Congratulations to the more than 300.000 people who participated in the AIDS Walk Los Angeles this morning who raised a record $3,905,725!
I've never covered AIDS Walk LA as a reporter before, I showed up at West Hollywood Park this morning not knowing what to expect. What took place was an unforgettable time that included watching the opening ceremonies from the photographer's pit and interviewing such stars as the ever-popular T.R. Knight, the great diva Jenifer Lewis (singing in photo, above), Oscar winner Shirley Jones, Tony winner Anika Noni Rose, Tony winner Sara Ramirez, the wonderful Ana Ortiz of "Ugly Betty," Andrea Bowen of "Desperate Housewives," Kimberly McCullough of "Genderal Hospital" and daytime television legend Deidre Hall of "Days of Our Lives."

"I've never been good with public speaking but it's something I'm trying to work on," T.R. (pictured above with Ana Ortiz and Sara Ramierez) told me backstage. He still got a rock star reception from the crowd. who he had a message for. "I think teaching is what's most important and it's not taught in the schools, in many of the schools. People marched in D.C. and remember the AIDS quilt and how monumental that was? There's a new generation of people who might not know about that. All you can do is try to teach and try to inform."
Caught T.R. just before he left to walk the route himself, accompanied by Ramirez, his on-screen wife on "Grey's Anatomy." I didn't get a chance to interview everyone but did get in a quick hello to the fab Wilson Cruz who was very funny and charming while onstage and the gorgeous Thea Gill and Michelle Wolff of "Dante's Cove." Also there were DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jai Rodriguez of "Queer Eye," Darryl Stephens of "Noah's Arc," Kelly Carlson ("Nip/Tuck"), a very long-haired Hal Sparks ("Queer as Folk"), Faith Ford ("Murphy Brown," "Hope & Faith") and current Frontiers' cover man Marcellas Reynolds.
Anika, one of the stars of "Dreamgirls," sent the walkers off with a rousing rendition of the powerful ballad "You'll Never Walk Alone" and told me she had never sung it in public before "It's a beautiful song and it holds so much to what is going on here, what is going on in this world. People need something that's going to keep them moving, keep them stepping upwards instead of sitting down and getting stuck in the fear and the hurt of what's going on. Move into the light of what's going on."

Anika had been introduced to the crowd by Shirley Jones, Mrs. Partridge to many but also one of the great stars in movie musical history ("Oklahoma," "The Music Man") and an Oscar winner for "Elmer Gantry." I will post our chat sometime this week.
I surprised myself at how giddy I felt interviewing Ana Ortiz who plays Hilda on "Ugly Betty." I gushed: "I feel like I know you. It's Justin's mom! It's Betty's sister!"
Gawd. And this was not the first time I have interviewed her. But Ana just laughed and said, "Everybody knows a Hilda, right?"
"This was a wonderful opportunity actually for me to come out and express my views and it's just such an honor to be a part of it. That last moment, when Anika was singing and everybody started walking, it was so incredibly moving. It's really wonderful to see all walks of life here. I mean, literally, there's not one single group that's not represented and it goes to show you that this is not relegated from one group or another. It's everybody's problem."
Deidre Hall had only a few hours earlier touched down at LAX after a long flight from Australia. But she didn't want to miss participating in the event with her son, David.
Fifteen years ago, when Hall was going through the surrogacy process to have her son, she had a lawyer who helped her through all of it. On the day David was born, Aug, 23, 1992, the lawyer was in the same hospital dying of AIDS.
"The last thing he saw was a picture of David being born. And today, David and I are walking it together and it's sort of a tribute to Marcus and all the people that we've loved and lost."
In the coming days, I'll be posting additional interviews from AIDS Walk on both this blog and HOLLYWOOD JOE so look for them. But for now, I gotta meet a new friend for lunch so I'll conclude with my favorite interview of the morning: Jenifer Lewis. She got things rolling with a bring-the-house-down performance of "I Know Where I've Been" which had such resonance with the crowd and if anyone there was not familiar with Lewis beforehand, they would never forget her now. She arrived on stage to polite applause, she left to a wild ovation.
That, is a star.
It was an experience and I was so glad to be able to tell her that after.
"You ain't gonna get me in front of a crowd that big and that loving and that wonderful - to get up this early in the morning and do that - I'm gonna show out as much as I possibly can. It's what I do darling. I breathe this, i breathe it all. There's no gay benefit, breast cancer, inner-city children that I am not there. If I'm called, I am there."