“Joan Rivers paid $10 a joke.” I was speaking to a writer’s group in Summerlin which was sort of intimidating since many of them were highly accomplished people in many different fields, including a joke writer. He had sold material to Joan Rivers. When I worked for her, Phyllis paid $5 a joke, back in the early 70s. Five dollars would fill your gas tank and still leave you enough to buy a sandwich at the deli. (According to the Consumer Price Index, $5 had the buying power of just under $30 in today’s economy.) After I had finished my talk and we were socializing, I had a chance to question him a bit about his writing. I asked him to tell me one of the jokes he’d written for her and it had to do with her being so frigid that her  gynecologist had to use an ice pick. I’m not sure… Read More »