The cat's outta the bag

And I just can’t stop making awesome shit with him.

In 2009 I had a Thanksgiving party in my LA apartment. My friend Ari Shaffir came over. I told him the harrowing saga of trying to get into Phish’s Festival 8 on mushrooms that kicked in too fast and too strong. (Mushrooms given to me by… Ari Shaffir. 17 years later I can’t help but wonder, what else was in those mushrooms?) We swapped more drug stories. We laughed. We ate turkey and stuffing and mac & cheese. We pretended we weren’t farting every time we shifted in our chairs. Kobe and the Lakers were on their way to a second consecutive NBA title. It was all very normal.

I had no idea it was the day my fate became hopelessly entwined with Ari’s. It was probably the worst day of my life.

Ari was awesome back then. I mean, he was horrible at comedy. Very very bad. Career going nowhere, full of self-doubt, lacking self-esteem. You don’t make Amazing Racist videos if you can even possibly imagine yourself becoming famous one day. Things were beyond bleak, his existence in comedy was just inconsequential. No endless rants about sound mixes in comedy specials, no abandoning an awesome project just before it’s finished for cosplaying homelessness in a third world country, no complaints about a very concerning bloody asshole.

Anyway, a few months after that Thanksgiving, we did our first storytelling show, Psychedelia, in the Improv Lab. And I’ll be damned — it was the best comedy show I’d ever seen, and I really mean that. (Not the best any-kind-of show, but I’ve never tried MDMA at a comedy show. Apples and oranges!)

A few years after that, Comedy Central took a chance on our little show. Soon we were on TV. I quit my day job. I directed my first comedy special, Double Negative, for a comic named — you guessed it — Ari Shaffir. I convinced the network to pick up a double order of our 4th season. Jack White’s company wanted to do a record with us. Some of our favorite comics were taping stories for the show. Things were going great.

And when things go great for Ari, hold onto your butt. He’s about to do some wild shit. He had gotten good at comedy. Not just good, actually great. Two high-level specials in a row (Paid Regular is excellent), telling killer stories on TINH. Ari was on a rocketship.

What better time to blow everything up? Oh I can think of a better time! The next volcanic eruption of Mount Ari, 3 weeks before shooting a special, upon hearing the news of a tragic helicopter crash… No one else in my life has lost a job due to the bomb threats made in the aftermath of their partner tap-dancing on a celebrity’s (and his young daughter’s) grave. 

But Adonai works in mysterious ways. It took two extra years and a new venue in a different Borough, but that new venue let us use real fire in the candles, and JEW turned out to be the most beautiful comedy special I’ve ever seen (totally unbiased). The next special, America’s Sweetheart is also impressively cool.

And now… The End is nigh. We’re still in the process of delivering episodes as I write this. And Ari — inexplicably confident as a producer — is trying to unlock episodes that have been locked for four months, coming up with unreasonable new ideas, and of course, taking 10 times longer than necessary in the sound mix. 

But fuck, I love him. I really do. He has a huge heart. He supports his friends, he supports me.  He loves comedy. He cares deeply about the quality of everything he makes… 

And the new show is fucking awesome. I can’t wait for you to see it.

-Eric Abrams, Director of The End (and tons of other cool shit he won’t mention but I will)

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The whole Studio Jeans team has been working long and hard on this project and we really can’t wait for you to see it.

You can preorder it for a discounted rate at theend.ymhstudios.com. You’ll save $5 if you do that before April 16 when it premieres. That’s 7 full hours of stories, plus a pretty fucked up prologue you’re not gonna want to show your mom. And you can watch it for a whole year.