Happy news at the Late Show. Head writer Justin Stangel and his wife gave birth to a baby girl, Emily.
Born Saturday morning at 1:07 A.M., Emily weighed in at the very lucky 7 pounds, 11 ounces. Emily is their first child. Congratulations to Justin and Lara.

Off camera we hear Tony yell out, "Lara." Dave looks over and says, "Lara. What did I say?" Tony says Justin's wife's name is Lara." I'm not sure but I think we were having a simple difference in accent. Dave's 'Lara' may have leaned a little towards "Laura." Tony brought it back over to a more flat 'A' sound, saying "Lara" like "Larry." Dave doesn't seem pleased with Tony's correction and gives him a bit of the evil eye. He asks, "And how do we pronounce your name? 'Adios'?"

On the show tonight, Bill Murray from the movie "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." Also tonight, guitarist Kaki King. Paul is enthused about the guitarist, raving over her ability and agility with the guitar. Dave mentions, "Coincidentally, when I was a kid, that's where I bought my pants." Paul, without missing a beat, asks "Where's that?" Dave: "Kaki King."

During this, Dave received a note explaining that Kaki King would not be singing, only performing an instrumental with her acoustic guitar, or as the note was written, "acoustic cigar."

Dave takes a moment to ask Paul for a Late Show/Late Night holiday tradition. Dave asks Paul if he could do his rendition of Cher singing "O' Holy Night" from one of her holiday specials some years back.
Paul sets the scene. It was Cher, with guest William Conrad, star of "Cannon." William sang "God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen." That was his contribution. Cher then, with great feeling, and with the lights lowered, her hands in a muff, sang a strangled "O' Holy Night." Paul sings two and a half lines. It gets better every year. It certainly left a lasting impression on Paul.

Earlier tonight on ABC they aired "TV Guide's: Greatest Moments 2004."
Dave has a clip which reveals the top three moments in 2004.
"The #3 moment on TV this year was 'Friends' going off the air.
The #2 moment was Tom Brokaw's final newscast.
And the #1 moment on TV this year was when Dave Letterman was fired.
ABC - still the one."

END OF THE YEAR CHECKLIST
-Prepare year end checklist - ding
-Marry my true love Star Jones - ding
-Receive erotic late night phone calls from Bill O'Reilly - ding
-Stop taking steroids - buzz

Dave takes a moment to compare his before and after photos of his taking steroids. It's obvious the effect these growth hormones had on Dave.

-In case I get sick, always have a guy that kinda looks like me standing by backstage (cut to guy who sort of looks like Dave backstage) - ding
-Ask Mel Gibson to direct my biography, "The Passion of the Dave." - ding
-Get in drunken brawl with an Indiana Pacer - ding
-Star in steamy sex tape with Paris Hilton - buzz
-Rent steamy sex tape starring Paris Hilton - ding
-Botox - ding
-Brow lift - ding
-More convincing hairpiece - ding
-Convince Michael Moore to join Weight Watchers - buzz
-Give the sound effects guy a Christmas bonus - buzz
-Give Martha a year-end conjugal - ding.

And that's been Dave's year.

Back from commercial, Dave is still upset with our cue card guy, Tony Mendez, for messing up an otherwise nice moment of Dave welcoming into the world little Emily Stangel.
Dave says, "I'm ticked that the cue card kids is pushing me around like that. This doesn't happen on Oprah!"
Paul agrees, then points out that our cue card kid is 60 years old.

BILL MURRAY: enters and before sitting down, says to Dave, "I've been enjoying your show." Dave says Bill looks tremendous. Bill suggests Dave to take another look. "Look at me. Look at me real hard," urges Bill. He continues, "I just realized . . . I've . . . . I've been poisoned."
Bill calls for a photo from one of his past appearances, asking for the guy who is in charge in the control room. Director Jerry Foley answers that he is here. Bill asks for the shot from some time back and we see a younger more youthful Bill Murray. Bill can only shake his head. "See the difference between then and now?"
How did this happen? When did this happen? Bill can only laugh a weak laugh. "Ah, Dave. That's what makes them so clever." You can't pinpoint the exact time you were poisoned. Bill suspects it happened a long time ago when he cut off a cab driver, or perhaps the cab driver cut off him, and the cabbie chased him to the edge of the island of Manhattan. Bill distinctly remembers being yelled at in Russian. Could this Russian, or perhaps Ukrainian, been responsible for the poisoning? No one will ever know.

On a lighter side, how is Bill's holiday shopping going? Bill has been hard at work making and promoting movies that he hasn't had time to do much at all for the holidays. He asks Dave if he could take a moment to finally get around to taking the family Christmas card photo. He hands Biff a camera and calls out a family he rented. A woman, two kids, and a dog run out on stage to be with Bill. Bill takes off his jacket and we see they are each wearing a red sweater over a white turtle neck, even the dog. Dave eyes the pretty wife and asks Bill, "Ever rent her before?" I chuckled at the question. I expected a bigger response from the audience. I laughed again when Bill suggested they pose in totem pole style. In front was the dog and the son. Bill was next. Then the daughter, then mom, then Dave. All lined up in a row, top to bottom. It was silly and funny, and a pose I've seen before. I'm still chuckling that this pose is referred to as the totem pole.

Any Christmas memories? Bill once bought his family each a nice individually wrapped bag of cashews. He put the bags under the tree a few days before Christmas. Being such a fan of the cashew, Bill couldn't help himself from invading the already wrapped cashews. By Christmas, less then what you would expect in an airplane bag of cashews remained.
Dave saw an article in Cigar Aficionado about Bill. Dave learned that while working on "What About Bob," Bill rented a bus and took much of the crew on a bus ride. The film was shot in West Virginia and everyone in West Virginia has their own still for making moonshine. Bill and the 55 went on a road trip to see an MC Hammer concert, swilling and swigging from the moonshine all the way. Was the moonshine tasty? "No, but it was effective." Being an actor with time always at a premium, you need your drug-of-choice to be quick acting. West Virginia moonshine fit the bill. During the MC Hammer concert, Bill was spotted and invited up to dance the "Can't Touch This" song. Bill is proud to say he knew all the moves necessary to dance to "Can't Touch This" and did so for MC Hammer. Bill ending up splitting his pants, which were quickly pinned shut by his seamstress wife.
Bill is appearing in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." It opens nationwide on Christmas day.
Dave described it as being "wacky, funny, enjoyable and silly, about 15% off reality."

ACT 5: Late Show Announcement:

"This message is for those people who were Late Show audience members. The following items have been left behind at recent tapings. Do any of them look familiar?"
See photo of a hat. A scarf. A .357 magnum handgun.
"If so, come on down to the Ed Sullivan Theater ticket office and claim your item. This has been a Late Show announcement. We'll be right back."

And that was our show for Monday, December 20, 2004. Wahoo EXTRA!

Now it's being reported that Bernie Kerik goes swimming immediately after eating.

So I bit the bullet and went to the mall on Sunday to do some Christmas shopping. I went to the old mall, thinking everyone would be at the new mall. I had a few things specifically in mind. I tried to buy a case for our digital camera -- a quantity gift, not really a quality gift. I was third in line at the camera section in Boscov's. Unfortunately, the guy first in line had a lot of questions about cameras. The cashier guy doubled as the salesman and the guy working the register. This was not good. I had my item and I had cash in hand. I couldn't make my purchase because the guy in front wasn't ready to buy. He only had questions. And the guy manning the cash register was now playing the part of "salesman." I saw this as a problem. This may have been conducive to making a "future" sale but it certainly wasn't conducive to making an immediate sale. I didn't blame the guy with the questions; I blamed Boscov's for poor staffing. But I waited. I was going to try to keep my happy and spiritual Christmas holiday joy as long as I could. I little wait on line wasn't going to ruin it for me. I was quite proud of myself for keeping calm for the 10 minutes of questions and answers ahead of me. Finally, the customer had learned enough about the product and decided against making the purchase of the digital camera at this time. He customer left and the lady in front of me was now ready to make her purchase. Or so I thought. She too had questions. She was not ready to buy. I stood for 5 more minutes of questions. Now I was debating whether to leave or stay. I really wanted to leave but I had already invested 15 minutes into my wait. Should I just throw away my time like that after investing a quarter of an hour? After another minute, my Christmas patience finally hit the limit. I left the camera case on the counter in front of the guy 'working' the register and left. I fumed the rest of the way to the car. I decided to try my luck at the new mall.

The new mall is about 5 miles away and is advertised to be the 2nd biggest in the country, after the Mall of America in Minnesota. It was now about 10:30 AM and I was quite surprised at the number of parking spaces that were available. I went directly to Best Buy. I picked up a camera case and some other stuff that I won't mention here because Denise will probably read this before Christmas. I went to pay for the stuff. There didn't seem to be much of a line at any of the 7 cashiers. I walked up to one register but a security guard pointed me to the line. There was one line for the 7 cashiers. When one register opened up, the cashier would yell "Next!" and the next person on line would go to that register. Made sense. I thought this was a pretty good system. I walked to the back of the line. The line was longer than I thought. It stretched around toward the back of the car stereo section. I followed the line and it continued to the DVD's, past the TV's, past the CD's, and up to the office furniture. The line was ridiculously long. I threw the camera case down on the nearest shelf and left. I wanted to spend money but I couldn't. What amazed me most about this was the number of people WILLING to wait on that line to spend their hard-earned money. The wait had to be over half an hour! None of this made sense to me and the rest of the day I wondered why people don't value their time the way I do.

I then walked over to the attached Target's and made my purchase of the digital camera case. I complain how I hate wasting time but if I only waited 5 more minutes I could have saved two extra trips to different stores.

On my way out of the mall, three cars followed me. It was now 1:30 and there wasn't a parking spot available at the new mall. Incoming shoppers had no where to go. Cars were stopped at the doors of the mall and they would follow departing shoppers. The idiots who built the mall made it so big they left no room for parking. The inside was roomy . . . . but the outside had no more parking.

Saturday night I went to the Turning Point in Piermont, New York. It's a small club that features some pretty good shows. Saturday night was the return of my favorite local band of the early 1980's, Finn & the Sharks. Back in the day, friends and I would venture to The Office every Friday night and kick it up to Finn. It was all good times and for one night we relived the fun. What a blast. Great music, great sound, loud, exciting, fun and good friends! During the show, one of my pals slipped me a note. It read, "Right now we're 20 years old. When we walk out through those doors, we're going to be 45 again." I laughed. I say that every year when our group goes to the Yankee game. A guy rents out a bus and 30 of us go to the first Yankee Saturday home game each year. The day starts at 8:30 in the morning and ends somewhere around midnight. Some years back when I lived 10 miles from Yankee Stadium, I would drive 25 miles further away just for the bus ride back to Yankee Stadium. It's a yearly highlight. It's all guys. No kids. No wives. No girlfriends. I usually end up a mess by night's end and stay at a friend's house till morning. It was on the ride back on the bus from one such Yankee trip that I slurred, "We're 20 years old right now. The second we get off the bus, we're going to be 40 again. Drink up!" It's a quote that is now oft repeated to me. When you can find those times that make you feel 20, it's golden. What is yours?

Finn & the Sharks just pressed a new CD. I got mine. If you want to find out what Mikemack listened to from '78 to '83, check it out at
http://www.turningpointcafe.com/finn.html