April Winchell

I don’t know, Alaska

I’m sorry to say that I will be missing the next two shows. I’ll be back on September 21st.

My husband and I have decided to go to Alaska. And why not? If it’s good enough for the bachelorettes, it’s good enough for me.

I have no idea what’s up there. I heard something about glaciers and fjords and salmon, but I really only paid attention to the salmon part.

After the show last night I made the mistake of telling Lee Klein. Apparently Lee lived up there for a while. Who knew? Lee Klein in Alaska? Does that even make sense to you? I never got a real Jeremiah Johnson vibe from Lee Klein.

Here’s the thing. I grew up with Jews. Jews don’t do well in the wild. You take Jews to the desert, they wander around for 40 years. And there aren’t even any trees there. You take them to Alaska, you’ll never see them again.

So I told Lee that we were “cruising the inside passage”, because that’s what the travel agent said. And he looks at me and says, “What, you think there’s a Peninsula that goes all the way around? You can’t look at a map?”

He’s such fun. Hard to believe he’s single.

By the way, the man changing the light bulb in the picture is Roberto, our professional show announcer and the KFI janitor. Isn’t he fabulous? Every time I see him, he asks me when my show is going to start.

And speaking of co-workers, someone left a note on my car last night. There was a Day-Glo pink index card on the windshield, and on it someone had written:

Affordable Parking Lessons
Hadji’s School of Parking
1-888-ONE-SPACE

Yes, I admit, I had taken two spaces. But in my defense, there are maybe 6 cars in the whole parking lot. It’s not like anyone was going to be inconvenienced.

The point is, who the hell put this on my car?

After thinking about it and eliminating some suspects, we’re left with two candidates: Wayne Resnick and Lee Klein.

Of course, either one could have done it. Both had motive and opportunity. But which one carries around a stash of Day-Glo pink index cards? That’s the question, right there.

Massive Update

Since I’m going to be gone for a while, I thought should do a big-ass update before I left. So here’s what you’ll find on the site this week:

NEW ARCHIVED SHOWS
8/3/02
8/10/02
8/17/02 (Anniversary show)

NEW MULTIMEDIA CATEGORY
My Favorite Promos

NEW PHOTO
Me and the boys from Puppetry of the Penis

NEW MP3s:
Spongebob theme in Espanol
Girl from Ipanema (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens (Phil Harris)
Sit On My Face and Tell me That You Love Me (Monty Python)
The April Winchell Show Disclaimer
If the B52’s did Stairway To Heaven

Aids Walk

All right, now look.

I need you people to come through here. I won’t be around to goad you into joining our AIDS Walk team, or sponsoring any of us who have already joined up. But I need your help, so let me just get this one big guilt trip out, and then I can go on my vacation.

I know you have your hand in your pocket all the time. And I don’t mean that the way you’re thinking, so just stop it.

No, what I’m trying to say is that I know people are always asking you to cough up your hard earned money for one thing or another. And I know it gets old.

But I’m going to ask anyway, because I’m tired of watching people die.

Sometimes I think we will never really mobilize on this issue until we are all, to a person, touched by the disease somehow. Until every man woman and child in this country loses someone they love and has a personal understanding and experience of AIDS, it will always be someone else’s problem. When it touches you, you lose the luxury of apathy and ignorance.

It’s a very cynical perspective, I admit. But at the same time, we are fast approaching that scenario. And I hope that some great good can come out of it at the end.

A few years ago, one of my friends was dying. This was the fourth person I was losing to AIDS, and I had really had enough. I was tired of loss. My instinct was to pull back from him. I didn’t want to watch him die, I wanted to save myself the sorrow of it all, and I thought that if I disassociated myself from him, really pulled away, it wouldn’t hurt when he left.

Fortunately, I had a realization that saved me from making that horrible decision. It occurred to me that after he was gone, I would have to live with myself.

That changed everything. I committed to doing everything, every single thing I could do while he was here to make a difference in his life. I would not skimp or short change him in any way, no matter how tired I was or how depressed. I would be there.

And I was. I didn’t hold anything back. My money, my emotions, my compassion. And a funny thing happened; the more present I was, the more involved I became, the more attached and invested I grew, the less sorrow I began to feel. When I think of him now, I think of him, and his memory is not tainted with guilt and self-recrimination.

The more I care, the less sorrow I feel. And I want to keep doing that, as long as I can.

All right, now go give me some money.