilled to have the bromance-of-the-century duo of Seth Rogan and James Franco jump out of a cake to wish us a happy birthday. But Stevie f'in Wonder singing? Yowza! Here's Jimmy’s 40th Birthday Surprise (9/19/14).

8. The deliciously deadpan Brian Williams rapping “Rapper’s Delight” is simply brilliant and nothing could ever be better (2/19/14)...

...except this. 7. Brian Williams Raps “Baby Got Back” (6/16/14).

6. Oh, how we LOVE when Jimmy sings! He does a flawless Neil Young, Jim Morrison, and Springsteen. When Bono got an owie and U2 couldn't make it to the show, Jimmy and The Roots performed their own kick-ass version of "Desire" (11/18/14).

5. Speaking of imitating singers, Tom Petty--er, we mean Jimmy Fallon--and Stevie Nicks recreate the “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” Video flawlessly (4/9/14).

4. We love Lip Sync Battles. We love Paul Rudd. Definitely a BFSS. Boom. (2/25/14)

3. Okay, we're in the nitty gritty now. We had a heluva time with these two and, frankly, they're easily interchangeable. The deciding factor was that the luckiest dude in the world didn't seem to know who the F Sting is. Therefore, coming in at number 3: STINGTONES!!! (10/16/14)

2. JImmy sings doo-wop with ROBERT PLANT!!! (9/26/14)

1. Drum roll, please...Disaster Sisters' number one Jimmy Fallon moment of 2014 is: NO DANCING? JUMP BACK! It's Kevin Bacon’s Footloose entrance that thrilled us beyond our wildest junior high dreams (3/21/14)!

What do you think? Do you agree with Disaster Sisters? Let us know! We're already looking forward to JImmy's top 15 moments of 2015. 

"It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely." Albert Einstein.


I am not a fan of Joan Rivers. I don’t know anyone who is. I’ve never found her funny; I’ve found her only mean and annoying. However, after seeing the 2010 documentary A Piece of Work, I have mad respect for her.

Cameras followed Rivers for a year, but this is no Kardashian “reality.” This is actually real. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing a celebrity so raw, intimate, and stripped down. The opening scene epitomizes this. The credits roll over her naked face as she gets made up and becomes Joan Rivers. What egotistical image-obsessed Hollywood actress would allow her bare skin seen so up close on the big screen let alone a 75-year-old (at the time) infamous for her nipping and tucking?

Rivers’ age is an important theme running through this film. She says of age, “It’s the one mountain you can’t overcome.” And I learned how much she has overcome.

I don’t think I understood just how much of a trailblazer she was in the 60s. I was mostly aware of her as Johnny Carson’s frequent guest and permanent sub for the Tonight Show; her subsequent late night show on Fox, which put her in direct competition with her friend and mentor; the show’s quick cancellation followed almost immediately by her husband Edgar’s suicide. I’d say those are a hell of a lot of mountains to overcome.

A Piece of Work was filmed during the time when Rivers was cast on—and won--Celebrity Apprentice. This was a huge success for her because she’d been blacklisted from appearing on NBC since pissing off Carson. In fact, he never spoke to her again. After 20 years of whatever-Hollywood-friendship-thing they had. It made me realize what a huge deal it was when she appeared on the Tonight Show’s inaugural episode with Jimmy Fallon as host. She was one of the celebrities who laid down $100 in the “lost a bet Jimmy would ever host the Tonight Show” gag. By the way, Leno had never invited her on during his reign of the Tonight Show, so he confirms that douchy status we all suspected.

I also realized how hard she works. I mean, wow! She gives “workaholic” a whole new meaning. She will do anything, play anywhere, hock any product. She is immune to humiliation. She’s not living if she’s not working. Others call her focus to succeed “chronic,” “maniacal,” “fanatic.” One interviewee says, “Joan will turn nothing down. She hears the clock ticking every minute of every hour of every day.”

Among the jobs she’ll take is doing stand-up in some bum-f#%@ town in the Midwest and I’ve never seen Rivers this way. She’s filthy, enraged (“Anger fuels the comedy”), and actually funny. I was really surprised to laugh a few times during this film. She’s also incredibly quick. She destroys a heckler. And I mean destroys. She’s “like a trapeze artist” (her words) keeping the audience on her side and laughing when they’re scared and not sure if they should. And, equally surprising, she feels sorry for the heckler after the show. My goodness, Joan Rivers has a heart! Who knew?

Rivers’ heart is all over this thing. She supports several friends and family members financially; she’s put several people through school (including one of my co-workers friends); she recounts her time with Carson so fondly; she has a sweet relationship with her grandson; she loves her daughter, Melissa.

Okay, Melissa. That’s a whole thing. First of all, yikes. Imagine Joan Rivers is your mother. Second, she grew up thinking of “the business” as “her sister.” Her sister. Then they did that Lifetime mother/daughter cheesy-ass movie of the week about surviving Edgar’s suicide. I mean, isn’t that how we all grieve? By making a made-for-Lifetime movie? Starring ourselves? Rivers says doing the movie “totally mended the relationship.” Yeah, just wrap your head around that for a minute.

Then there’s the bit about Melissa joining Joan on Celebrity Apprentice. Those dynamics are what keep therapists and pharmaceutical companies in business. Rivers worries that it will be traumatic if Melissa is voted off first. She claims she’ll “hold back” to help Melissa shine and succeed, but Melissa knows her mother is in denial: “She can’t hold back.”

In a way, it’s downright maternal of Rivers to want to protect Melissa from the cruelty of show business; on the other hand, she sends a not-so-subtle message to Melissa that she doesn’t have what it takes to succeed in Hollywood: she is “supportive but not encouraging.” Rivers is a woman obsessed who claims to have no choice but to be in the business. But if Melissa doesn’t stand on a red carpet with her mother—and her “sister”—making  snarky comments about what the stars are wearing, how else will she get to spend time with her?

The most surprising thing I learned about Rivers is that she thinks of herself as an actress. “My career is an actress’s career and I play a comedian.” Huh? Hmm. I thought that was nuts until I saw the passion and emotion with which she speaks of her acting. She breaks down in tears when she says, “My acting is my one sacred thing in my life.” Her vulnerability is real.

She wrote and starred in a one-woman show that was a huge success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but as one friend says, “There is nothing she can do that will be industry-embraced.” That is proven when she considers bringing the show to New York. So terrified of bad reviews, she decides to can it. Yet, she continues to knock, scratch, and force her way into a club that will never accept her. She’s the master of just sticking in there. Regarding George Burns, Phyllis Diller, and Don Rickles, she wants to be the last one standing. “I’d like to beat them all…and I think I will.”

I think she will, too. She can’t not be “on.” She jokes with doormen, cab drivers, fellow voters when she goes to the polls. Her life is a comedy routine. Just as the opening scene epitomizes the intimacy that Rivers is willing to share, the last line of the film epitomizes her entire life and is chilling to consider:

“The only time I’m truly happy is when I’m on a stage. I’m a performer. That’s my life. That’s what I am. That’s…it.”

In 1992, I was working at a B. Dalton bookstore in Minneapolis. One of the best perks was getting advanced copies of books. One day I picked up a thick galley with a gorgeous cover called The Secret History and upon reading the first paragraph, I was hooked.

To this day, it remains one of my favorite books. Over the years, working in bookstores and libraries, and hanging out with book-loving friends, I've recommended it countless times. It famously took Tartt 8 years to write The Secret History so it wasn't too surprising it took 10 years for her second book, The Little Friend, to be published. This brilliant tome (500+ pages, just like its predecessor) is Tartt's take on Southern Gothic, complete with religious zealot snake-handlers, meth addicts, and the unsolved murder of a child. It kept me up until 4:30 in the morning on more than one occasion.

Eleven years later, right on schedule, The Goldfinch arrived. I am more than halfway through its 784 pages and I'm already dreading its end. After all, I'll have to wait until the 2020s to read her next one. 

The Goldfinch begins with 13-year-old Theodore "Theo" Decker barely surviving a terrorist attack on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He spends several harrowing--and ultimately futile--hours searching for his beloved mother. 

Theo's life becomes one of chaos and instability as he is thrust into sudden orphan-hood. Various caretakers don't always have his best interest at heart. He copes with his living situation and ever-present grief by delving into alcohol, drugs, and petty crime. He navigates a precarious adolescence in which the reader holds her breath, just hoping he won't fall off the edge. 

I got to meet Tartt at a reading at the Free Library of Philadelphia last October. We didn't become best friends, as I had hoped. I was too nervous and geeky and I think I came across as aloof in my effort to mask it. But she's very astute and it's possible she sensed that and knows how much I love her.

During the Q&A many commented on her lack of prolificacy. "If I did my math right," she said, "this could be three 250-page books."

Instead, her lengthy novels have a depth and richness that would be sorely missed in a shorter story. She started out writing poetry and short stories in college, "but it wasn't really until I began writing my first novel that I understood that I had found what I did best, what I like to do, and the long-form novel is, really, just what suits me best." 

Her approach to writing mirrors other facets of her life:

Tartt's decade of dedication to one work of art is evident on every page, in every word. Her talent is immense. She weaves a perfect narrative of plot, pacing, and character development with beautiful language, unexpected humor, and meticulous detail. The result is a moving, thought-provoking, and endlessly entertaining tour de force. There is no doubt in this reader’s mind that the world she creates is not one of fiction, but a living, breathing universe.