"I fucking tried." -- Stephanie McNew

I FUCKING TRIED…

It’s the Battle Cry of 2020

Long before COVID-19 mandated we stay from each other and move to online platforms to interact, my team and I used to do what we called at the time, “Skype Hangouts.” We’d get together, sometimes after shows, sometimes just to chat and joke around, and to drink, and then to drink some more. Basically, we were friends doing the best thing we could to interact with our friends who were separated by the barrier of distance, not a pandemic.

During one of these sessions earlier this year, I decided to do something different. We’re hours into this Skype drinking session and I got the idea of “Let’s record a show.” Now, I don’t know if this was stupidity, genius, bravado in thinking I could turn any situation into a show, but we did it. My thought process was, we do these, “mailing it in” shows for the holidays, but if we are truly mailing it in, why do it during valuable studio time when we are actually recording? If we are truly mailing it in, why not do it at a moment when we are actually kinda mailing it in?

The next big holiday was Easter, so even though it was 2-months away at the time, I decided, let’s just hit record and do a show. Well, it didn’t take long to figure out we were in no condition to do a show, yet I still pressed on.

I mean come on, we’re committed.

By the time our Small Talk segment was over, McNew was done. She hung up without saying goodbye, presumably to pass out and end her night. I convinced Justine to pick up the duties after the break and we came out of commercial with her at the helm.

As the shit show continued, at some point, McNew regained consciousness and rejoined the podcast which was still going. As the show wrapped, we went through the usual protocols of our where to find you segment. That left the one final piece of business… the 5-Star Review/Patreon plug.

I was in a quandary… I knew McNew didn’t have enough gas left in the tank, but, she’s also my senior announcer. She’s done this ending literally hundreds of times… so with a fairly coherent Justine in the house, I tossed the, “Anything else to say before we get outta here,” line to McNew.

I swear to god, I wish there was this triumphant moment where the voice of angel flowed through her and she instructed our beloved audience to please give us a 5-star review as it helps new people find the show and she reminded them to get involved by heading to patreon.com/theabvnetwork.

Real life, though? It’s not all Hollywood moments.

Yes, McNew crashed and burned that day my friends. She blew the whole thing getting our websites wrong and embarrassing the network and letting down legions of adoring fans. Of course, we laughed it off, as we always do, and I picked it up with my signature, “We’ll have a brand new show for you tomorrow, looking froward to that, until then, take care everybody… see ya!”

We ran though the goodbyes, and right before the “PEACE” ender, McNew, jumped back in and said, “I fucking tried.”

Yes, she fucked up, but she was doing her best. What more could you ever ask of a person? She was doing her absolute best at the time. She lost the battle that day, but she gained my respect.

In the months since the recording of that moment, so much has changed. Life has gotten harder. There is so much uncertainty. So many things are out of our control.

It would be easy to fold-up shop and give up. To fall into the deep hole life can be sometimes.

I can see this in my own life at the moment. I’ve worked hard to try to build something up. Now, everything we’re doing is getting canceled. Hell, I can’t even get a movie published because Amazon is down people that review the materials. Everything we’ve worked for… everything we are doing is on hold… to when?

I don’t know. Nobody knows.

It would be easy to stop… to shut down… to do anything other than try your best… but I don’t have that in me. We have to try. We’re doing virtual events now, we’re still making shows… we’re still getting together to laugh because we know it helps others even when it doesn’t seem like the best time to be doing that.

Will we be successful?

Can we win?

Can a network, built on some silly podcasts and a community of great people make it through this?

I don’t know… but we’re going to keep working hard. No matter what, I can tell you this.. I’m not above working fast food if that’s what it takes me to survive if this doesn’t work out. I’ll be easy to spot… I’m the guy with the long beard, the blue googles, and the t-shirt on under his polyester uniform that says, “I fucking tried.”