Even though I’m a tremendous fan of David Letterman… he’s so much better than Leno… I’ve never attended a taping of his show. Well, that all changed on Monday! I submitted a ticket request several weeks ago when we planned our trip, but because of the Late Show’s taping schedule, the only day we could see the show was Monday. Not very hopefully, I submitted that as our only available date.

But they called… last Thursday the day before we left. So we showed up Monday, got our tickets, and watched the master run his show. It’s all very choreographed… we were reminded several times that our laughter was the soundtrack of the show… which was not really a problem because Dave was funny as was his first guest Riann Wilson (from The Office). The best line from one of the production assistants was {paraphrasing}, “If you find yourself on the fence thinking… ‘was that funny?’, go ahead and laugh your head off. You have the entire ride home to figure out if it was actually funny.”

The infamously cold theatre lived up to it’s reputation. Paul Shaffer and the band are fantastic. And you can tell that at his core, Letterman really is a bit of a curmudgeon! Which is probably what makes him so funny. He also seemed genuinely pleased and grateful to have the life and job that he has. And while there are many parameters/restrictions on the audience, I didn’t get the feeling that we were the burden for his stardom, but that as long as his crazy showbiz ride continues, we were welcome to come along.

Speaking of stardom… here’s a video of the monologue from Monday night. I make a very brief appearance in the audience shot after his joke about the women wearing “Kiss Me I’m $4000″ buttons (about 40 seconds from the start). I’m in the lower right hand side of the shot.
enjoy.