Gabe Abelson

hi this is Rupert G from the hello Deli and you're currently watching The Lettermen podcast welcome once again to the Letterman podcast my name is Mike Chisholm uh I am the host of this endeavor and it is a delightful post indeed I am very excited to be here that's what you get whenever you see me you get excitement because I get to talk to people who were somehow involved or affected by the world of David Letterman and Company and what a world it is what a rich world it is so much fun we're in having a blast with this endeavor uh hopefully it continues to grow and expand and lead to all sorts of Adventures and insights um that we have no idea we're gonna happen uh this week's example of our show certainly has that um I have uh the pleasure of talking to Gabe Abelson tonight Gabe Abelson was David Letterman's uh head monologue writer from 1998 to 2001 there was a time where Bill shaft um and I I don't to be perfectly Frank I'm in a full disclosure here I don't know how many monologue writers uh head monologue writers Dave had throughout his career um what I will say is with the Late Show Bill sheft a guy I would very much like to talk to but at the end of the day uh we'll see what we'll see what happens chef may come on the show I have hope the reason I have hope is Chef wrote the forward for the last days of Letterman um and I have it on good authority that uh my good friend Scott Ryan had to ask Chef a couple of times and he got nose at first um so I'm hoping that bill shaft will come on here and give us some uh some fun tales uh that aren't Tails out of school that he will be able to tell to talk about um the very unique position of head monologue writer for David Letterman now now that being said he did it for a few years and then he took a break and Gabe came in and took over in 98 I believe August late August early September of 98 and then he did it all the way until I believe the very end of 2001.

uh Gabe has done a bunch of other things in his career as well and we talk a little bit about that he also he wrote for The Tonight Show and a few other uh notable things that he has done a fascinating conversation my favorite part about this entire experience is uh becoming friendly with these folks and actually building a relationship with these folks Gabe and I have talked uh since and um I I just am really excited to know him um he's one of those guys that likes to give back and I mean it's a if you've listened to all of these or watched all of these shows you know that there are a lot of folks who worked for Dave and Company uh I guess were who were the company of Dave and company and they just are so generous with how they built others up and and I really really liked that about the culture uh within the pants world and it seems to be all of the eras were like that Gabe certainly no exception when we talked about Steve O'Donnell I love Steve um boy uh what a legacy that guy was a part of he just finished up a run at NYU uh teaching comedy writing class uh a comedy writing class Gabe does the same thing Gabe actually has for those who are in the uh California area Gabe actually teaches so not only does he give you know generously of his time uh from performing and and doing the things that he does uh but he actually wants to give back and to and to be part of projects like this what we're doing here but he also teaches he's got a he's got a class coming writing for late night um and he does this at Flappers through Flappers comedy uh Club so go to flapperscomedy.com his next class is actually going to be uh January 23rd through February 20th and if I lived in Cali I would be doing this just to just to have FaceTime with Gabe he is a phenomenal guy I use I don't know if there's a word I use more than phenomenal on this show um it's just the level of how I feel for things I'll I'll get a thesaurus out and try and find some uh some synonyms for it but um I gotta tell you um I'm just really blessed to talk to people uh like Gabe we had a phenomenal conversation see that hurt us again sorry about that I'm gonna do my best uh at least I'm noting it right we had a uh just a delightful conversation there we go where we talked about uh some of the stories that he had how he got the job he talked about that the interview um coming into you know take over for bill um that's a tall order it really is and and we got into a whole bunch of things this is a long form show I'm not breaking it up into two parts partially because we got a whole bunch of guests that are coming and and I mean I don't want to stretch them out too much when they come and record I don't want them to be you know a month or two later and we got a whole bunch coming so uh you know I hope you enjoy the long form the numbers seem to uh reflect that people are ready to do a deep dive when they come in here and and and and hear a letterman podcast I appreciate that very very much because at the end of the day I think a lot of the depth of these conversations I think about Jeremy weiner um you know some real cool things started happening after an hour and 10 minutes same thing with Gabe I mean Gabe and I get into uh later on into the into the into the show we start talking about the culture of stand up these days and and um I just uh in in 2023 and how it's different and and I get some really good opinions from him uh about that and and I mean at the end of the day his opinions are nothing short of expert world class um I feel like with many of these guests I'm sitting under a Learning Tree uh Gabe is certainly one of those guys but he is a Learning Tree that is entertaining it's all get out gosh some of the stories that we tell I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you right here he reads something on here there was a joke that he uh um gave to David Letterman in one of his monologues um and it wasn't written by him it was written by uh by two of Carson's boys and we'll we'll talk about those guys a little bit here but anyway the joke was so funny to David Adam doubled over in laughter and to the point where they actually had to ask the boys um how they came up with part of the joke they sent a fax deconstructing the joke and and and kind of explaining the joke um in its Bare Bones skeletal form uh the justification of it and uh Gabe read that facts to us on this show and he's never done that for another podcast he's been on other shows before in fact oh before we get I wouldn't even know Gabe if it wasn't for Jay Ryan so shout out to my buddy my brother from another mother uh Jay Ryan thank you so much for I love being in partnership with you uh more to come on that everybody um and uh I just appreciate you you introducing me to some of the amazing people that are in your in your world in your circle Gabe being one of them um yeah we just have some really really fun times here uh anything else to note before we just get right to it uh I mean it's a long conversation I hope you enjoy it uh lots of good stuff here we want to provide uh you know lots of content here uh at the Letterman podcast oh you know what there is one more thing I'm gonna say um the integration uh of Don Giller into this show um is is is being honed right now and and it was a delight to have Dawn real time uh spout out some cool facts and things like that that I could then reintegrate back into the conversation with Gabe and and and not just for fact checking but also for um you know uh for for trivia's sake it certainly makes the broadcasts that much uh more enriched I appreciate dawn like you wouldn't believe I uh man the fact that that he is taking part in some of these shows um is is nothing it's it's fantastic to me I'm just gleefully delighted hopefully uh as our community grows here that uh gleeful Delight can spread its way around and everybody will experience it as well we've got a lot of really cool things coming we've got some more Community shows that are going to be added in those will come out on Tuesdays I think uh whereas the the Letterman podcast uh will be every Friday the community shows where where people can talk about some of the experiences that they've had we've got one that we're recording tomorrow um very cool story of a couple of guys who made it to one of the very last late shows uh we've got somebody who was featured on stupid pet tricks who's going to be coming on the show as well uh lots of good things happening in the world of the Lettermen podcast I could not be more grateful uh and I guess that's it right there um so for those who really enjoy Gabe I'm gonna say it again uh his comedy class flapperscomedy.com it starts uh January 23rd reach out to him he offers private coaching that kind of stuff as well you have a speech or something like that you want some help from one of Dave's uh only head monologue writers ever it's available these guys love to give back these guys love to teach guys and gals uh love to enrich the lives of others I'm gonna stop now because you're not here to see me or listen to me you're here to see or listen to Gabe ableson right here on the Lettermen podcast foreign okay so yeah so that was on D-Day or dumpster day as a lot of the staff called it um that is a that was a casualty and somebody rescued it and held on to it and uh when I as I started becoming friendly with a lot of these former staffers um they started showing things like you know one of them sent me the uh the the book there and a few jackets and things like that and and yeah somebody came forward was like hey I've got this bridge and it's literally just been sitting in moth balls for seven years I don't know what to do with it I'm like I've got a place to do for sure Vision great um I am so grateful Gabe that you have uh you have come out to do this and and I I can't wait I've got a million questions for you um the first question I have for you is uh did you always have the performer bug because yes head monologue writer all that for Dave we're going to get into that like crazy but you're also a performer now and a really good one where you always won thank you I auditioned I won't even say how old I was let let's just say a child I auditioned at The Improv oh my God uh 48 years ago in 1974.

obviously way too young to get into the club but not too young to get on stage and I stood on the line actually with Fred Stoller no I I actually growing up I grew up on 123rd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam two blocks away from George Carlin and his mother used to sit downstairs on the public bench there and I would sit there and this old lady would tell me stories about her son George I had no idea who it was and then when I got to be 14 and I learned about Carlin's album I put the whole thing together Carlin became my favorite favorite comedian anyway but but then you know the the tie-in and the picture the picture in class Crown I looked down my block I see the same Riverside Church and so over the course of my career I'd done stand up with all those contemporaries with Robert Klein and David Brenner and I never worked with Carlin uh so years later 15 years into my stand-up career I was doing Caroline's comedy hour for a e as a stand-up I said to the uh the producer she just worked with Colin I said you know I've never written ever a celebrity or comic I've never written a letter but I I just have to tell him about knowing his mom and knowing some of the guys in the neighborhood he knew she said here's a post office box I wrote to him forgot about it two months later my wife comes running into my office okay okay George Carlin's on the phone like holy and so I'm I get on the phone with him we talk for about two hours about the neighborhood and and it ended up coming full circle because about two years later when I got on Letterman I finally met him for the first time wow so why do I mention that what a long long story for something we're not even going to talk about no that's okay we're going to keep going it probably got me into performing there you go I just wanted to be a comic I don't know why I never thought about writing monologue I guess it was never a talent that I thought I had because I've been working on stand up for so long and I was doing audience warm-up in 1994 for Politically Incorrect when they were on Comedy Central New York and I said to the EP you know what happens if I have an idea for bill for a monologue joke he said well you know we have a fax team it's kind of a thankless job you'll be writing 20 jokes a day in the hopes of selling one for 50 bucks and Bill only does six jokes and we look to our staff first so I thought out what the hell I'll try it and I tried it and the very first night I tried monologue writing half of the monologue was mine three out of the six jokes whoa how did that feel more exciting than any moment that it had up to me it had happened in stand up in 16 years of doing it uh 14 years and you're not exaggerating when you say that you were go you got a rush from having your stuff said through that that voice uh and hearing the laughs and the reaction but being able to do it you know kind of third party it was a different kind of Rush than when you were on stage and you'd be hearing completely different and much more satisfying people said I used to say all the time still say you know aren't you were wasn't it tough as a comic for so many years to hear Letterman do your jokes what are you kidding me I'm a nobody he's the person I worshiped he's getting out to Millions I'm getting out to 200 at a time if I'm lucky you know um so uh no that didn't bother me so in any case that happened and the business humbles you quickly I thought this is what I'm meant to do the next night nothing in the monologue next night nothing but then all of a sudden it was two then one then three again then two and after only a couple of weeks they said we want to put you on retainer meaning we're not giving you a stab job you've never worked in TV which ironic because that is the job the staff job eventually that did bring me out to LA was getting on app when they were on ABC when it was a much bigger show actually so they said we'll put you on retainer I think it was like 400 a week to send 20 jokes a day and I loved it I was a lazy stand-up I had nothing to do with my day times and uh and and it was just this thing and then all of a sudden when they moved to LA when they got the deal on ABC they ended the fact New York New York factors I don't know why but whatever they ended it and I happened to be doing a one-nighter uh as a stand-up with the uh late wife of uh Bill Shep to his monologue writer for almost all the years at Lebanon and I said and I knew Adrian very well and I said yeah I just you know I'm not writing for Politically Incorrect what do you think of these you know you think I could maybe write for Letterman she looked at him she said call Bill who I knew from stand up see I can't make any promises I called Chef he said send them to me I sent them same thing happened to put you on the facts list facts team these are really funny you know because you have to have a limit on the facts team it's the only show where there was just one monologue writer on staff that was Bill shaft and the boys the two guys who wrote for Carson Malone Barry everyone yeah yeah no one else on the show none of the other 12 writers had anything to do with the monologue even Joe toplin at that time oh that's not well it was just me and the factors and that's how Bill sort of created that department and you know Dave wanted it as close to the way as Bill had it you know um their best friends yeah and so um uh I can tell you about that too about my interview something that was very interesting absolutely okay so yeah please do but anyway so the same thing happened after a month he said we want to put you on retainer it was more money than politically incorrect because that was non-union at the time on Comedy Central it isn't after a Comedy Central union now um unless it was more money and I knew that bill was the only monologue writer to work on the show so I never I knew there would be no room for me there and yet I had no master plan of okay let me put it back together for Conan then or anything like that I just never planned in my career and out of nowhere one day Chef calls me up he says I'm leaving the show to write a book would you be interested in my job and it was like one of these things where I remember exactly where I was standing what I was wearing what room I was in you know it was one of these and he said I'm not going to guarantee it we have five retainer guys but you stand a good chance you know you're a stand-up uh and um and uh you know Dave just really likes your stuff so I have a couple of stories about that interview that are hilarious one of them's probably too long but in any case none of this has come along this is long form and we love this stuff so you you no you open up as much as and I've never told on podcasts also um you know okay before you get there what you're talking here just to have some context to the viewers okay again uh what year would this have been just to give some context okay so I started in 97 and ended at the end of 2001.

okay I started writing for the show I think in 96 95 or 96 but that was as a a retainer as a factor then retainer and then staff writer in 97 yeah and you were living in La at the time as a fact I was a New Yorker that's what I was living in the same place that I grew up in in white Harlem is George Carlin so you never even moved out to LA when political you stayed and okay I gotcha I got you there's like listen to snap writer so there was no right thing for me to move out I had a family with two very young kids at that point I wouldn't move out to be a factor I I don't even think they have the facts program anymore at that point but in any case you know I didn't even move out when I got politically incorrect as a staff writer I waited for two years because you never know how long a show is going to last and as it turned out bill that show did get canceled about a year into my tenure there then I went to Kilbourne then I went to um um uh uh Tom Green where I did some of the work I'm I'm happiest with in my career actually wow uh yeah and then boy Tom Tom's my closest I would I was about to say in LA but he moved back to Canada Tom's probably my closest buddy in the world okay so before we get this is an aside because obviously you know Canadian here as well so uh Tom Green I'm I'm pretty sure he blew up here and then blew up down there I think I think it was some of the things that he was doing up here the Antics and things like that he was on yeah and I'm sure you know well Roger's Cable absolutely yeah he's on Roger's cable and uh an MTV executive saw you know all these pranks he played on his parents and and you know brilliant stuff and very letterman-esque just to the next level and with a with a Gen X Flair to it well what was you know if you think about Tom Green there would not be Jamie Kennedy experiment that would not be punked it would not be jackass those are not shows modeled after Candid Camera those are just called after Tom Green and the thing is unlike with jackass Tom Green never did any mutilation or scatological well no on the mic well that was it uh but you know even even I'm talking about the early stuff that got them famous it was you know those pranks with his parents and undercutters pizza where we would find out about a pizza I mean just just genius genius absolutely Eric Andre totally would be the first to say how much he owes to Tom Green but I did I didn't know you know I'm I'm well I I'm actually not that much of an older generation than Tom but I am one older generation than them practically and I didn't know much about him and I was writing for a union show Craig kilborn which was produced by Letterman yep and my agent of William Morris said do you want to interview to be the head writer of Tom Green and I was like oh God that guy who hunts a dead whatsoever and I met with Tom and he was one of the most serious people I'd ever met and he'd spent the past two years every day in the museum of broadcasting watching old Steve Allen Jack Parr Letterman Carson shows that's what he always wanted to be he didn't want to be that other guy but it was tougher because now he was getting older and people knew him as that other guy he was so identifiable yes that crazy guy yeah that it was hard for on our show you know we did a throwback to the early tonight shows with the light boxes the whole set and everything and that's not who the MTV audience wants Tom came out in a suit and tie and did a monologue so but I know as I said as far as the work and the originality of some of the some of my favorite stuff oh my gosh yeah yeah okay so I remember so in Canada we have MTV but our our big music channels the channel called much music and and uh when I was 15 years old Tom Green was in a top 10 Canadian hip-hop uh act you know check the or organize organized Rhymes yeah but the big the big single and and I mean um so we watched him kind of come up and start doing these things here and then there's something about being a Canadian and watching one of your boys or one of your girls go down south and make good down there uh you know we saw with Jim Carrey of course SCTV is one of those things where we're you know just infinitely proud the Kids in the Hall that kind of a thing and and there's that little spin or that little Flair to it Tom like I'm I mean I'm a lifelong Letterman fan since I was a little kid I love Tom so much because I felt like he was also a lifelong Letterman fan and decided to do things um on on his uh in his own language in his own Generation Um you know at the end of the day Tom was one of the guest hosts of uh when when Dave was off with shingles he was one of the guys that guest hosted The Late Show and and I just I love all of this were you still there at the time when he did that no I was with Tom oh my gosh that was while we were doing our show and he flew in to take over for Dave and I gave him I gave him one line that was I shouldn't say that but I did uh that was you can here you can you can say anything you like here you remember the uh it was the outrageous line he was at the desk he said uh I can't believe I'm sitting at the same desk where Drew Barrymore flashed David Letterman what a lucky guy set the time what too right like that's yes yeah yeah perfect that's that's perfect um gosh I want him to it'd be it'd be fun to watch him go on where I met you was uh was with our mutual friend Jay Ryan Jay Nicole doing the the cars and comedy show you know he's got that desk in his house that very desk um it'd be fun to see Tom sitting at that desk and and to say a line like that that's pretty uh but at the time I mean that is a phenomenal I just love that so much phenomenal by the way is the word you're gonna hear the most on uh on this show here because I just love all of this I'm fascinated by all this since I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you since this is about Letterman and I'm straying over you Tom I do I mentioned the interview and Tom was actually a very interesting um PostScript to that story about interviewing with Dave uh so Bill Chef tells me before my interview he says look he said Dave is going to at some point say something to try and throw you off your game like out of nowhere he'll say do you like red meat he said and just know that because he wants to see how you roll with the punches but just know he's trying to throw you off your game I said thanks Bill it's a great tip to know going in I'll be on my clothes and he never did it he never asked me anything that was weird it was a very straightforward thing we had we had a good laugh the first thing he asked me was do you know Mitch Walters and Uncle dirty and those were two Road Comics that were like from his generation but we're still working and I said do I know Uncle dirty and uh Mitch Walters and I told uh uh and Dave actually lived with Mitch Walters when he was doing stand-up Over The Comedy Store he and Mitch Gary mule there but in any case yeah I told him we exchanged some stories and years later I was telling this to Tom and I was telling him about what Bill Chef said to me and he said something so on the money right away I said you're absolutely right he said you were the only stand-up that interviewed for the job right you know because I told him about that I said yeah he said see you do realize the uncle dirty witch Walters was the do you like red meat question that was the litmus test right there that was it oh isn't that interesting yeah yeah I thought that was really interesting and then um after the interview Dave said something to me and I uh it's funny because no matter who I interviewed whatever host I interviewed with after working there yeah the first thing I knew we said is what's Dave like didn't matter who they were how big they were like Craig Kilbourne who's produced by Dave said you know what was that interview with Dave like you know and then I told him um when Dave told when I got the job and and Dave you know sort of gave me a pep talk in the beginning he said to me he said I just want you to know I'm an I'm gonna scream at you I'm gonna yell at you I'm gonna get purple in the face but just know it's never you it's always me and I told that to Kilbourne and you know he you could see him absorbing it going that's just great he said I have to remember that I gotta use that because he really should use that but that was just I thought that was very cool of of Dave to do that before he even knew me you know um yeah I I I I helped me relax you know that part of that part of Dave that it's legendary you know the the postmortems and things like that um you know the idea that nobody was harder on Dave than Dave and that would spill out to everywhere um was that instantaneous like when you got there I mean I just look at uh the first 18 months they're beating the Tonight Show and then a series of unfortunate events gets to the point where uh oh things are trains gone off the tracks and and there's a lot of um what I would call anyway uh frantic experimentation frantic the energy is still you know chaotic and high and and trying to get the numbers back and then at some point there's sort of an admission that okay we are where we are you were kind of there in that place where it was frantic and it was the idea of trying to get it back that kind of a thing um I guess the question would be is was there joy in that job or was it just turned up to 11 high intensity the entire time and and it was really uh a kind of a boiler room well keep in mind um uh like I said I was like my own fiefdom separate from the rest of the I was not in the writer's room for any of the rest of the show I did not you know I would I was going to say fraternized with them I I just didn't you know they were a group on their own I was just off in this one one place who was head writer at the time at that point the head writer I was there for three head writers okay young who went on to write for The Simpsons and produced for The Simpsons Rodney Rockman who yep won the Oscar I think for the spider-verse movie yep um and the stangles okay yeah so I was here for all three as head writers um and uh I'm trying to think of what your last question was did you corroborate with them at all or were was it was it separate either girls completely no not at all and in fact because the model they didn't really have any they didn't have much face time with Dave everybody just kind of put their stuff under his door and then they would see him you know at in rehearsal and in fact after a while it was just right to the show there wasn't even any more rehearsal but the monologue was so important to Dave I got to spend an hour with him and uh Inky Mendez a cue card guy every day for an hour going over the jokes okay that's what I was gonna say he asked me about the tension and the atmosphere keep in mind this was my very first job in television and arguably to this day my biggest job in television I mean in 1997 head monologue writer for Letterman if you're a late night writer that's the gig you want that's the show you want you know absolutely you're a late night joke writer ratings don't matter at that point you're on the coolest show on TV you know and I and I went to the and every year I was there we won best show every year all five years and we were nominated every year for best writing but it was after the period where they won writing every year so it was like frustrated because like how do you win best show we're not best writing and um but uh you know but it was it was it was just great it was thrilling it was it was terrifying you know um sometimes Dave and I would argue because he wanted total honesty for me about jokes and I love getting into the weeds you know I've been teaching late night writing for for about 15 years now yeah and I just loved nothing more than deconstructing it and we would get into you know once I start talking about jokes I kind of forget it's David Letterman you know yeah but that's something that I'm certain uh from everything that I've learned throughout this process with all the folks that I've that I've met and talked to um that is being able to like in the political world they talk about being able to tell truth to power and and being able to be that guy where you're being flat out honest and it doesn't matter the emotions that may come up with that Honesty don't matter to you don't matter to him what really matters is getting into the weeds of it to me uh that sounds like it's something he would have very very much appreciated yeah yeah yeah and you know uh it's funny because sometimes uh you know what would happen is Dave I I would get about whatever 300 jokes a day Dave wouldn't want to read more than 50 300 a day without yeah I mean between the factors right yeah oh yeah yeah no I actually didn't have time to write as many jokes as I did when I was freelancing because I had a collate everything you know so I would pick the jokes that I thought were strongest and the ones I thought Dave would respond to um if it was anybody else I would pick just the strongest jokes but with Dave I he's so specific I would I would try and hone in on what he wanted and I was praying that I would get the sheets back from Dave with at least um 13 check marks because he only did eight jokes and I knew he would cut at least four or five in rehearsal so I was praying he would check off that many and every day when I got the sheets back you know because it is subjective I would find jokes that I thought he missed that were stronger than some of the ones he picked so I would have Tony put those on cue cards and I would go to rehearsal and sometimes he would say I didn't pick that one and I would say I know but I think it's good because so and so sometimes he wouldn't say anything and he would just read it as if it were a joke and pass on it or take it and if I really felt strongly about a joke I would argue it once or at the most twice right yeah yeah actually there was really only one time I I kept arguing something and that was when I got yelled at and it was uh I can't tell that story that could be that could be NDA territory there but yeah I I appreciate that and and I mean um but we get the picture like it's it's some of these stories and I mean I've Heard lots of them off camera yeah entertaining and funny and they're good they're good like bar stories or whatever but for the purpose of the show like we get it like I understand that um the the point of how serious and how like 300 jokes whittled down you know to to eight to ten to whatever whatever that is um were you the guy on the other side of the fax machine or were was the writer's assistant the person that would kind of take facts or jokes and send them either to the writer's room or over to you from Mom machine was right in my office they faxed it directly to me okay so here's the question um how much joy was there whenever a joke would come in on the fax machine from Johnny Carson he didn't fax to me he oh he had a different place he faxed he did he fax directly to uh to Lori or to Mary or uh okay but his mother faxed me a happy birthday to Dave Johnny Carson's mom no no David Dorothy did yeah Dorothy oh that's adorable you've met Dorothy yes uh oh no not in person no okay um uh the facts from the boys did I ever tell you that story I didn't hear that story no she's here on Christmas um wow damn I don't know if I could find it now but hang on I it's it's worth it if I can find it uh oh absolutely I go for it hang on this is the best lesson in comedy any will ever hear who's watching uh it's just amazing I'll tell you I love hearing this um I can I can don't worry I can fill time while you're while you're looking for it I love that so many of you uh who were in different capacities of writing for the show um you know even from different eras like I look at Steve O'Donnell he's teaching about NYU uh you know he's teaching a course on Comedy writing you know you've done this as well there have been other like even Eddie Brill I mean he'll put on he puts on these you know stand-up uh uh um uh comedy um workshops and things like that there's so many examples of of folks who worked for pants in some capacity at some point who try and um and give back and enrich others it's just there's so many of you it's so fascinating to see the culture um yeah of of of of of of teaching and and growing others it's very cool yeah I mean I I love it it I enjoy teaching uh as much as I enjoy writing uh because from you know I mean I've been doing stand-ups I've been writing comedy for 42 years and you just you know I don't care how strong a comic you are how weak a comic you are uh comedy writer you just you know in 42 years you pick a lot of stuff up you're able to deconstruct what works why it works or why it doesn't work and so I love passing that on you know there are unfortunately to me too many people that are teaching comedy that really shouldn't be that that teach stand up that like work the door at some Club you know and you just unless you've done this again and again and again you can't you can't teach it unless you've been in a writer's room yeah um you know you just you're not going to be able to give them all the information they need I find it so funny that uh okay so let's get back to did you find the facts I just I can't believe I can't find the boy I actually had the original can you talk to them for one minute because I think I can go run in the other room and find you I absolutely can go get the other one I think this is this is fun um gabelson's gonna go grab the original uh and and and and I just find it fascinating that um you've got Johnny Carson um and somebody actually in the in the the Facebook group the other day just asked about this they asked about uh what's a faxer and so the idea of telling oh it's freelance joke writers they come in and uh they send the the show jokes for um you know consumption and the show uses them I think they're 75 whatever I'll ask him about that too so remind me uh I don't know who can remind me Don can remind me um yeah Gabe how much did you guys uh it was that easy and uh I actually someone said I should frame this this is the original page on blue paper and you can see the boys they were that in case folks don't know watching the boys uh Jim Mulholland and Mike Barry um the head writers of Johnny Carson head writers of the Emmys the Oscars the Legendary Legendary comedy writers and they were big contributors to the monologue but they didn't have cell phones only called over of the regular phone and they didn't use a computer if you can see this is typewritten a typewritten page old school and signed on the bottom on the blue paper yeah and signed so here's the story behind this December 1997.

so um it was a CR yeah David did Christmas jokes obviously around the holidays and there was a joke of mine about some Christmas special some Kathy Lee special some dumb joke and then after that and this was the tag this is the kind of joke that Dave would do that's not from the boys it's not even like a joke joke just sort of a tag he said and then tomorrow it was my show Kathy Lee has a Christmas show tonight whatever the joke was and then the boys joke is and tomorrow night Jerry Springer celebrates the holidays with five teen prostitutes right so um it's so Dave nobody else would say that you know and but it's hilarious and so but here's the thing so I'm in rehearsal we go through my joke you know and we get to this joke and Dave just doubles over at the waist he used to do that sometime if he was laughing really hard and just couldn't stop laughing and I said I said that is pretty funny but like I don't know if I've ever seen you laugh this hard and he looks at me says I just want to know how the boys came up with five teen prostitutes how did they know and so I call Mike Barry up on his landline and I say Mike Dave just wants to know why five teen prostitutes I'm telling you it couldn't have been more than three or four minutes later when I hear beep beep and this thing comes through and I gave it to Dave afterward and oh my God by the way that joke was told on December 12 1997.

anyway so really yep uh this is I assume this is from Don oh yeah Dawn Dawn through that event right there I have to speak to this man this is ridiculous their letter was the 15th um which is interesting because this was the day of so Mike must have gotten the date wrong wow okay um uh so we responded back because if you got if you phoned it in or whatever yeah we're gonna do the joke or whatever a couple days later they send the facts back saying how they did it no what I'm saying is I go to rehearsal with Dave for the show that night right right okay yeah and and so he says how did the boys come up with this the moment I get back to my office I call the boys Dave wants to know how he came up with five and four minutes later this comes through the fact no it was the same day but I'm wondering if maybe it was a well no we taped Thursday we take two to air one on Friday so the latest it would be was the 13th oh this is interesting okay what did the boys say anyway so here's what they say uh so he rewrote the line tomorrow night Jerry Springer celebrates the holidays with 15 prostitutes okay in answer to Dave's query as to how we came to pick five teen prostitutes had we picked four or 16 prostitutes the joke would have sounded like 14 prostitutes or 16 prostitutes doubling its meaning and heavy laugh potential one teen prostitute sounds like a strictly personal encounter or at the least a serious break in Springer's regular multi-low life format two or three teen prostitutes still seems a rather skimpy panel and not very funny yet seven or more teen prostitutes is too unwieldy a group for Jerry Springer to believably handle on a Christmas special and would undermine any credibility the joke might have with the audience thus five team prostitutes is the only possible number of King prostitutes that works the alternative would not to be the joke altogether which in retrospect I strongly recommend especially people starting out and stand up don't get how every single word every number is considered yes it's syllable every letter and the number six and all of that is true oh yeah it's it's every bit as scientific as it is emotional and I guarantee you that when the boys wrote that joke they didn't think oh 14 16 sounds too much like 14 or 16.

it's instantly just new but when they have to be constructed they deconstructed it in perfect logic I just think that's great it is great um oh I appreciate this so much this is so I'm having a ball talk like I love this stuff so much babe thank you so much for oh that's so good I want to get back to the interview here what else in the interview do we need to know here uh well this is just kind of a it's a personal thing so you know I studied acting with Lee Strasberg uh when I went to NYU um I was lucky one of his last uh students actually uh you know the founder of method acting and uh so it was I I you know I wanted to do stand up but I also kind of wanted to act but I I went full force him to stand up when I graduated and the acting what I did because I do about a hundred celebrity Impressions or I used to um I did a lot of radio ads as celebrities uh and I did a couple Internationals but I never landed a national on camera commercial until there was an audition uh we were in Frazier first went into syndication so that was my first year of uh Letterman uh uh 97 but right at the interview and um they needed a character called crane man for the national campaign it was supposed to be basically Rayman but addicted to Frazier crane instead of Wapner and walked around he had 10 minutes to freeze your gear you know I keep getting impression anymore but so my agent calls me up and it's all the way downtown and I'm like okay I that's gonna I'm I don't know why I'm going on an audition to be Dustin Hoffman and I get there and sure enough every guy in the waiting room I mean I'm 5 11.

everybody else there's like five six yeah dog hair big now they all look like Dustin Hoffman and so I'm like why am I here I might as well go home and of course that's the only nut the first national on camera commercial I get in 17 years I mean I did the impression a lot better back then and I looked nothing like him so I go I go I think I think interview with Letterman yeah um uh no no I don't have my interview with Letterman yet but I think bill has already made the call that he would you like to at my job in writing I'm leaving the show great I get this commercial now to make me look like Dustin Hoffman is a real undertaking um and I'm not saying I'm better looking I'm just saying I don't look like the guy uh so they what they had to do is dye my hair jet black and give me a haircut like a mental patient so the problem is with this color hair if you try and dye it black it comes out like orange or red dyed it again darker red again Brown it's like fried times and I don't know if permanent dye from temporary dye or if I would have had a choice but it was permanent dye and eventually they dyed it black and they had to dye my eyebrows black now with my light complexion with black eyebrows and I came home and my kids cried they cried they were little they were scared and my wife was like just don't look at me you look like the devil Okay so now I get a call from Bill shaft got the commercial I get a call from Bill Shep congratulations Dave wants you you gotta think oh no no no I'm getting ahead of it here and I didn't get that far that would have been fine he said okay so you have your interview coming up on Tuesday I'm like oh man this is great and then I said do me one favor and I didn't know Letterman personally but we all knew enough to know the guy's probably pretty eccentric something like that black hair with this face you know would he want to spend would I want to spend a day with every day looking at this guy I don't know so he said to Bill Chef please go down and tell Dave that this is only for commercial I can't wash it out but it'll come out in a few months it's totally not by choice it's really bad timing he said you know what I'm glad you told me that because I will tell him so I go on the interview the interview is great I leave I go home and uh Bill calls me up and I said how did it go Bill said the interview went great you know Dave told me he thinks he can work with you he can see this being you know you're uh you know a pretty chill guy he loves your jokes and he said he just had one thing he was a little puzzled about and I said what's that he said well after we were done talking Dave said I like the guy but what the hell is the deal with his hair and I said Bill tell me you told him and Chef goes told him what oh and I said no no I can't lose this job but right now I was in no position to ask Bill for anything but I said please I beg of you go downtown right now this with the only one oh my God the commercial yeah I'm gonna I'll go down right now and it didn't it didn't torpedo it but uh it came close it was funny because I had nothing but regret for landing a National Commercial at that point so that's my other story praying man yeah there's a there's a former Letterman writer right now who we're gonna have on the show here soon who's working on the reboot of Frasier right now as a staff writer oh great yeah um so anyway okay so you get the job as you go in there um is it the sh is it the circus That Never Ends immediately is it is it uh you know kind of kind of like a roller coaster like culture shock like okay here we go you're on the ride and now we're going 100 miles an hour is that really what it was like and then the hundred miles an hour fine for most of it but I would imagine before Showtime it had to be pretty chill like I mean I it must have gone very fast to very uh intense like like the I can only imagine the atmosphere I guess is where I'm trying to I'm trying to figure that out for you and and was there an adjustment period or did you take to it right away and that yeah we hired the right guy because right away you were there well I just I just focused on the job right away and you know yes do I saw a tremendous pressure but mostly with the rest of the staff um you know like Dave asking them to do another pass in the top ten another pass another pass another pass uh there's a lot of pressure and obviously there's tremendous pressure for me my pressure didn't really start until rehearsal um um I in terms of well the pressure was Dave picking enough jokes because the the biggest the words I hated hearing the most was we're in a box meaning we don't have enough jokes and usually it meant we don't have a closing joke and we had a closing joke every night not because of me but I got so many jokes there were plenty that could close and you know during the Clinton years which was most of the time I was there um we he would end with a Monica joke after the Scandal every night he would absolutely yep that's back when you know you could do that now he wouldn't do that no host would do that I don't think I know oh no the the temperature has changed significantly since the culture the entire culture has shifted you know we're talking a quarter century ago here yeah right exactly um so I have a story about that that I can't tell that's a great story about literally about being in a box not having a closing joke and and Monica but in any case um so that was stressful because if you said we're in a box to three I mean we taped at 5 30.

so I would have to go back in and call the boys get another round call the factors get another round put them together again some a couple of times I would go back to Davey would say we still don't have it you know now it's getting like within an hour of taping and it's really very stressful uh but you know once it was out on that stage and he was doing the monologue that was uh um yeah a great relief and um I got in earlier than all of the other writers and I'm not a boarding guy because I had to give all my stuff today by 11 or 11 30.

um and I so all of that work had to be done by then but I got to leave at about I you very often I would go back to Dave's office and watch the show with him afterwards yeah and that was you know that was cool that was exciting so I would leave uh probably seven nah about 7 30 right but the other writers very often stay till very late like you know maybe not quite as late as sitcom writers but very late would you be writing the next day's show that night afterwards I would I would cheat a bit I would get a head start if it was a story that you knew was gonna hold yep um absolutely yeah uh you know um and and I would always encourage the factors to keep track of to watch every monologue to see the subjects that he liked because yeah yeah when the story about you know the in the New York Post when the story about how New York rats are getting Brazen now that they're not just on the subway they're crossing the stream the fact that the boys started writing Brazen rats jokes he was on that for about two months in at that point and in the time of year squirrels with nuts things like that I mean yeah well those come along anytime you know it was raining it was Scotch guarding is not you know uh whatever it was oh no matter what there was yeah the squirrel nut jokes um um but uh what was the other one I was just talking about my memory is shot the the rats the rats so I showed uh uh you know in my class I show a few pages of my jokes and I show a few pages of the boys jokes because they're actually one of the few uh joke writers that didn't need punch lines to their jokes because they were so visual and this is what I tell everybody that tries to write comedy based on wordplay wordplay will never ever get the laugh that situational or visual comedy will so um the boys visually so for instance they say boy these New York rats are Brazen I saw one at Rupert G's Deli climbing down a hanging salami with a knife in his teeth I mean that's a scene that's gratitude that's you know I mean that's that's I I used to say to them you guys have to write an animated feature these ratchet braids and I saw rat at the Korean Fruit Stand feeling the peaches what what other comedy writer writes that it's not an anti joke but there's no real punchline and yet no freaking hilarious it's funny if anything I could write you know a New Year's Eve everybody's partying I saw two rabbis rolling a keg down Broadway you know I mean just yeah I saw a funeral procession stop into 7-Eleven for party ice yes yeah you know and party ice being the like it's got to be the party ice it's got to be yes absolutely party Ice is like five prostitutes exactly yes exact right yeah it's just it's brilliant comedy writing and okay I'm really glad you're bringing this up because we've talked about this on the show like um this is one of those things where you know you watch uh from back in the day I just think about growing up you know um you think of a Kennison set or a Carlin set for that matter and you can go you hear it on the record and you can go to the elementary school or Junior High the next day and you can replicate it to your friends and the laugh is transferable one of the things that it took me a long time to learn in in Middle School uh or Junior High was that many of Dave's Jokes which would have me doubled over or have me like my mind just lit up from humor the way that only humor can do it I could not replicate it to my friends because there was no punch line there wasn't a setup a middle and a and a punchline I don't to do the mechanics of a joke very well but but when there's a beginning a middle and an end you can do it with Letterman's stuff many times you can't do it because it is the emphasis on on on the right amount of syllable it's almost like a haiku like the right amount of syllables the right word party ice like it has to be partying yeah and and and those who wrote for him were experts and and that were that's where we go back to the idea of not a stand-up but more a broadcaster or an auteur like a a word Smith and and and that was the thing and still is to this day um you know I'll hear words that Dave uses on my next guest and there are words that I want to incorporate into my vocabulary because they're just the right words you know yeah yeah absolutely and um uh you know my favorite joke probably ever in late night was written by the boys and it got absolute silence in the theater and I know everybody in the industry certainly in the comedy industry was at home laughing their ass off this is this is an anti-joke it was silent he says uh everybody is sick with the flu that right now in fact the two guys that wrote this joke got sick with the flu had to go home and couldn't finish it oh I don't think I've ever heard a better a more clever and I mean nothing crickets all the tourists are like and then what yeah in a self-referential you know two writers wrote this job I mean it's just so perfect but you know for me I can't write this way I have a very a very structured approach to it but the structure is very Letterman to this day I write in his voice and I I can't I can't shake it man I can't shake it um and and I use this as an example of just you were talking about the structure of a joke so the the typical structure of a monologue joke and this is the key that I that I I tell that not I don't mean to keep bringing up my students but I have to because oh please do no bring them up bring them up by hand give them Shadows I think about it yeah um I always say the biggest Pitfall you can fall into because most of my students are stand-up comics and some veteran stand-up comics the worst thing you can do is try to think of a funny punchline the best thing you can do is try to think of an association something related in a completely bizarre and unusual way when you find the perfect Association the joke writes itself so the best example that I think I could give is uh uh and I don't remember everybody's jokes but a joke of mine uh when Clinton got caught with Monica he hired two spiritual advisors to come and pray with him in the white house so I thought well this is a typical empty political gesture and so I wanted to write a joke about it so I knew it was going to be a Monica joke so right away I know where I'm going with it so uh I thought so this is the way a joke gets written so now I go through this mental Rolodex of spiritual advisors okay what do they do they uh wear robes well Monica had the blue dress with the stain maybe there's a tie-in not really uh the wine the wafer eating mouth open nah maybe that could get to what else they pray they're on their knees bam there it is Association the joke is done now all I have to do is create the right framework and not use too many words so the joke ended up being President Clinton hired two spiritual advisors to come and pray with him in the White House just so we need more people in the Oval Office on their knees the economy of words on that joke is incredible me that that's not trying to think of something funny necessarily it was just what do I associate with spiritual advisors and that's really how 90 percent of them are written and when the perfect you know uh Association comes out so does a joke um um you know and that's a true so many jokes like there's a joke Dave used to do of mine every Christmas Even after I left the show for all I know he was still doing it 60 years later I don't know but the joke was it's expensive to buy a Christmas tree in New York you know it's a hundred bucks then it's an extra 50 if you want to tie it to the roof of your car oh no wait I'm sorry that's the deal on a hooker you could do that every Christmas he loved the hooker jokes and he loved that structure oh no wait I'm sorry and then it's something else and so again how does a joke get written I think of tying it when I saw about this is what it costs tying it to the roof of the car I'm thinking kinky tying hookers bang there's the joke so it's about Association and the other thing I just wanted to say quickly about that on their knee stroke is the first way I wrote that joke was just so we need more people on their knees in the Oval Office which would still get a laugh but not as big a laugh as putting knees the punch word last right someone said anything Oval Office in the Oval Office on their knees and what's amazing is I see people that are late night writers that do this for years and including myself that will still make the same mistake you miss the simple thing the thing but the simple things like the key thing it's something that we should have flipped yeah so and um I love the technical support by the way the uh the spiritual advisor joke September 16th 98 um I just I love this so much it is like God amazing um I had I had a I had a conversation uh with Mr Mulholland uh he was on Facebook for a very short amount of time and and I peppered him with questions and then uh he either blocked me or laughed I think he left uh at least I tell myself that um but uh no I I gave a joke to him um that uh I was it's such a screenshot of the conversation I was so proud was that it was a Times Square Elmo joke in any way um they're trying to it was really cold in New York they were uh the Times Square Elmos are rubbing each other to keep each other warm his response great fax that back to me in 1997 can't wait to put it on this show I love that um there's a joke that you guys told though in that same conversation I had with him that is one of my favorite jokes to this point it makes me laugh every year or it made me laugh every year that Dave would tell it and I'm just curious if that was around when you were there it was the um uh and it's very similar to what you're talking about here because it put two things together two things that are happening in New York at the same time are right around each other the Westminster dogs show in Fashion Week and uh you know we got coming and going and it just I love that joke whose joke was that I don't know if it was it was it I I uh Mulholland said he thought it might have been it he thought it might have been yours he thought it might have embarrassed he wasn't sure but anyway it was around that time um it doesn't sound like me it doesn't sound like chef and it doesn't sound like the boys I wonder if it was a freelance it must have been well I'm not going to say it was and it could have been it could have been one of them but yeah like every year every year at the same time Fashion Week in New York and then next week's the West Mr dog show we got oh yeah coming and going um I love that actually you know I just wrote one about the Westminster uh kennel show and I'm gonna get it wrong something like uh it was uh um I saw something like I saw Great Dane uh tackle a poodle and steal its little doggy sweater uh there's just something funny about the Steelers little doggy sweater and then he said uh uh uh oh yeah uh they have they're having the uh Westminster Kennel Club show over at Madison Square Garden for three hours uh for three hours Spike Lee was taunting a German Shepherd or something because he was at the Garden always at Madison Square Garden always in the like like there you go the perfect by the way the sick with the flu joke January 12 2000 um it's just crazy how this this can happen now I gotta ask you now you're doing The Mentalist stuff and I do we're gonna we're gonna finish with talking about what you're doing now um I am curious when The Mentalist stuff started but but at the end of the day uh I want to know about because you do a stage show now still you're still doing stand-up you're still presenting to people you're still we're talking about jokes that were written 20 years ago right now that we still get a laugh out of and all that when you're writing I mean when you're writing to tell things to to current audiences I don't know how stand-ups do it without you know being able to watch other stand-ups or writing for other stand-ups and all that and not be able to take some of these things from their subconscious and put it into their acts right now how conscious of are you now when you are writing humorous things for people um not to reuse things or or are you able to repurpose and reuse things I'm super excited about this but it's funny I have a friend uh one of the best writers I know named Beth armageda She Wrote for The Tonight Show while I wrote for Jay she was there a lot longer than I was she's also written um for the Emmys for the Oscars she's like Stephen Martin's personal writer so like anytime you see him on an award show whatever even on SNL a lot of the stuff is bets so she's always calling me out on my page I write a joke like this one I wrote the other day she writes Dave joke that's all that's all she posts Dave joke and I can't help it so I this was one from a couple days ago I said just in case he has a bit too much to drink on New Year's Eve George Santos is hired a designated liar you know on this one too I think uh I'm looking forward to January 1st I've been waiting weeks to open my 2023 Jonas Brothers calendar that's a very day type of joke you know it's not a standard punch line um and this is a very old school joke Mall Santas are now unemployed tough job you work for a month under terrible conditions then get let go it's kind of like working for Twitter you know that old school type of joke um this even more show holiday week and Shoppers are in a crazed frenzy in fact over at Best Buy I saw two Amish women fighting over a microwave there you go I mean that's you know and I can't help it it's just and I think that was a big part of me getting that job too which with no experience in TV was just that voice and for whatever reason maybe because I uh you know admired him so much was always in my head and still is to say yeah oh man I I dig this so much um okay so you do that job for three and a half four years um they're supposed to talk about four and a half years yeah some big highlight moments um we're gonna talk about 9 11 in a little while because that's near the end of your tenure uh but I mean at the end of the day going through big events do you remember some of the big events that happened the big National events or International or even City events that happened that would then come in and dominate the monologues um two of the biggest events of the latter part of the 20th century well one of the biggest events of the ever uh both very um tragic and both on my watch one the very for I believe it was the day before I started I know it was the weekend before I started might have been the day before if it was a Sunday Princess Diana got killed welcome oh my God the writing jokes for David Letterman the next day I gotta I gotta be funny he's got to be funny and then of course the other one was 9 11.

yeah um um and I thought the way Dave handled it was absolutely incredible everybody kind of followed his lead on that absolutely I always talk about how he's my Walter Chromecast exactly exactly and yeah I mean they were Benchmark big moments uh um I think there was a market crash or something where like where if something like that would happen in the middle of the day we would like get on it so our we addressed it in the monologue that yeah the.com Bubble Burst that during that time as well so yeah you guys would have definitely talked about that for sure right yeah yeah his accountant jokes like Dave used to make accountant jokes uh and things like that all the time in the monologue um yeah that kind of stuff yeah so so Princess Diana uh getting killed the week that they start like that is that's talk about it because it was on the I'm talking about I started on a Monday so it was either Saturday or Sunday and I think it was the day before um well yeah so that was being thrust really into the fire um so yeah I mean there were you know uh events there that look and that's true even now there were weeks where it's really hard or there's nothing in the news to really make fun of or what there is is too too serious or too tragic yeah and then there were other weeks where there's comedy gold you know where it's just you get a story that's I mean this guy Santos is is comedy gold you know oh yeah a few years ago when OJ was in jail and he got busted stealing cookies from the prison cafeteria I mean that's that's a gift yeah from the comedy Gods you know uh I I was non-dave staff at that point this was I I guess had to be before 2016 but he had a joke that night he was accused of stealing prison uh cookies in the prison cafeteria this time he left a trail of crumbs um I thought that was I wrote one I said OJ's gonna said he'll spend the rest of his life looking for the real elves um that was a joke I wrote I don't remember which host I wrote it for but yeah it was like one of these one of these things where let me just dig into this I got you know I'm sure I got 10 jokes here so occasionally you get one of those um yeah Diana was killed on August 31st uh which was a Sunday which means September 1st on the Monday is probably I started right around the time oh I remembered I didn't want to say it for sure but that's how I remember it sounds that sounds right um we haven't done one yet it's gonna happen at some point like we're still in our first year we're 40 something episodes in um but we're definitely honing in on and there's certain episodes we know we want to do we know we want to do at least one if not multiple episodes on Tony Mendez um you know there's and there's all sorts of ways that we can do it and things that we can do we want to devote an entire show onto the the the Tony Mendez show and things like that um when was the first time that you met Tony was it your first day was it first before like did you mean during the interview uh not during the interview um but my first day on the job the first person I was introduced to uh after Dave was Tony because it was going to be just me and him we had a very very close working relationship yeah and in fact quite often if Dave didn't pick a joke that I thought was really funny I would go to Tony and say you know what do you think you know right and and uh um you know comics and and writers will do that a lot um uh in fact I recently wrote to you know Rita rudner the comic of course absolutely agreed is brilliant and I hadn't spoken to her in many many years and I saw her on social media and I wrote to her and uh just you know how cool it was to see just to see her again and I said what I admired so much about you and I made note of it was I said I remember that when you had a new line even though you were much further along in your career than anybody at the club you there was no ego at all you would come to me and I I wasn't even I was an open Miker and you would say what do you think of this what do you think of this you know you'd go yeah you would go by Dennis wolfberg and Paul Reiser and these people but you would come by people like me because there was no shame in it you really wanted to get a great cross-section of opinion yes and so uh I I love doing that you know when I was putting together packets for shows what I would do is after I wrote you know I'd always overwrite I'd write 40 jokes to get you know 10 I needed for the packet I would send it to two late night writers who I really really respected and I would say you know if you don't like it at all don't put anything if you like a joke put a check and if you really like it put two and if I saw that they both put two checks by a joke but that I really like that's in the packet you're on to something yeah and if there were two checks in both of them and I thought it was just okay more often than not I would go with their opinion than both having the same opinion two against one so yeah collaboration in my opinion uh you know we host the men's mental Wellness podcast as well I do that and that's where I kind of got my podcasting chops if I if I do have any um and we talk about this a lot um a lot of men these days live in their own little silos and they and they don't talk about things and the idea of of a lot of these life coaches and therapists and stuff that we've had on is how is how powerful collaboration is and and and how uh in many in many aspects including team sports and all of these other places collaboration actually kicks the crap out of competition in many ways um especially when you're collaborating with people for something like and again like what you guys were trying to do the trenches that you were in um and Tony also had a unique perspective knowing Dave's voice and knowing this like you know you being separated off from the rest of the writers in your own kind of little Silo here um you know and and Tony's the guy holding the cards Tony's the guy seeing um you know and and even I want to get to the to the cue cards here in a second too because I think that's yeah I know you've got um uh you know comparisons you know the Johnny Carson cue card versus the David Letterman cue card and and and right I have a few of them well and I was hoping that you might bring some of them out for this for our viewers to see uh um you know because even the the the Cadence of the cue cards um important and and these are these are things that no one else can talk about um you know we want to have Chef on the show here he's kind of he's kind of squeamish about it um you know you're one of these people that can can really shed light on this um you know so you and Tony would have had a really good working relationship because you got the whole joke and and are you having to explain certain emphasis on the certain words or things like that that go on the card or like party ice you know does he know to put party ice on there yes not only that but he knows how to break up a sentence and you'll see even if though you it's just part of the joke you'll be able to read the joke straight through he was brilliant at that I would never try to uh enter into his territory once in a blue moon and I really mean maybe twice in all my years there okay did I accentuate a word by balding it or something but I hated doing that the very first time I submitted to Bill Maher first time yeah um I get a call from the executive producer and I can't even believe I did this he says uh you know how you put an exclamation point after at the end of every show and I said yeah he goes don't do that Bill knows if it's funny or not I was like ah okay um I never did that's awesome though that's you cutting your teeth like those are the little things yeah but you don't necessarily think about right like that should have been obvious I was you know I just didn't know it thinking I I didn't know and uh I guess maybe I don't know I thought there was yeah this is fine I don't know um but yes what you wouldn't know and I do have a lot of people of my students asking me is it okay to Boulder italicize or underline I said try if you can not to do it if it is absolutely not neces I mean if if there's any reason that you cannot do it don't do it because you're telling him this is the funny part come in on this you're not giving you shouldn't be giving them acting tips you know right yeah right because it's them using their voice to but it's you writing in their voice so I see it I see it both ways um I saw Dave live last May when he was doing his um he was at the uh at the Fonda theater doing um the the Netflix is a joke Comedy Festival he had his little uh uh my um that's my time with David Letterman so we had you know for example Brian Simpson you know Dave comes out does a monologue goes and sits down Brian Simpson comes out does 10 minutes goes and sits with Dave for some panel you know and he did that three times that night um when he was doing his monologue Gabe I swear I was fascinated I was in the third row and I wanted to turn around and and for one of his sets because I saw three of his sets I wanted to turn around and watch the teleprompter because he had it on a teleprompter and it was just like Inky's Cadence used to be you know like certain words that kind of a thing and because Dave is such a Wordsmith it fascinated me the words that were on there versus the words that he would fill in that weren't there and how many of them were still very clever words or the Cadence of it it was it was fascinating to me how long did it take you to kind of figure that out well I guess I guess you had it already when you got the job a lot of stuff I just kind of instinctively knew and that's why you know I mean my my career as a monologue writer you know I mean I did stand up I did stand up for 16 years and I got in a headline but nobody knew I was I wasn't a household name I wasn't on The Tonight Show yeah and yet within monologue writing very very fast things happen so here's a skill I didn't know that I had that was stronger than the skill that I thought I was you know that I was born with and destined to uh become you know the next great comic and that didn't happen but there's something about monologue that just and I think it's also because it's purely observational stand-up is half about who you are you know and there are there are stand-up comics that really are not very good writers if you deconstruct what they're doing but there's such great performers on stage yeah with their lack of writing and then there's a Storyteller or something like that and there's a guy like Seinfeld who's such a great writer and really is that what we don't know who Jerry is we still don't really know who Jerry is personality wise but it doesn't matter because he's so funny then you have generational Comics like George Carlin and Pryor um or less than a generation uh who have brought it all together who are incredible actors and you know rubber faces and incredible writers too you know um so for me I was never comfortable really peeling back the layers and revealing my soul and so I think that stopped me intent if I'm to be honest with myself and why I took to monologue writing better because it was all looking outward you know so the jokes really have to be much stronger for monologue than they do for stand up because you're taking the 50 of it out of it use being able to sell it so the joke has to read funny on paper the first time so the first thing I kind of instinctively knew was to keep it short like I always tell my students three lines or less on the page and the one thing I see Dave do that I've never seen and you just basically mentioned it is he can stray from a three-line joke and make it 20 or 30 seconds long and he will hit that scripted punch line perfectly there you go back and hit it perfectly other guys can do it no I you know and the other thing is is Dave had a structure to his monologue a story arc which I've never seen in other host including Johnny Carson have he would find the closing joke which recently went to Monica is a dirty joke he's always going to get a bigger laugh on TV because it's forbidden on network but everybody was about a you know so um we would always close with a borderline I'm Jewish I can I can make that slip I'm Jewish uh um a borderline blue joke and um so we would find that and then that would be joke number eight and then he would usually pair up joke six and seven uh you know like if one was about Clinton maybe the next was about Gore and then uh uh jokes three and four and then joke one and two was the I was walking to work through Central Park today so a squirrel you know and right away the idea of him walking to work through Central Park people started giggling oh yeah I love what he talked about here on the subway cab drivers but there was an arc to the monologue every every host is like every stand-up comic let's see what else is going on you'd never heard Dave do that no no you didn't um I wanna I wanna do a quick aside here I don't know if this is true or not because you mentioned Carlin you mentioned the time he took with you and it just occurred to me uh and it was right around the time that you were working for Dave too Gary Shandling was doing Larry Sanders at that point um one of the people who has uh an instrumental uh had an instrumental um uh place in Gary's heart was George Carlin as well you know Gary wrote some stuff down legendarily it's before he was anything and and handed it to Carlin and Carlin kind of went through it line by line with him and all of that uh did you ever make Gary Shandling throughout your you know you didn't okay um no I'm just curious about that but but he same thing with George Carlin I I love the echo there uh and George Carlin's guy who again built into young Comics just like you want to build into young Comics um have any uh the only other time I the only time I'm sorry I just go ahead no no because I went up to the dressing room you know which was on the top floor in the uh uh in that little building that next to theater yeah only only because of the whole thing you know with the letter and his mom I had to tell him because he's absolutely where I ended up and the only other time I went up top was to meet Don Rickles um and I forgot if it was games or somebody introduced me to him and said uh uh this is Don Don uh this is a head monologue writer for uh uh Gabe and and Rickles hi nice to meet you he said so you write all the jokes at the top of the show and he goes that explains it perfect perfect thank you I think that's better than being insulted by Don Rickles the best how many years later are you talking about it uh by the way it was probably June 5th 98 when you met Carlin um that was when he did an appearance on the show so probably that date there um I I love that now now your students and and and uh I just I love listening to a teacher talk about the pride of their students that kind of a thing um have you taught any notables that the the rest of the public might know about that uh you know you've helped give them some Sage advice or or or uh you know who who are some people that you've you've worked with well um I've had a number a number of Emmy winners uh in my class but I had my first Oscar winner this year uh but again you know these are writers so I don't know if you can say household names necessarily you know it's not um but I had a student named Travon free in fact he he's so big as a writer that he was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel like a sit-down guest Travon um took my class and he was great I mean it was a stand-up but he just got he got he got it right away and he got hired by The Daily Show with all the way going back to Colbert uh then he stayed there uh when Colbert um left wait was it was it Daily Show with Stewart or what I'm sorry I'm sorry got a report of uh uh Stuart I'm thinking upstairs okay yeah then when Stewart Lefty stayed with the show then he wrote for Samantha B he then he wrote for a ton of shows and then he wrote a short called um two distant strangers and it was about a cop shooting the same black guy every it was basically groundhog day but with the Prime Minister a cop shoot in the same black guy every day oh my God he won the Academy Award that's short and so that was you know that was I love seeing my students do well and end up on shows and um and yeah I mean I've I'm trying to think if I think of over the years I have had a couple people that became name Comics because I taught stand up too or even are able to and even the ones that are able to make a living at it and I mean it's it's in my opinion it's one of the most noblest Pursuits I look I've done stand up now again I'm I'm kind of like um I shouldn't say it like this Dave Dave learned to do stand up because he needed to have the discipline under his belt to do what he really wanted to do uh last year when the when the mask all started to come off and all that I went out to do the same thing I wanted to get the skill under my belt a little little bit so I was comfortable with it and learning I look at what's and I and I have a lot of friends who are stand-ups on a local level some of them who are getting bigger and all that I adore hanging out with stand-ups um if if there's a party going on and there's a couple stand-ups in the corner I I be lying to them um I love just the way that all the different stand-ups think completely unique yet similar in the sense that uh how in their uniqueness if that makes any sense whatsoever it's I think it'll make sense to you I don't know if uh you know it'll come across absolutely yeah it's just the creative minds and things like that um and so even people being able to do that for a living and you helping them being able to do that because they don't feel like they work a day in their life you know yeah yeah no I feel that way but but you know that's kind of it's that's I don't want to say it's over with but it's over in the sense that when I started in the early 80s uh and I became a feature act by the mid 80s you know and keep in mind how cheap things were then um I was making 800 a week as a feature act yeah that doesn't exist anymore if you were a headliner you were and you were completely unknown headliner just some guy from New Jersey that had a you know a heck yeah they were making three thousand a headline for the week um now I was just talking to a guy who's a really big act at the comedy seller and he said he said I do the ships because comedy clubs that I used to make three four thousand and now want to pay me 1500 and want me to pay my own airfare out of the 1500.

yeah should I make three thousand thirty five hundred a week why wouldn't I do it and that what has happened a lot the acts that can made the transition some of the a lot of them became motivational speakers yeah because it's a you know they had the skill and a lot of them became you know all the guys that said in the 80s and 90s I'll never be a boat act that's two hacked I'll never be a boat act ended up that's where they ended up because not that it's a bad thing they're making well over six figures not over but in the you know making a couple hundred grand a year just doing ships yeah um so that that is all changed I want to be a comic and I can make a living within a couple no it doesn't work that way anymore unfortunately a lot of the great comic young Comics I know now have day jobs because they have to and that was something you didn't have to do back when I was doing this no it's the opposite it's it's you've got the day job so you can get out uh and do as much stand up as you can so you can then get out of the day job and then and then build it up but yeah it's it's in flux there's no question but in many in many ways in my opinion there's ever been a better time to be a stand-up because it's uh uh Ari shaffir said this it's dangerous again um with the culture doing what it's been doing and the Pendulum swinging as far as it has in multiple directions you've got the left and the right both wanting to censor people for different reasons and and and and and Castle culture and all this sort of stuff stand up in many ways is dangerous again and and some of the stuff that's out there is just Dynamite I love uh some of the stuff that we've seen the last couple years I do too I I don't I don't know if the cultural shift and the cancellation um making it more dangerous is a good thing I do yes it will be dangerous but if you know that that it's dangerous because you could get a reaction of that's not funny um or you can't talk about that I don't think that's productive to stand up I don't mean to argue I'm just telling you no no no I want to hear your opinion yeah I don't I don't I don't think that's a healthy thing at all um um it does make it more challenging um definitely but you know I was surprised in uh uh some comic uh told me that another comic told him that something was really uh um uh racist that was not at all actually it was about something Jewish and I'm sensitive to that stuff sure um and I did not find it offensive and the fact if it it scares me when Comics are telling other Comics you know you've crossed the line no you can't do that you shouldn't say that that's that's it's bad enough that you know Muggles say that and Comics start telling each other that it just is uh yeah I I it's um a problem uh so there is an element of risk that if you uh approach certain topics people may not be accepting and may may you know get their dander up because of it um but uh I don't think it's helpful to the art like I got a question for you again your opinion on this to me is is is unique and and at uh at worst expert um I I would say um Stephen weiner who was a a writer on uh late night he was one of the original uh he was the guy that came up with the glass breaking he and uh and Carl his partner Carl they discovered Calvert to Forest we've talked about this um there is an adage with many stand-ups that if it's funny as long as it's funny everything goes but it has to be funny you can go any direction you want to as long as it's funny enough and if it's funny enough all will be forgiven he actually disagreed with that uh that that statement what do you think about that adage I agree with it 100 yeah and look Mel Brooks did a musical about Nazis and the majority of the audience every night was Jewish anybody else doing humor about that they'd probably not only not go pay 200 to see it they'd be incredibly insulted you know a great friend of mine was the late comic Robert Schimmel and Robert could talk about anything I mean it did a whole album about cancer granted he had cancer which made it more acceptable but he would talk about anything because of the way he approached it that he was sort of the fool at the end of the day like he does this whole bit about he questions how people in wheelchairs can have sex he doesn't understand it he said and you know and and people could get upset he said but he ends the bit so cleverly he said and I'm sure it's true he said and I walk out of the theater he said as I'm walking out I see the crowd part like the Red Sea and this guy in a wheelchair comes approaching me and I'm thinking oh and he said uh um um you know that thing you did about how people in wheelchairs can't make love and he said I don't even know what to think at this point I just want to crawl under a rock somewhere and I said yeah and he said before I could say I'm sorry the guy says to me well you should know that my wife and I actually have 65 ways that we can make love and Shimla said Lynn I felt really bad because my wife and I only have two and one of them she doesn't even need me in the room I love the extra one it's like a combination we got the left and then the right the one two but by ending with that he's now the fool he's now the idiot that guy is the cool guy he's the one who has 65 ways of getting laid and so it's the way you approach it you know like I work a lot with um uh a comic named Emma Willman I don't know if you know Emma I have on the phone um uh she's gay comic not telling Tales out of school that's her bit is she gay uh short blonde hair does a bit about looking like Ellen but she the way she approaches being gay is the most clever way I've ever heard any comic talk about it because what she does is she can get the most homophobic redneck in the room to love her and get on her side so check out this bit um I work with her a lot and what's great is I don't work with her really as a teacher even though we do sessions because I'm all I'm all about structure and Emma is all about the funny I could never be half as funny as her as a comic but the collaboration we're talking about but she needs structure yeah so but this is entirely her she said um she said you know my father's very old-fashioned uh when I came out to him he said he said to me he said so Emma tell me uh in a relationship are you the um are you the man one or the woman one and she said and I got really offended you know because obviously I'm the Man one that's joke number one so now people feel okay saying that yeah because she okay and that wants to be known as the man one she said she said I'm the man one I'm the Man one and then she says and this is the brilliant part she said then she says um one time a friend of mine tried to fix me up with another man one and I got really homophobic I was suddenly like some Southern Senator conservative Senator I was like you can't have two man ones you gotta have a man one a woman one like the Bible says and what's so brilliant about that is it gets everybody that actually does think like that on her side you know what I mean it's such a brilliant way to handle it and um and I know Adam and she actually does think that way she doesn't want to be seen with anybody but you know it's really funny it's it's just really endearing and adorable and if you get a chance to see her on Facebook absolutely I'm glad we're shouting her out here on this show this is great oh it's so great I I uh I appreciate your time very very much and I might love it um you know I'm I'm but I'm also going to ask you to come back at some point and we're gonna like I'm gonna assemble other questions and things like that from the time that you were there there's a couple there's a couple places I do want to quickly go before uh we finish off um how long after you left Letterman did you go to work for The Tonight Show um Letterman 01 tonight four years okay between I created uh I don't even know if I should say this I co-created a show well actually I created a show called Mind of ncia with Robert Morton who I had never met which was so weird because oh that's really weird like in New York he never saw me all those years and he never saw me at Letterman because I would say with Robert Burnett and one day he calls me from California he said I can't believe we've never met never worked together uh you know I got this guy Carlos Mencia we want to do a show with him um for Comedy Central we're doing a live presentation pilot we're thinking of you the head writer you know I started pitching ideas they liked it they flew me out to LA and while uh uh and so I did that that and when I finished working on the presentation pilot we only had three weeks to put it together I get there and I say to Carlos and Bob Morton so what's the concept for the show and they point to a whiteboard that's completely blank we got three weeks so we came up with a show in three weeks and um and you know during an aft right after that I got an offer from The Tonight Show just to do a test week right with the show so I did a test week and then I found out when she got green lit uh and then I got an offer from The Tonight Show uh and it's how do you say no to The Tonight Show you know I mean so I'm the rumor for the model like the monologue is that's Jade no no in the room in the room okay yeah yeah so I have commercial parodies I have jaywalkings I have sketches so now I have a you know a much more rounded resume in fact I mean it's really fun because even at my Advanced age I got to do something new this year I'm I'm producing a show knock wood it'll get renewed again called Josh Gates tonight on Discovery Josh hosts their big show called Expedition unknown he's like yeah yeah with the adventurers have he's like an adventurer but he's really funny really funny and so uh we did a bit on uh whatever the theme of expedition unknown is we carried through to our talk show so it's theme based and one was secret societies about the Knights Templar and so forth so our show was on secret societies and when we do a field piece every show I thought you know what I'm in a very small secret group of mentalists called the elders how about and I said to Josh how about we do the show in this group he said I love it I said he said you know I used to be a waiter at the Magic Castle I'm like you're kidding me I said I don't want the Magic Castle magicians and mentalists sort of like the Crips and the Bloods yeah but I said but it would be a great place to shoot he said I would love to shoot at the castle so I got to not only do it I got to I got to do a demonstration for him on camera yeah I acted on the show is four different characters on that same show I produced it and I directed that segment at the castle my first time directing in my 42 years in entertainment directing television that is so you know it was great it was I've never been that involved with with one episode of a show because there were only two of us we had a write and produce entire episodes but in addition to that you know because I was an actor and it's it is cable uh I got to act and you know and then because I I knew how to shoot the these mentalism performances you know you gotta at a very specific way that I wanted a shot so I got to to do all that and you know do the setup and everything so yeah it was it was thrilling Dave it's like it's it's like you're a pro uh because you are one um you segued so beautifully into this the next time you're on we'll talk a little bit more about the Tonight Show and some of the things as ironic that some of the things that you worked on on The Tonight Show are the things that if somebody would have said that some of these elements of The Tonight Show were Letterman ask jaywalking and some of these other things would have been I I think in that category for sure uh but we'll do that another day how and when and how did you get into mentalism when did this happen because it's such a fascinating form of entertainment when I first got hired Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher um a long time ago uh no no not when I first oh okay when I got hired which when I came out here in 2000 and two okay so right after Letterman I got absolutely Incorrect and now I didn't have to uh it was so funny because now I had four years of that under my belt they hired me for ABC when I couldn't get hired for Comedy Central because I had you know no experience whatever uh and they moved out here so um the executive producer of the show said you know um he was into magic and I was never really that into magic I never did sleight of hand or anything I could do a few card tricks but never really got into it um and I'd seen too many bad magicians on the road over the years as a comic he said you know my cousin is one of the most esteemed mentalists in the world you he does a show at the Duke and Duchess of Windsor suite at the Waldorf and it's 250 bucks a ticket there are only 30 people you sit right on top of them he said but I can get you and your wife in for free if you want to go see him I said yeah sure I'll go see him and he was doing stuff mind reading thought reading stuff and persuasion stuff I had never seen before and it was like that light bulb going off like when I first listened to my car first Carlin album it's like I have to learn how to do this and so I probably have you know hundreds and hundreds of books and and videos and tutorials and I have a couple of mentors and so I started learning basically certain pillars of mentalism uh called reading and persuasion and hypnosis and parts of magic as well um uh and misdirection but to me the most interesting part of mentalism is the purely psychological stuff I love that and that stuff that I wish I could do over the over the internet but I have to be in the room like like 80 not more than that 90 percent of my what I can do is taken away by not being there in terms of yeah it makes sense well technologically my wife and I for example we'll watch America's Got Talent and and inevitably when you watch America's Got Talent there's going to be one or two uh mentalism acts that make it and and and and start to you know get multiple viewings it seems like the technology both for that and for um for illusionists as well is a nice little cherry on top and and Technology moving forward the way it has you can do some cool things to Accent or to augment what you're already doing uh but it does very much seem to be with the mentalism respect to that um classic very very classic um uh techniques am I am I am I right with that or is technology you're absolutely right okay in terms of how it revolutionized magic and mentalism with you know micro processors and all of that but the problem is is there's so much exposure people know how certain devices are used and I don't want to I don't need to get into it but no no people know about stuff that sends signals to something else so ironically many mentalists including myself have gone back to using what we call billets which are just pieces of paper pads Sharpie markers and you know and coin envelopes and rubber band just stuff that where you know there's a saying that the you know magicians like to shop in magic stores and mentalists like to shop at Staples and it's true you know so a lot of the stuff that was exposed that I did early especially in my mentalism on stage mentalism career because Electronics do make for miracles uh much easier yeah I I now am going to much more rudimentary stuff um that has no explanation uh of you know when I give somebody a golf pencil and and a piece of index card and a coin envelope and I say write something down they know that it's not sending a signal to me because it's literally a single piece of paper it's not a bad thing you know so I I do that and um uh so yes so it revolutionized it in a good way but got Overexposed in a way that and maybe that's the probably a good thing where they couldn't rely on that anymore and they really have to get back to some of the old methods well we've we've talked to I I'm buds with uh Jeff Altman now we talk about that and he feels the exact same way about about his side of the coin you know he loves the close-up magic and and uh that's that's the so it makes sense to me to me those are similar uh dispositions um Gabe if okay so so you're doing stuff on cruise ships you do you're you're bookable uh so let's talk about that if if what are you bookable for are you bookable just for the mentalism for for stand up as well do you have a stand-up workshops going on if people want to uh attach themselves to you or follow you uh reach out to you what are the best ways to do that okay so there's three ways to do it if they want to take a class I teach at Flappers comedy club in Burbank and they have a university a whole university of classes from screenwriting to marketing to and I uh I taught um uh their late night writing class for the last 15 years but they did just started a level one and two level one being pretty much all monologue level two everything desk piece is all that uh I got I brought in the guy to heat teach level one one of the few people that I feel really confident with a guy named Peter charkalis who used to fax me at Letterman and then I helped him get on Kilbourne and he's just a joke machine he can just crank it out he understands it all so he took over to level one I'm now teaching level two except for the upcoming semester where I'll be teaching level one I don't really do ships I do it a couple times a year if I want to take a vacation and get paid for it because you work I work these lines the the really kind of exclusive lines they're not thousands of people there are only a few hundred so I only have to do one show so I'm working 45 minutes and I'm going to you know whatever oh yeah it was a good game when you and I were going back and forth when you got that one kind of suddenly uh holy cow good gig Gabe that's awesome yeah you know they're they're great gigs like I said one show um and you know teaching and then writing the Josh Gates thing uh then after that I worked on a talk show Pilot We shot four shows and they're gonna cut it to one I can't really talk about it yet okay but it was executive produced by Eddie Feldman who was Dennis Miller's EP all those years wow um so uh but in any case so I go yeah and and believe it or not I in terms of Performing gigs I probably do more mentalism gigs than anything uh I do obviously I do stand up when when called for it so I have the classes at Flappers if you want a classroom situation I work privately with monologue writers if you have a little bit of experience or if you've tried your hand at late night for a while you know private is fine if you've never tried it before I would say take level one whether it's me or Peter charkalis you need to have taken level one before you take level two uh Flappers um and in terms of stand up that I will only teach privately now um and and if people want to reach out to you where do they where do they reach out just uh reach out to me at gableson uh on Twitter or on um Instagram um and yeah I might as well I'll give you my uh my email is gabebrider yahoo.com yes still a Yahoo hold out g-a-b-e and then the word writer Gabe writer yep I um I I I hate that uh that we've got to end this but we've got to do I I just I could do this all night like I literally on the Energizer Bunny for a moment I fascinated there's an all Letterman line I wish we could do this all night I made two of them for a moment I thought we had um yeah let's just say that uh uh so yeah so we'll do cue cards next time there's something we could do oh yeah okay we can do two cards next time that'll be fine um by the way Don Giller is still on AOL so you're in good company being a Yahoo hold out um I uh I'm gonna say our uh my goodbye PRI I'm gonna I'm gonna move it over here and do a quick outro and then we can say I'll stop hit stop and then we'll do our uh our goodbye privately uh one of the things I am going to do though is mention that our only sponsor is rupergy in the hello Deli um they're our only sponsor for the show I'm I'm keeping ourselves pure as I like to say because I I'm hoping one day that Walter and Company uh will will come forward and say okay we're gonna make you we're gonna deputize you and make you official so I'm not I'm not doing any other sponsorship but Rupert however foreign one of the nicest guys in the entire world yeah um I'm sure you ate at the hello Deli back in the day many many times Rupert and May and their team um if you want any uh Late Show with David Letterman merchandise he's the only official place you can get it go to hellodashdaily.com um oh I guess yeah there's one of the last question there uh has Walter and them uh reached out to you yet for a favorite moment segment no no oh okay uh well let's see if we can make that happen because yours would be one that's uh in my opinion um you know very unique because your favorite moments would be all kind of monologue moments and that's a that's a neat idea for the official channel to do that um I'm gonna say a quick goodbye I would assume that bill might have covered that though Chef I don't know if he's done it yet but if he has uh Billy's favorite moments weren't monologue moments I don't think yeah it's got me oh now you got me wow we gotta go back with him with the cookie where he's picking pieces out of the cookie that was really funny yeah he oh I I can't I really I've talked with them privately a little bit I would love to have him on here and and uh um be the Yang to your Yin on this here because uh you know again it takes a special kind of person to to have that Dynamic I mean of all the people that worked with Dave uh for as many years as they did some of them you know three decades plus you have spent more time more face time with David Letterman than a lot of these staffers who worked with him for decades um just a fascinating uh uh thing I I just appreciate you opening up for the things that you can talk about and you're I appreciate the fact this show is very very um you know we want to be uh you know we don't talk about gossip or Scandal or any of that stuff on here it's just the highlights the positive stuff I appreciate that that you have come on here and talked about some of these uh these amazing highlights Gabe thank you so much for being a guest on the Letterman podcast thank you so much this was a blast and you are a great podcast host you do something that Dave was great at which is and not to not that I have anything great to say but you really listen and you're you don't try to interject too much um which is very rare among the podcasters just not not trying to interject you know I watched the Dave interview where I and somebody wouldn't think was interesting some actor that you would think would be boring but they were incredibly entertaining telling a great story and Gabe was silent for almost the entire six minutes it was amazing it's amazing to see uh I want to thank you and I want to thank Don as well absolutely that was the most impressive thing I mean it's like in a baseball game oh yeah in 1976 he was on second base in the third inning wow very impressive it's uh it's it's a pleasure for me um you know what I'll just I'll say the goodbye with you here it this is great I just appreciate that you have no idea how much I appreciate hearing that uh with the zoom technology sometimes I talk over people accidentally but it's this podcast I was when it comes to I've got this little documentary that's being shot oh here oh no way there is hey Don the man the Legends oh I guess he got an appearance from Don Geller this is this is that's big for me um yeah that's big having him there thank you for that wave Dawn I uh I I gotta tell you um there's a little documentary up here in Canada being being kind of made about the unlikely it's called the unlikely host of The Lettermen podcast and it's all about imposter syndrome it's it's about um you know this is a dream for me uh whether or not it ever turns into anything that's monetized but it does not matter I've already won like conversations like this today Gabe I swear to God it's a dream come true for me it's like you meet in Carland it's like it's just it's so fascinating to me and I love it so much the ironic part is I hate watching myself but I've been waiting for well over a decade I was an early adopter of podcast Kevin Smith um you know Corolla 2 but Kevin Smith was my you know right at the very beginning and I've been waiting for this Letterman podcast to come out so here's the irony the sickening irony I hate watching my myself but this podcast to me is so important and it's so fascinating it's easy to listen for me because you guys are just you're blowing my mind with this stuff this is the show that I've been waiting for the ironic card is I have to sit through watching myself which I hate uh to get to this but this is the magic to me and I just thank you for saying that I you made my week if you're terrific at it oh man thank you so as you probably know and I don't have to tell you every performer hates watching themselves everyone yes I've definitely logically talked my way out of that uh the worthiness part is still not quite there I'm trying to embrace it as much as I can and who knows what it turns into I don't know but I'm just know that I'm having a great time um Gabe you are you are a consummate teacher you can tell the encouragement I appreciate that um one of the only monologue writers for David Letterman Gabe Abelson uh go and find him at gableson and I just appreciate you so much that is another episode of the Letterman podcast with Mike Chisholm coincidentally I am Mike Chisholm thank you and good night overcoat and Underpants