There. It's out there now.

Tonight was a great Monday Night Comedy Show.
Every night has its own moments, and I am a little biased.
But we have a great thing going, and I have so much love for it, I am near to bursting.
So so dramatic, I know, but you do something for near two years and see how you feel.

Tonight I told the world of The show (audience, performers, everyone) that we would be ending June 15th.
I wrote down a couple pages to read so as to resemble some sort of press release. Something I could just recite and not have to look out past the bright lights into the audience. So I wouldn't have to feel the reality of it all.
But of course, the long winded 'I cannot stop talking' side of me found a short natural pause and started talking.
I lost my shit tonight.
It was just like that one night in November when I was calling out names in a curtain call at a Theatre where if I talk about it, it somehow spins around where I am telling the world that it fucks children and punched the elderly while it sells crack to puppies.
It could have been worse. I could have shared everything I felt in detail. That would have made it the second to the last show. I guarantee it.
So there I was. Ending a great show with dramatic bullshit. Telling all the good people who sacrifice their Monday nights that this thing they have become accustomed to is going to be coming to an end.
And then I had the audacity to ask them to keep coming back. to stick with it till the end.
In my head, the act of coming clean with the people who make the show what it is was a good idea.
It's like reading about communism. On paper, it looks like a good idea. That it might just work.
But I ended a descent show with a big Debbie Downer.
It was such a shit move, that friends thought it would be a good idea to buy me all the drinks I could handle.
'I drink to forget' I would always joke.
Tonight there just wasn't enough whiskey.
So here is Andy, getting home from the bar, scared shitless that I have scared away all of the audience who have made us a weekly place to go.
Why keep coming if it has a finite end?
I honestly have no idea. if they do come, it will be like building a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield.
Roni started an applause that made me want to die. If lightning could have struck me down in the midst of it, I would have felt like I accomplished something. There are some moments where no words or actions can justify what is being held in by, what is it? Pride? Humility?
What was I feeling at the moment where all I wanted was to crawl into a time machine and go back to the moment where I was saying 'Welcome to this new thing, The Monday Night Comedy Show' That was almost two years ago. I talk about the show all the time, and either I love it or I hate it in words. but inside, inside, I feel like tonight a part of me died. just like that one moment in November almost three years ago. 'Ladies and Gentlemen, The cast of The...'
I wonder if I will ever let it go. Either moment.
So it is out there now.
The end of an era. There was a woman who was asking me afterwards all sorts of questions that all I wanted was to scream at her: 'I don't Fucking know. It's just over, ok? I wish it wasn't, but it is. Please stop asking me questions. I want nothing more than to always have something I work hard for continue to exist, but more often than not, nice guys finish last. Thank you for coming, stop trying to get me to ask the fucking Bryant Lake Bowl if you can do a Monday Night Comedy Show there. The slot is already taken. Jeeeeeez.'
But some new guy asked me afterwards if he could do a stand up set. This was after the lady with the incessant questions.
He seemed like the fact that I just opened the floodgates about the end of the show didn't phase him one iota.
Didn't even mention it. A testament to the fact that maybe three people will miss the show after six months of it being gone.
Keep in mind, it's a pretty fresh wound. But it's a wound I chose to let people know about. I could have kept my mouth shut. I could have let it be my own dark secret, but I have this incredibly fucked up need to let the world know that when i am sad, the world has an obligation to be sad with me, and it they aren't, then fuck you too.
I may not be healthy, but at least I can call out my own bullshit.
Like I said before, I wrote stuff down so I wouldnt be weepy. It didnt work, but in my mind it was going to be like the President's speech in Indipendance Day.
At least the very end was.
" We aren't dead yet, so these next few weeks are going to be one hell of a ride. Are you with me? (illicit resounding applause) Because I need you to be!"
I don't think I have ever been more honest with the audience of the show.
So we will see. Either we go quietly into the night, or we kick ass and take names.
I choose the latter, but it stands to chance whether I have it in me or not. These next couple months hold a lot of changes for yours truly.

At any rate, please keep me in your thoughts, as you will be in mine.

Stay Awesome, or I might cry on your pillow like a beautiful butterfly made of lady parts and doilies. And pink stuff. And baby girl boo hoo bits... I have no idea what I am talking about now.

Andy.

ps- Read www.shadowofthefop.blogspot.com That asshole is even more dramatic than me. But in a funnier way.