The Eulogy

I would like to start by thanking so many of you for coming. I know Astoria appreciates you being here as much as I do. I would like to explain something about myself for a moment. All I wanted was to make people laugh. It was, I believed, my raison d'être. I worked hard, honed my jokes on the circuit, and I was rewarded with the laughs I needed.

While trying, I of course met up with the two men who lay dead before you. I understand it’s rare to have a double funeral, but their lives were so deeply intertwined we thought this was appropriate. Sadly, both passed away at the same time, and in the same place. However, maybe it’s for the best that they had near simultaneous heart attacks while sitting in the balcony. While they both had families, I’m not sure one would have enjoyed life much without the other.

Back to me though, if I may indulge myself for a moment with out their interference. I just loved to make people laugh, and I always have. It wasn’t selfish, I didn’t want applause or accolade, I just wanted to know I had made someone else feel good. That was what those two never understood. They thought they were heckling me, but they were just part of my show. So long as they were there, so long as they shouted, people did laugh. Best of all, I was still getting paid and they were paying for the privilege to play along.

Now though, as I am just getting over the shock and find myself having to grasp a world without them, I wonder how much of the show really was them. They made me funny, they made me sympathetic, whatever am I going to do without their twinned laughter? I can hear them now, cracking something at a punch line that I had deliberately bungled, listening to them say something far funnier than I could ever think of, and then those delicious laughs of theirs before the rest of audience would find itself grudgingly guffawing along.

Some thought that they dogged me, bullied me constantly through my career. This, I am afraid I must now point out, couldn’t be further from the truth is the truth were on Mars. They were my dearest and most beloved fans. I wouldn’t tell this story if they were still alive, because I think it would embarrass them, but it was the two of them who talked me down off that roof on that horrible night when I thought of ending it all. When they heard about my… addictions, they spent a lot of money to settle debts and made sure that I got the help I needed. When no one else could help, they proved that the heckler is the greatest fan a comedian could have.

So this is to you, Statler… Waldorf. Without you I… *SOB* I’m sorry. *SOB* I’m sorry, I can’t go on. Kermit, please finish up for me.