My Appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman
On October 14, 2004 my parents and I attended a taping of the Late Show with David Letterman. The guests that evening were the always funny Billy Crystal, and then Ralph Nader. You can probably guess how entertaining Ralph was. Because I was with the parents, who are old, we were given excellent seats on the floor just 4 rows from the stage, the logic being that: 1) old people laugh at dumb things, and 2) old people never cause any trouble. Before the taping of every show Dave warms up the audience with a little bit of slapstick, which always consists of him telling us the show sucks and that the guests are no good. On occassion he asks for questions from the audience. This time he did, and having such a prime seat I was able to get Dave's attention before anyone else did. He asked my name and where I was from (I told him Alberta), and there was a little more small chat before he asked for my question. The one I used I had thought of long in advance, and although it wasn't very good I knew it would get me on TV. It was a very simple "Do you validate?" to which Dave asks, "Parking?". If I'd been more on the ball I'd have replied, "No, hookers!", but I didn't. The audience laughed at my question and Dave kind of did, and proceeded to inform me that they do validate. One simply has to see announcer Alan Kalter after the show and provide proper documentation to be reimbursed. That's good to know for future visits. After that the show was to begin so Dave headed backstage. When he came back out for the monologue the first thing he alluded to was my question, and the shot switched to me in the audience. I was expecting it to happen and thought I'd make it more interesting by giving a quick salute. As you'll see in the clip though I looked into the completely wrong camera when I did it. I guess I shouldn't expect much of a career in television.
You can see a video clip of my appearance below. The files are the same except that one is of lower quality and therefore a faster download. For the high quality clip you're probably best off if you right-click on the link and save it to your hard drive, then watch from there.
Low quality streaming clip (7 MB download) | High quality clip (36 MB download)
Now my problem is that when I go back to the show again I don't have a question for Dave. Any suggestions?