Joan Rivers has known plenty of rich people.

There are the old rich, guarded and distant; she won't name names. �These are people I still sup with and pretend I like.�
There's the poker-rich Annie Duke, her �Apprentice� opponent; Rivers doesn't pretend. �I didn't like her � It had nothing to do with poker; I wouldn't have liked her if she played (bleeping) bingo.�
There are the show-business rich, including her. And there are the people she meets in �How'd You Get So Rich?� Many came up with one basic idea.
�You know you blow bubbles and it makes a bubble?� Rivers said. �This guy made one that makes five bubbles. You understand? Big (bleeping) deal.
�Lives next door to Barbra Streisand ... His dog has � a psychiatrist � She's making the dog feel relaxed. How much more relaxed can you be? You can lick your (self).�
During the six weeks of the show, we'll meet a dozen such people, including the guy who created goofy �Billy Bob Teeth.� He says he has $50 million; for fun, he crushes pickup trucks with a bulldozer.
Larry Jones, president of TV Land (which airs the show) points to the guy who stumbled into riches via laziness: �He wanted to reach his (TV) remote and didn't want to go over the top of the blanket. So he cut holes in it � and then created the Slanket. The guy is worth millions.�
Once he had the idea, Rivers said, he was far from lazy; that's common among the new-rich.
�They all work like dogs,� she said. �There's not one person that said, '9 to 5 is my deal.'�
That includes a guy who was 2 when his Cuban parents sent him alone to live with relatives in the U.S.
�He lived with 18 people in two rooms,� she said. �Worked his way through Harvard cleaning toilets.� He became a big-time lawyer, specializing in franchises. �Now (he) owns the biggest house in Miami.�
Then there was the Californian whose leisure � married to a doctor in Bel Air � ended abruptly.
�At the age of 49, he came to her after they had come back from skiing at Vail � and he said to her, 'I'm leaving you for a 19-year-old with a shaved head.' And she had no money.�
People told her she was good at make-up. Soon, she was doing it for the �Titanic� movie, then was creating waterproof make-up.
�She started to sell camouflage to the armies,� Rivers said. �She now sells it worldwide � but only, as she says, 'to armies I like.'�
Each half-hour profiles two such people. There are also quick visits with people Rivers confronts in Beverly Hills or Miami. �You walk down a street and somebody goes past you in a Maserati or a Lamborghini or whatever those stupid cars are, and you go, 'How'd you get so (bleeping) rich?'�
Rivers says (bleeping) and its variations often � or, at least, more often than you expect from a tiny 76-year-old woman who grew up comfortably as a doctor's daughter and graduated from Barnard. Her feistiness sort of reflects a previous generation.
�I had a grandmother who came over (from Russia) with 13 children and no husband,� Rivers said.� (She) cleaned fish and every one of those children went through college and were dentists and doctors and school teachers. It's the old way of doing it.�
Or the new way, for some. That Cuban immigrant, featured in the opener, started a lawn service at 7. Today, his Miami home has 13 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms.