Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Writer George Meyer | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-03-22T14:59:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer George Meyer | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Writer George Meyer | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-22. Transcript available.

Hi, I'm George Meyer. I got a job on The Letterman Show right before Christmas
in 1981, and I was delighted and terrified.
I had been working in Arizona in a biochemical research lab doing a very bad
job, so this was a tremendous joy and relief to me when I got the gig.
To me, the show was kind of like a big toy box where you got to do all kinds of
goofy, spontaneous things and trot out ideas that you'd been nurturing since
high school, sometimes ideas that you came up with after lunch.
One of the latter was Camping with Barry White, which was just a weird non sequitur
that we thought about, and it turned out to be weird and occasionally funny.
I like the names. I like the nights as well. I like just sitting by myself.
We'll have to sing a different story.
Snakes and snails, and funny little things.
Ouch!
Jesus.
Barry White has just been bitten by a northern copperhead.
What you've seen here, fortunately, is only a dramatization.
But if you were camping with Barry White and something like this happened,
would you know what to do?
The first step in the treatment of a snake bite, of course, is applying a tourniquet
just above the wound.
We'll simulate this with this bit of gauze.
Barry, can you hold on to that if you're not in too much pain?
I don't want to die, David.
All right, thank you, sir.
Make sure it is above the wound.
Next, make an incision also over the wound.
Get yourself a sharp knife and sterilize it.
This appears to be clean enough.
I'll make that incision right about in there for the sake of the argument.
Now, next, suction the venom out of the wound.
There you are.
Now, after that, get Barry White to a doctor immediately.
Please.
Now, a lot of you are probably thinking, Barry White bitten by a snake, that
only happens when the other guy goes camping with Barry White.
But what if that other guy turns out to be you?
Make sure you know what to do.
Thank you and safe camping.
Thank you, Barry.
Thank you, Barry.
You know, walkie-talkies can also be a lifesaver in an emergency, but their
sound quality is often tinny and shrill.
With almost no bass response, they might not transmit Barry's call for help.
That's why this design has a powerful five-inch woofer attached to it.
Let's see how this works.
Let me try.
Hello, Barry.
Do you read me?
David, my leg.
I think it's broken.
Okay, don't worry, Barry.
Help is on the way.
Well, there's...
Safety Day was fun because we kind of carried the theme throughout the show.
You know, I can't leave because we have important work to do here tonight.
On this program, nowhere else in North America, tonight is Safety Day.
I actually heard someone gasp.
It's unbelievable.
And we had some props and we had some goofy stuff with Paul and the band.
To continue with the festivities here on Safety Day, here is Paul Schaefer and
the late-night band with their special number, Hats Off to Safety.
Paul?
Dave, Dave, I talked to the guys in the band and we decided that, well, we
couldn't get off on this safety stuff.
We don't think it's cool to think about safety, isn't that, don't you think?
And, you know, we're musicians.
We do our own thing.
We live on the edge.
You know what I mean?
We walk on the wild side.
After all, we are the world's most dangerous band.
And that is why I'm glad to, at this moment, do our version of the Lou Reed
classic.
Born to be wild.
Here we go.
Just a second before you play.
Just a minute.
I'd like to say something.
I know you like to live on the edge, but don't you think you might just be
going over the edge, Paul?
Just a little too far over the edge.
Dave, what are you talking about?
I'm talking about this.
Look at this.
This overloaded electrical outlet.
This is dangerous.
Dave, give us a break.
If we're going to plug our amps into another outlet, you know, we would have to
walk a couple of extra feet.
Uh-huh.
An extra few feet that could mean a few lives.
Hmm, a few feet, a few lives.
Anything else?
Well, I'll tell you something.
If your drummer, Steve Jordan, has got to smoke, honest to Pete, you should get
rid of this box of oily rags.
This discarded box.
Oh, my.
Oh, my.
Oh, my.
All right.
I can't fight you on that one, Dave.
But there's nothing wrong with Hiram Bullock, is there?
Hiram?
Let's see.
Hiram?
Now, wait a minute.
He's not wearing any shoes.
And even worse, he's standing in a tub of salt water playing an electric guitar.
Do you want to see this man electrocuted?
Gee, I...
I didn't even notice.
Well, I guess you've made us all look pretty silly tonight, Dave.
And I don't know how to thank you.
Would you like...
Will, would you like one of these egg salad sandwiches that Will Lee made?
We were going to eat them after the show.
We were going to eat them after the show, but if you'd like one now, Will made
them last week.
And they're really wonderful.
Last week?
Don't you know that egg salad needs proper refrigeration?
Had you eaten these, you would have been victim to America's number one silent
killer.
One of the things I specialized in at the show was prop comedy, which is
usually kind of a low calling, but I tried to do it with some ingenuity.
I remember Dave did not really care for the term wacky props because the word
wacky kind of grated on him, and I understand that.
It was applied to a lot of stuff that really wasn't wacky, but was kind of
sweaty and forced.
Oh, this is a good idea.
Parents know it can be hard to interest their children in faith and religion,
but nothing brings out natural reverence in any youngster like the praying
hands raceway.
We have, this is Albrecht Durer's masterpiece of devotion, is now a thrilling
action set.
With each hand capable of hitting over 80 miles an hour, and the sheriff's car
not included.
I grew up in a house with five sisters, and one of my sisters had an orange
cardboard set of drawers that didn't do anything, and she never put anything in
it.
And I guess that lodged in my mind, and so I came up with this product, Lotion
in a Drawer.
For centuries, women have known that nothing smooths and softens skin like
lotion.
This is certainly true.
But there has always been that puzzling problem, how do you store the messy
stuff?
Well, here now is the perfect answer.
The new Lotion in a Drawer.
Yes?
It's all at your fingertips.
Here, of course, you have the oil.
And there, oh!
Oh!
Oh, oh!
Oh, my, oh!
Oh!
Here you have the salad dressing.
Oh, oh, oh, oh!
Let me just apologize right now for this one.
And down here, of course, is the cream.
Not nearly as, oh, come on, stop it.
We're adults here, for heaven's sakes.
The show ran through material like a ravenous baby bird, and one morning I was
trying to think of something at the last minute, and I walked into Chris
Elliott's area.
He was a very surly and uncooperative PA at the time.
I said, Chris, can you try to get a steamroller and maybe we can run over stuff?
And he, like, grumbled and reluctantly agreed to do it.
It kind of was more of a stunt than a comedy thing in itself, but it kind of
gave rise to, like, a bunch of mechanically oriented things.
Yes, sir, may I help you?
Yeah, I got this contour map for Christmas, and it won't fold upright, and I
can't get it into the glove compartment.
So could you turn it into just a regular flat map for me?
The problem is this raised stuff on here, huh?
Right.
Yeah, okay. We'll see what we can do. You're from out of town, aren't you?
Yes, I am.
All right.
I don't know if we got it flattened or not, but it looks like we've added a few
new countries.
We often had to come up with kind of weird stunts for people to do, and one of
them was when Mariel Hemingway,
clean fish on the show.
It was a hundred times grosser than anyone thought it would be.
Now would be a good time to phone the neighbors, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be on the air cleaning fish until two o'clock tonight.
Is it two or how late are we on?
Two.
Until two o'clock cleaning fish, and if you can get a nice tight shot of that,
Hal, I...
Yeah.
Yeah!
Oh, my...
Yes.
Oh, wouldn't a tuna melt hit the spot just about now?
We shot our remotes on Fridays, and we would usually go to some random place
and do something
destructive, and one of my ideas was to over-inflate things.
So we started doing that, and nothing interesting was happening, and I could
see Dave was getting
a little bit irritated, and so finally we started to over-inflate a volleyball,
and it got, it just
kept getting more and more air in it, but it didn't do anything.
So, finally, we stopped the camera, and we were just kind of playing around
with it, and
like, tinking on the side of it with our finger, and it was like a Christmas
ornament.
It was so brittle and just trembling with pressure.
Then we started bouncing it, and it went really high, like a Super Bowl.
So Dave said, great, let's get the camera rolling again, holds it over his head,
and here's
what happened.
I think Jim Downey was behind the world's largest vase, because it came from
Iowa, and
he lived in Illinois, and was a fan of Iowa wrestling, and the vase had a
connection to
Iowa wrestling.
We did this whole week with the world's largest vase.
On the last day of the week, when the vase was about to be shipped back to Iowa,
it delivered
a stern lecture to humanity, based on what it had seen in New York City.
Ladies and gentlemen, it has come time now to have the world's largest vase say
goodbye to
all of us, so join us now, won't you?
People of Lakeland, my time among you is now drawing to an end.
In the past week, I have observed much that impressed me.
However, I have also witnessed much that disturbed me.
From my perspective, your civilization resembles a wobbly end table, on which
the vase of brotherhood
teeters precariously.
To avoid a fall to the hard linoleum of doom, you must set aside your petty
differences and join together in peace and harmony.
Now I must return to my home, Ames, Iowa, and my owner, Dr. Nichols, the
winningest coach in college wrestling,
who has guided his Iowa State matman to a record of 409 wins, 57 losses, and 11
ties.
Very soon, the future of your society will no longer be in my hands.
The choice is now up to you.
Farewell.
Now pass.