ACT 1:
CBS is running an odd announcement about Dave and he doesn't know what to make of it. He shows us the clip.
Announcer:

"David Letterman surprised viewers yesterday by returning to the air with a beard. This is the first time Letterman has sported a beard since his portrayal of Uncle Jesse on 'The Dukes of Hazzard.' David Letterman: Cooter, got your ears on?"

Because we've been out of work for two months, we failed to address a number of important news stories. Well, we quickly caught up.
We see a bunch of photos followed by a quick description.
" Knicks suck . . . Romney's an ass . . . . Ron Paul is nuts . . . what is a heart attack . . . . baseball players love steroids . . . Mike Huckabee loves Jesus . . . Keifer loves booze . . . Amy Winehouse really loves booze . . . those Spears girls really love sex."

A lone guy with a WGA picket sign walks in behind Dave and stands. The lone figure looks lost. Dave notices the sad-sack and immediately realizes what's up.
DAVE: "Joe, I think you guys are over at SONY today."
JOE: " . . . . . . . oh. . . . ."
Joe, looking for a line to march his picket, exits.

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES
-We see Clinton.
-We see JFK.
-We see George W. Bush: "Hope I didn't spill any sauce on my shirt after I had barbecue at the Whole Hog."

ACT 2:
IOWA CAUCUS TIMELINE - It's the Iowa Caucus, when millions of Americans pretend to know what it is.
9:00 AM: Crowds surge around John Edwards, mistakenly thinking he's Pat Sajak.
10:00 AM: Tension mounts when Hillary Clinton and John McCain show up wearing the same pantsuit.
10:30 AM: In this latest flip-flop, Mitt Romney launches stinging attack against himself.
11:00 AM: Since he's unlikely to win caucus, Bill Richardson focuses on winning state's pie-eating contest.
NOON: Candidate Mike Huckabee tells crowd he enjoys crossing picket lines and promises to cross more in the future.
2:00 PM: When asked about his dismal poll numbers in Iowa, Dennis Kucinich responds, "Hey, at least I have a hot wife!"
AH-OO-GAH!
Dave so enjoyed the ah-oo-gah sound effect that he requested it follow each time line joke.
4:00 PM: President Bush decides to attend Iowa Caucus, ends up in Ohio.
4:30 PM: Realizing he may finish as low as 5th, Fred Thompson calls "Law & Order" to try and get his old job back.
5:00 PM: Joe Biden is thrilled when he meets a guy in Iowa who's actually heard of him.
6:00 PM: With no strong contender on the Republican side, Dwight Eisenhower returns from the dead to throw his hat in the ring.
6:30 PM: Barack Obama speech draws thousands of Iowans who always wanted to see an African-American in person.
8:00 PM: To ensure two more caucus votes for Hillary, Bill has last-minute three-way with two undecided Iowans.

ACT 3:
TOP TEN - Things to ask yourself before having sex with a robot
An artificial intelligence expert says that by the year 2050 robots will be so lifelike that they will be nearly indistinguishable from real people. . . . and that we will have sex with them.
Says Dave: "Years and years ago I may have had sex with a robot because there was absolutely no response whatsoever.
And following each Top Ten entry was the comical sound effect of a slide whistle.
#9. "Is it properly grounded?"
#6. "Am I AC or DC?"
#5. "Is it programmed for low expectations?"

Much to my surprise, not one mention of the word "lubrication" in tonight's Top Ten.

BILL MAHER: His 6th season of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" premieres next Friday at 11:00 PM.
How were the holidays? Bills says he was performing in Las Vegas two days before Christmas. He was amazed at how Vegas celebrates Christmas. It's like they airbrushed the holiday right off the map. There was absolutely no indication that Christmas was right around the corner. There was no tree, no red, no green, no chipmunks . . . and Bill loved it. Dave says he had never been to Vegas during Christmas but was there once around Easter. My guess is they probably had no Service of Shadows.
Dave asked Bill if he likes taking time off, and Bill responded with a satisfying, "It's great having time off when you know you're coming back." I liked that.
So what does Bill like to do when he has some free time? He says he likes reading about health. He is very suspicious of Western ways of medicine and health. He believes we are being poisoned by the medical world, which keeps them in business. When your body fills with mucus, it's our body's way of trying to create a river for the poisons to flow out. But every medicine on our shelves fights to reduce the mucus. Our body wants to get rid of the poison, it supplies the means of expelling the poison, and then our medicine destroys the means. Mucus is good!
Following the Iowa Caucus? Bill doesn't understand why the Republicans are not distancing themselves from George W. Bush after all the harm he's done. Dave points out that Al Gore distanced himself from Clinton and look what it got him. Bill points out, "But that was sex!" America sees "sex" as worse than the problems Bush has created. Bill recalls the President once claiming he had read 87 books this year. Bill wonders about a man's insecurities when he keeps a tab of the number of books he's read. I guess that doesn't reflect well on me. Whenever I read a book, I tell everyone.

ACT 4: HAL GURNEE'S NETWORK TIME KILLER - tonight, Hal introduces a guy drumming on balloons on a ballon-aphone. The big finale included the guy popping the balloons.

ACT 5:
It's writer-striking Joe walking down Broadway with his picket sign.

ACT 6:
ELLEN PAGE: From the hot new film, "Juno."
How was her New Year's Eve? Ellen hunkered down in her new apartment, her first, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She grew up in Nova Scotia and is very excited about her new digs. After moving in she learned that she now lives in a former whorehouse. It's 130 years old and it is haunted. Things always end up missing.
I know what she means. Whenever I go to one of those places, when I wake up I'll find my wallet is missing from the end table.
Ellen says she is a bit scared coming home late at night because she half-expects to find a transparent slut waiting for her at the top of the stairs.
I find that most sluts are not transparent at all. They tend to be straight forward. Ellen likes the outdoors and was on a recent camping trip to Newfoundland. It was about an 8-hour ferry ride from Nova Scotia and was awesome. Everything was beautiful. She and her friends decided to hike up a mountain at night, so Ellen strapped on one of those headlamps around her noggin to keep her hands free for the climb. Unfortunately, one of her friends thought it would be funny to kick the flashlight out of her hand . . . . but the flashlight was on her head. She ended up getting kicked in the face. Oh, the laughs they had.
Dave then quickly asked about the Halifax Explosion. Ellen was delighted that Dave knew of the event since most are unaware, especially south of the border. She explained it involved the world's biggest explosion up to the dropping of the atom bomb. I never heard of it, so I looked it up. You should do the same.
"Juno" - now playing. It looks real good . . . quirky good. I like quirky.

ACT 7: "YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN" - Roger Bart, Sutton Foster, and Christopher Fitzgerald performed a number from the new Mel Brooks Broadway musical, now playing at the Hilton Theater at 213 West 42nd Street.

And that was our show for Thursday, January 3, 2008.



Day 60 of the writers strike.
What's the word on the picket line? Check out what the Late Show writers are saying on their website, www.LateShowWritersOnStrike.com

Here's something I just realized: For the past 2 months, it was the first and only time head writer Justin Stangel has ever been called "striking."

What do I do for fun? I love watching New York Knicks basketball games. I am not a fan, but it is great theater. They are terrible this year and their coach Isiah Thomas should have been fired months ago but for some reason the owner won't fire him. Wednesday night the Knicks lost big to the below average Sacramento Kings who were without 4 of their best players. The Knick announcer said the Knicks have hit "rock bottom." I laughed because this is the 5th time this year that I've heard that the Knicks have hit rock bottom. It's a train wreck that goes on and on and on. My guess is the only reason Isiah is still coaching is because it is the only thing of interest with the team. I am fascinated by the whole thing. Meanwhile, Isiah is promising a championship. C'mon, I know there is a writers strike but someone must be writing this chapter of New York Knicks basketball. This can't be just "happening."

When I was in high school, some kids had those hand-held calculators. At the time, they sold for $100. Twenty years later when my wife and I shopped for a Co-op, the real estate people gave us a free calculator just for showing up Last week, I bought my wife one of the GPS gizmos for the car to tell her how to get from here to there. It cost me $250. And I would say in twenty years, car dealers will be giving away these GPS things just for looking at a new car.
I don't know what to make of those GPS things. I can live without it. I really don't mind getting lost when I'm on the road . . . when I'm ALONE! Put someone in the passenger seat when I've lost my way and I'd pay anything for a GPS.

As I was writing about the GPS ---- "Global Position System" ---- I recall a Late Show guest mentioning a GPS and I having no idea what he was talking about. I searched "GPS" in my Wahoos. I found nothing. I pictured John Travolta being the one who talked about the GPS. I searched him and again found nothing. I was about to give up but made one more search of "GPS" on another database in my computer. DING! I'm not sure why I logged it but it was Patrick Swayze who talked about the GPS. The date: April 29, 1998; 10 years ago. He talked about "GPS" as if we should all know what it was. Now, it's in our everyday language.

When I drive to work in the morning, I usually listen to WFAN , the sports radio station. When they go in to commercial, I go over to ESPN for more sports talk on the radio. Usually, they are in commercial at the same time. I then go over to Air-America. Usually they are in commercial, too. Then I check out WABC and WOR. Commercial, commercial. And then I check the time. It's 20 minutes after the hour. My guess is the radio programming manual says you must go to commercial 20 minutes after the hour, so every radio station on the dial is in commercial 20 minutes after the hour. Listeners press their car radio buttons until they find a program not in commercial. This is what I would do if I ruled the world, especially if I ruled ESPN radio, the #2 sports talk station in New York: I would make sure I was NOT in commercial 20 minutes after the hour. I would be in commercial at 16 minutes after the hour. If everyone was like me, everyone listening to ESPN at 16 minutes after the hour would switch over to WFAN. A minute or two later, WFAN would go in to commercial. Now everyone listening to WFAN would switch over to ESPN and catch 10-15 minutes of commercial-free radio. Once ESPN went back to a commercial, everyone would switch over to WFAN until they went to commercial, which would be in a minute or two, and then they would go back to ESPN. This results in 15 minutes of listening to ESPN vs. 2 minutes of listening to WFAN. If you are first in to commercial, you will also be first out. It's what ESPN radio should do, especially when they are #2 in the sports market like they are here in New York. And that's a memo.

For more writers strike info, check out the following sites:
www.Wga.org - the writers union, west
www.wgaeast.org - the writers union, east
www.amptp.org - the "other" side of the writers - the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com - Nikki Finke of L.A. Weekly - this is the website EVERYONE goes to for strike news . . . right after going to the Wahoo Gazette.
www.millerandgreen.blogspot.com - a blog written by former writers of the Late Show sharing their views on the strike

CAMEO MENTION OF A WAHOO READER
From Bridgeport, Connecticut, it's Paul J. Nager
This concludes another episode of CAMEO MENTION OF A WAHOO READER

Michael Z. McIntee - also known as "The Guy"
mikemack@aol.com