Energy Efficient

Joan Rivers has found a potential boyfriend. She was filming "How'd You Get So Rich?," her new TV Land show about entrepreneurs, when she met Norm Zada, the subject of an episode.

Here's the situational irony. Rivers, 76, is no stranger to plastic surgery. But Zada started the magazine Perfect 10, which features nude women who must be totally natural -- no plastic.

"He owns Perfect 10, which is exactly what I'm not," Rivers says. "Even with all the help from the doctors, I'm a Jewish 10, which is a 3 with money," she says. I laugh, and she says, "You never heard that?"

Rivers says Zada is a very sweet and funny man.

"And being rich doesn't hurt," she says. "I find the whole thing very strange and what-the-hell."

As of Monday, she was calling him a "friend" who is "courting" her, not a "boyfriend."

I ask her how he rates on the potential boyfriend scale.

"At this point, anybody on the boyfriend scale is alive. Anybody that's got a pulse is in."

This is the second time Rivers has dated a man from one of her TV shows. When she ran a daytime show more than a decade ago, she went out with a guest billed as one of "the world's most eligible bachelors."

"That was fun," but it didn't work out, she says.

"He was a very good eligible bachelor -- and his boyfriend thought so, too."

As you can see, Rivers is still quick and sharp with the wit. As a comedian junkie, she's one of my favorites. As a writer, I'm envious of the efficiency of her jokes. I recite to her two of my all-time favorite Rivers lines (as I paraphrase):

1. If Gloria Vanderbilt gets one more face-lift, she's going to have a goatee. (That's an oldie, but notice how descriptively it kills in just 13 words.)

2. Clint Black is so sexist, he won't let his wife put Equal in her coffee. (That's a recent put-down, and 15 words.)

I ask Rivers how she keeps jokes so tight and powerful. She reminds me she started in improvisation at Second City, where she learned skills she still uses.

And she works on material constantly in front of live audiences. She performs just about every Tuesday (and sometimes Wednesdays) in front of a hundred people at the West Bank Cafe, a club on 42nd Street in New York.

But you're probably more interested in Rivers' plastic surgery. That's an old topic, so to speak. But I'll bite:

What does Rivers think she'd look like if she'd never had any work done.

"I'm sure I would look like a very nice old lady," she says. "But I don't feel like a nice old lady. And there's no reason to look like it."

She was talking to Marlo Thomas the other day, and the aged actress told Rivers she still feels 26 even if she doesn't look it.

"I understand that," Rivers says. "That's why Mother Nature is a bitch. (Aging is) another mean joke from Mother Nature. She's not my friend. I don't know what I did to her, but she sure is getting me back."

Maybe. But Mother Nature has been very, very good to Joan Rivers' funny brain.

Contact Doug Elfman at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.