April Winchell

Two Minutes of Sunshine with April Winchell

"INTRODUCTION"

When I was a kid, my family used to go to Cantor's Deli on Fairfax. It's one of those New York kind of delis; short on ambience, long on attitude.

So one afternoon, we're sitting there having lunch, and I notice this old woman at another table. She was complaining. Loudly. About everything. The brisket was dry, the napkins weren't absorbent enough, I don't even think she liked the silverware pattern.

She simply refused to be satisfied. No matter what the waiter did, it just wasn't good enough. And I remember thinking, "How could anyone be so old and so bitter?"

And now, some 30 years later, I wonder how anyone could not be.

This is what life does to you. Years of bad customer service, unrewarding jobs, humiliating fashion and Celine Dion music will eventually erode your will to live, until you're ground down to a raw stump.

I am that stump.

And let me tell you something, I'm not ashamed. I view cynicism as a coping mechanism. It's either this or shoot someone, and I have no desire to work for the post office.

Maybe you think I'm just premenstrual. Well, yes, there's a good chance I am. Or post menstrual. Or just menstrual. In fact, there are only about two days a month when I'm all right, and that's usually when I have a headache. But that's neither here nor there. And I resent you bringing it up.

The point is, I'm no more irritable than the average person. I'm just more observant. You'd be pissed off too, if you were paying attention.

So what makes me qualified to be the mouthpiece for the harsh realities of life? Well first of all, I'm not an amateur. I'm a conniseur. A member of the Bitterati. I've been annoyed for a very long time, and I've learned to separate the merely irrtating like, oh, Starbucks, for example, from the things that ruin the quality of our lives, like Paris Hilton. And I try to coat that misery with layers of luster, like an oyster. And then I give you pearls. Pearls of bitterness. I mean when you look at it that way, it's almost a public service.

So for two minutes every day, I'm going to say what you're already thinking, I'm going to be your clearinghouse for angst. Because I firmly believe that if I just say it out loud, we can heal. We can change. And we can get back to the important things. Like making fun of Katie Couric.

This has been Two Minutes of Sunshine with April Winchell.

Two Minutes of Sunshine with April Winchell

"TELEVISION FOR WOMEN"

What exactly is "television for women"? There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. All these networks supposedly programmed just for us. Was there really a need for that? Were women somehow unable to relate to regular television unless there was a tampon commercial on? Say, there's an idea. The Tampon Channel. Now that's television for women. But you can only watch it once a month.

Until that day, you'll have to content yourself with Lifetime. Lifetime is the creator of television for women, so you'd think they'd have gotten it right by now. But I got to tell you, I don't get it. Basically, Lifetime is just a carousel of bad TV movies where the women are either killers, victims of domestic violence or on trial for seducing their high school students. So there are some good role models right there.

Then you have Oxygen. TV for women, by women, about women. Never mind that the money behind the Oxygen is a man. That's not important. The important thing is, Oxygen gives us women the kind of programming we really care about; infomercials about hair removal. I really like the one for Nads where they put the wax on the girl's upper lip and, well, I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't seen it.

And of course you have your WE channel, which stands for Women's Entertainment. The night I watched WE, they were showing a movie with Elizabeth McGovern getting gang raped in a train yard. Fortunately that was followed by an infomercial for Nads, which always cheers me up.

Now let me be clear. I don't mind that these networks all show crap. What I resent is that it's the same crap everyone else shows, but they package it up and pretend it's for me. It's kind of like getting that present at Christmas that you know the person giving it to you got in the first place. They just changed the bow and put your name on it.

Not to be outdone, Spike has repackaged a totally different kind of crap and called it television for men. So now we have TV for women, and TV for men. Kind of makes you wonder who the other 500 networks are for.

Now to be fair, I don't know that I could do much better. But I think that's because women don't want separate TV, we want good TV.

Like that's ever going to happen.

This has been Two Minutes of Sunshine with April Winchell.