Today I have the honor of getting 20 questions answered by April Richardson. April is a comedian who is just delightful. She has a quick wit and dry delivery that makes me laugh, and giggle, and sometimes titter. She also has a podcast called “Go Bayside!” wherein she and a guest will wax eloquent about an individual episode of the seminal Saturday morning syndicated turn of the decade TV show “Saved by the Bell.” I do not know much about the lovely Ms Richardson, mainly because I only started following her when she guested on Never Not Funny. Since then I have attempted to consume her content as much as I can. Mainly I have watched her spots she posts on her YouTube channel… I’m not an Internet researcher, and quite lazy.
Anyway… I hope to know waay more about her after these 20 questions. Here we go
I was a cartographer for many years so I have a fascination with how stories play out geographically. For example, my geographic story is rather simple. I was born in Oklahoma City and then the fam moved to Montgomery, Alabama when I was three. My dad chased a job up to Birmingham when I was five and we stayed just to the northeast of B’ham in a little place called Center Point, Alabama from about 5 until I graduated from High School. I went off to school in Kent, Ohio where I met my fiance. After graduating from Kent State (Kent Read, Kent Write, Kent State) We moved to Columbus, Ohio for grad school and got hitched there. We have lived in the Columbus, Ohio area for the past 17+ years no more than 2 miles from a Dairy Queen of some fashion. Question 1: What is your geographic story?
Well, I was born in Savannah, Georgia, where we lived until my real dad bailed when I was 3, and soon after that, my mom met my stepdad while he was on a business trip -- he lived in Atlanta, so when they decided to marry, my mom and I moved four hours north into his house about 20 minutes outside of ATL; that's where I grew up. After high school, I spent a few years in England, on and off, with a dear friend I'd met in high school -- I lived with him and his parents in Manchester until I ran out of money, came back to Atlanta, and went to college at Georgia State University. Two days after graduating, I moved to Los Angeles, and I've been here now for almost 10 years, which totally blows my mind.
Southern roots will definitely color how one looks at the world, and more poignantly, how the world looks at you. Question 2: Do you still get any people making crazy assumptions about you because you originally hail from the deep south?
Oh absolutely. When I first moved here and told people I was from Georgia, they would say the craziest shit to me -- mostly white people, of course. They would weirdly want me to like, commiserate with their racism? In my first apartment in L.A., I lived with my ex-husband in the bottom floor of a three-story house, and one day this white woman came to look at the vacant second floor, and knocked on our door to ask about the neighborhood -- she asked where we'd moved from, and when we said Georgia, she said something like, "Oh okay, so you made sure all the neighbors are all white, right?" in this creepily optimistic tone. Something super racist like that, like I was going to high-five her or something, like, "Yeah we whiteys gotta keep these neighborhoods pure!" I was like, "Uh, WHAT?!" It was insane.
But one of the raddest things to happen to me occurred only a couple of weeks after moving here -- I was driving to work one morning, and I still had my Fulton County license plate on my car, and a black lady pulled up next to me at a red light and signaled for me to roll my window down and yelled, "You just moved here from Atlanta? Welcome! I think you're gonna love it here!" and gave me a huge smile, and it was so amazing. Southern hospitality on the West Coast!
I was on a plane to England when I was 10 or so and the person in the row in front of me asked where I was from with a very thick Midlands accent. I said Birmingham, Alabama and his immediate response was “Ah, George Wallace, water cannons, and dogs.” Oh, Deep South, your reputation precedes you.
From the immortal Paul F Tompkins bit I bring you Question 3: Cake o Pie? Which specific kind and why?
Oh man. Dude. Let me say this first: I have the most ridiculous sweet tooth known to man. I will eat anything and everything with sugar in it at all hours of the day and night. This is such a difficult question for me. However, I really really love cherries (they're my favorite fruit), so at the risk of sounding like Warrant's number one fan, I'd have to say cherry pie!
I have found in my years of doing these 20 questions that people who select pie really like pie, but people who select cake would kick a puppy in the rain for a slice of cake, a slice of cake that would only be made sweeter by it being taken from someone else. Question 4: If you had to guess (and these are my 20 questions, so you do have to guess the “If you had to guess” was really me just being polite), why do you think cake-eaters are so much more vehemently desirous of cake than pie-lovers fancy a slice of pie?
Again, considering how much I love sweets, I couldn't tell you -- I'll take either/both any day of the week.
Question 5: When did you realize that you are a funny person? Was there a keystone moment or was it a gradual realization? This, of course, presupposes that you feel you are funny. You are. Carry on.
Heh, well, if you say so, I will labor under the assumption that I am humorous. And really, as far back as I can remember being able to talk, I was cracking jokes. Classic "class clown" shit. I mean, in like, kindergarten I remember being reprimanded for yelling shit out, and then as I got a little older, like in middle school and stuff, I knew I was weird and I knew I wasn't going to be popular or whatever, so it was also that tried-and-true "make fun of myself before you can make fun of me" stuff. But I truly just always enjoyed making people laugh, making light of weird situations. I think I also knew I didn't excel at anything else -- I was a terrible student and wasn't very academically minded, so one-liners were kind of the only things I perfected during class, ha! And I guess I knew I wasn't too terrible at it because I got in far less trouble than I should have -- teachers kind of laughed at me instead of yelling at me. Also I was voted "Wittiest" of my senior class, so if that's not a solid seal of approval, I don't know what is, heh.
Question 6: What is the most bizarre place you have been for doing the stand-ups?
Hmmm... I was going to say "When you first start out, you say 'yes' to any type of show you can get," but I still do that! But I did stand-up at a rockabilly fashion show once; that was super interesting. I was modeling in the show (stop rolling your eyes, I do that sometimes), so I was all dressed up and had tons of pinup makeup on and stuff, and then the woman running the event was like, "Can you do a set while the girls change?" and I was like, "Sure!" and I went out there on the catwalk, still dressed up, with no mic, and just tried to do a set for 10 minutes, but ended up kind of just dicking around towards the end to try to loosen everyone up. I could tell they were like, "Wait, what? You're telling jokes now?" because I still looked so done up, and a burlesque act was coming up next, so I'm sure they were thinking, "Shut up, we want to see boobs!" But it ended up being fun and a really interesting learning experience on how to bring the crowd around to your side. Also I did stand-up in South Africa once, just jumping up to do a set at a club while I was visiting my friend Michelle in Cape Town, and that was surreal and amazing. I always assume my humor won't translate elsewhere, but it went shockingly well!
I currently make maps for a living, but drawing is where I am more passionate at the moment. Question 7: What is your passion/hobby besides “Saved by the Bell.”
I am a huge record collector, and still buy physical CDs and records -- I feel like a current hobby is constantly having to rip new shit into iTunes! I also started making zines when I was 14, and while I haven't made one in about five years, I still buy and read them regularly. I read books. I see movies. I write. I write a lot of prose and stuff about music as a hobby -- way more than I write comedy, which is pretty dumb. I need to switch that up. I also love clothes and fashion, just like a giiiiiirl.
Concerning “Saved by the Bell,” Question 8: Who do you identify with most from the show? Or is your specific identification with the characters more fluid pending on what is going on with you at that time?
Ha! I mean, I don't think I identify with any of them, really... but if pressed, maybe Zack? But not in the terrible sociopath way, but in high school I did kind of do whatever I wanted -- I hope I didn't fuck over as many people as he did in the process, but I really didn't accept "no" for an answer very often. If I wanted to say, go drive to another state to see Morrissey, it was going to happen -- I was going to do what I needed to do to get there, if it involved sneaking out or telling my mom I was sleeping over at a friend's house or whathaveyou. But I never sold the principal's car for concert money or anything too insane.
