Sitting in with the band tonight, on the accordion, Buckwheat Zydeco. His CD is entitled, "Jackpot." Buckwheat will be one of the many performing at the Pay-Per-View benefit concert at the Madison Square Garden Tuesday night, "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy." I settle into my seat looking forward to some good, fun music tonight.

Also on the show, Martha Stewart. Dave is good friends with Martha and knows stuff about her that is not common knowledge to the rest of us. She has overcome a lot to attain her level of success. For instance, she was once married to a thug; actually a thug, rat bastard. Then she killed a guy and had to do time. Paul jumps to her defense, advising Dave that's not exactly how it went. Martha then left the thug and for 7 years she lived in a hollow tree. Working with nothing but acorns and twigs, she built this incredible empire she calls "Martha."

It's time to put away the LATE SHOW Bear. We got to do it. City regulations, or something like that. It's been on the book for years now, dating all the way back to the Van Wyck Administration.

Performing tonight's ritual is our production assistant, Amy Hideirotis. She's ready to put up a fight with the bear, but where's the bear? I thought perhaps the bear was still in L.A. for the Emmys, but no. There is no bear, but there is the bear's lawyer. The lawyer enters and speaks to the camera:

Lawyer: "The Late Show Bear can't be here tonight due to ongoing contract negotiations. The bear maintains his position and is willing to hold out indefinitely for a piece of the foreign distribution rights and percentage of DVD sales. This is an unfortunate situation we hope will be rectified soon.

Even though the show hadn't won last night, CBS has stuck with the show and continues to show strong support. They were running this Late Show promo all day.

The usual CBS/Late Show promo Announcer: "Congratulations to the Late Show on coming home empty-handed from the Emmy Awards! Way to go, losers! Then catch Craig!"

Announcer: "This is William Shatner's first Emmy win. This was his third nomination and the second nomination for his hairpiece."

Afghanistan held its first democratic election in 35 years on Sunday. By late last night, Al Jazeera was already projecting some winners. Dave read directly from the blue card. Instead of reading "projecting" some winners, we first said "protecting" some winners. I kicked the copy machine, worried that I had mistakenly typed "protecting" and now "projecting." I had to sit through the whole show before checking the blue card. After the show I checked the show file and discovered I typed . . . . . . . "projecting." I had it right.
Phew!

Announcer: "This is an Al Jazeera election update. With two-thirds of precincts reporting, Al Jazeera can now call the hotly contested Kabul provincial council seat for . . . Gary! (graphic shows Mullah Wahid: 12%; Gary the Goat: 88%.) We now return you to our regularly scheduled program already in progress."

American Chopper on the Discovery Channel, Mondays at 10:00 PM. Dave calls it the best show on TV.

Back from commercial, Dave says he learned something over the weekend while in Los Angeles. You know the "Hi, Bob. Hi, Stan. How's the go going?" Well, Dave heard it right from the source, Tom Thomerson. It's not "Hi, Bob. Hi, Stan. How's the go going?" It's "Hi, Bob. "Hi, Phil. Hi, Stan. How's the go going?" Dave's been leaving out Phil all these years. And I think I got the name right, "Tom Thomerson."

MARTHA STEWART: Hey! Looks like prison agreed with Martha. She looks great. Dave admits he made quite a few jokes about Martha’s incarceration and apologizes, explaining it’s just business and it’s what he does. Martha fully understands, and let’s Dave know there were televisions in prison. She saw the jokes. So what exactly was Martha convicted of, Dave asks. Martha says, “I don’t know.” The audience applauds because they don’t know either. Martha says she doesn’t have a long memory for bad things. Dave asks about the appeal she is going through to overturn the conviction, not understanding why she would do this if she had already done the time. She would just like the matter cleaned up. But why do the time? She could have appealed and put off doing the time. Martha says she wanted to get it behind her. If “time” were still a possibility and it was still sitting in front of her, she wouldn’t have her new daytime program “Martha” or her NBC project, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. She wanted the possibility of time over and behind her so she could move forward and get on with her life. Was she convicted of insider trading? No, she was convicted of obstruction of justice and she says she will not talk any more about it until after the appeal.

Discussing with Martha her ordeal, Dave mentions there are precipice moments in one's life that shapes everything else. I smiled when Dave said the word "precipice." I'm still "reading" Frankenstein, (I have about an hour of reading left . . . . I'm getting there) and Mary Shelley uses the word "precipice" throughout the book. It's a word I never use. And then I heard Dave using it a while back. And now reading Frankenstein, it's in there all the time. I think I'm now ready to start using it in my vocabulary. "Precipice."

The verdict: When she stood before the court awaiting the verdict, she and her team were optimistic. When the verdict came down, she thought it was all a dream. She was dazed. Her daughter fainting behind her and hitting the floor shocked her back into reality. Dave admits to having a very low threshold for withstanding any sort of embarrassment, and wonders if the guilty verdict embarrassed her. Martha says she was more horrified than embarrassed. Get depressed? Martha wouldn’t allow it. She says she was not so much concerned about what was in store for her but what about those around her, those who worked for her, those that made their living from her television projects and magazines and other ventures. What would happen to them? After 5 months in prison, Martha’s empire seems greater than ever. Was there ever any doubt? What did she learn in prison? She believes that contrary to what we may be led to believe, our penal system is not geared towards rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is non-existent. Uh oh. You mean Martha may once again do what she didn’t do the first time again?

Dave ends by asking how she thinks he would do in prison. Martha says, “I think it might do you some good.”

ACT 5: Music from Buckwheat Zydeco.

GRETCHEN WILSON: From her soon-to-be released CD, All Jacked Up, Gretchen rocked it with "All Jacked Up."

And that was our show for Monday September 19, 2005. Wahoo EXTRA!

What was once my most hated part of the Emmy Awards is now my favorite. It's the banter between the presenters before they announce the winner.

Rachel Bilson, to Chris O'Donnell:
(paraphrasing) "When I was a little girl, I had the biggest crush on you."
O'Donnell: "That makes me feel good . . . . and very old."

It is just so so bad. There has to be a better way to get into the presentation of the Award. It is NEVER funny, this banter. And do the presenters actually rehearse their lines? I think not, or else these professionals wouldn’t be so stiff.

I just thought of something. I may have first thought of it back during the Academy Awards. My idea is for a new Emmy category. The category: Outstanding Acceptance Speech at an Awards Show. Maybe if those honored knew they could get another trophy, they would put some work into making their acceptance speech more entertaining.

Emmy Trivia: From the Emmy Website

Naming the Award: Academy founder Syd Cassyd suggested ‘Ike,’ the nickname for the television iconoscope tube. But with a national war hero named Dwight D. ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, Academy members thought they needed a less well-known name. Harry Lubcke, a pioneer television engineer and the third Academy president, suggested ‘Immy,’ a term commonly used for the early image orthicon camera. The name stuck and was later modified to Emmy, which members thought was more appropriate for a female symbol.”

“Each year, The R.S. Owens company in Chicago casts the approximately two hundred statuettes ordered for the prime-time awards show and the three hundred for the regional awards. Although the numbers of categories rarely change, the possibility of multiple winners prompts the Academy to order extra statuettes. Surplus awards are stored for the following year's ceremony.

The statuettes weigh four and three-quarter pounds and are made of copper, nickel, silver, and gold. Each one takes five and one-half hours to make and is handled with white gloves so as to leave no fingerprints.”

What is Zydeco music? What is Cajun music?
From a Buckwheat Zydeco interview I found on the Wire Website:

- “Your name is Buckwheat Zydeco, not Buckwheat Cajun, yet people still confuse the two styles. What makes Cajun music Cajun, and Zydeco music Zydeco?”
- Buckwheat Zydeco: “Cajun is white, and we blacks in Southwest Louisiana call ourselves Creole. Zydeco is more based on R&B, Cajun is based more on country.”