Name: A 1988 Christmas Tale Collection on Letterman, 2000-2011
Uploaded: 2020-11-11T01:12:55.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A 1988 Christmas Tale Collection on Letterman, 2000-2011' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-11-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A 1988 Christmas Tale Collection on Letterman, 2000-2011' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-11-11. Transcript available.

A 1988 Christmas Tale Collection on Letterman, 2000-2011

We've got a great show.
Is it Christmas Eve?
Yes, it is.
Is it?
It's not Christmas Eve, is it?
Well, we're darn close.
Our Christmas Eve show, yes.
No, it's not.
Please don't, because people will think that this is a rerun.
It's not?
It's not a rerun.
Tonight's Friday, December...
16th!
There you go, December 16th.
Oh, so it's not a rerun.
It's not a rerun.
It's a brand new show.
And it's not Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve is, in fact, a week from now.
Yeah, that's right.
But our big Christmas party...
Is tonight.
Is tonight.
Our lovely Christmas party this evening, by the way.
And, of course...
And, of course, the audience is invited.
And one other thing.
You follow me.
You're dead.
Oh, we had our big Christmas party Friday night.
Did you have a nice time, Paul?
It was a gas.
I had a lovely time.
Food was good.
Food was good.
I think it was a very successful evening, don't you believe?
Yes.
And Connie Chung was there with her husband, Andre the Giant.
Now, I left kind of early, but I heard you got a little wild after I left.
Is there any chance...
Well, the only thing I did is I did drop my pants, but it wasn't really...
I heard about that, and this is absolutely, gentlemen, true.
You dropped your pants at the Christmas party.
Yeah.
You waited until a little later on.
Yeah.
Who was around at the time?
Tom Brokaw.
I really...
I thought I'd get on the nightly news if I did something like that in front of
Tom, but no avail.
It didn't happen.
But we had a lovely time.
All right.
Here now, tonight is the big holiday Christmas party, and I'll start out just
with a general...
One time, we rented a big space downtown.
Remember this?
We used to go to, like, a big space.
I didn't even know what it was.
You remember what it was?
It was some big building, a big space, a big party space.
Yeah, it was somebody's loft.
Yeah, some kind of phony kind of thing downtown, right.
Huh?
Somebody named O'Neill had a loft.
Oh, I don't...
Yeah, I think you're right.
And it was just for big parties and stuff.
Yeah.
And, like, an hour into it, we were all stunned and horrified because two
people, one person we knew,
one person we didn't know, were, like, making out right in the middle of the
party
and rolling around on the floor and under the table.
Yeah.
Okay, that's just a beginner.
That's just a starter.
That's just an icebreaker.
Okay.
Now, here's another story.
I showed up one year, and Bill Wendell, God rest his soul, used to be our
announcer on the late show here,
or whatever we used to call it at the other place.
I show up at the holiday party, and I see this.
I see him and Howard Stern, like, choking each other.
Yeah.
I saw it, too.
And then, finally, and then Wendell actually threw Howard Stern out of the
party.
Rejected him from the party, yeah.
Kind of like that.
Yeah.
And I said...
And he says, he can't get away with that.
And I said, what?
He said, crashing the damn party.
And I said, Bill, he was on the guest list.
Another year, when we worked at NBC, we were owned by General Electric.
General Electric invented, you know, the light bulb.
They invented the three-way bulb, is what they did.
They invented the three-way.
And I always used to say to myself, hmm, I wonder what's next.
A four-way bulb?
So, and then Jack Welch, who's the outgoing CEO of General Electric, regarded
as the most
powerful, most scary global corporate manager in the world.
Used to be known as Neutron Jack.
Because, you know, the buildings would remain standing, but everybody would be
gone.
He would just come in and fire everybody.
The building, what happened to that thousand people?
They're gone!
I fired them!
So, he comes running up, and he's got, like, a gift basket, and he comes
straight for me
at the Christmas party, and he says, hi, Jack Welch here.
We love it when you call us weasels.
Well, that's good news for stockholders, Jack.
Now, here's the best Christmas party story I know.
I mean, maybe you've got a better one, but this is the best one I know.
We used to have a guy that we worked with on the old late show, Late Night.
It was a stagehand called Al Marr.
Do you remember Al Marr?
Oh, of course, yeah.
Sweet guy, had been in the business for years and years and years and years and
years.
And at the party, like people often do, you have a cocktail, and you have one
or two,
and, you know, Al had, like, 19.
And as the evening went on, people were kind of like, oh, look, Al's really
enjoying himself.
And then, as so often happens, there was a little bit of trouble.
And the trouble was, Al went up to one of our other guests, Tom Brokaw.
And Al told Tom Brokaw to go f*** himself.
We just don't want any of that.
Oh, you don't need that.
You see what I'm talking about, trouble?
Yeah, okay.
I just wanted to share that with you for the holidays.
We'll be right back here with Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche, ladies and
gentlemen.
Oh, ladies and gentlemen, here's tonight's top ten list.
This is the time of the year for Christmas office parties.
Category tonight, top ten signs you're at a bad Christmas office party.
A lot of them are great.
A lot of the office parties are just terrific.
A lot of fun, you know, from start to finish.
Exactly.
Well, sometimes you can go to a bad one.
And here now, top ten signs you're at a bad office Christmas party.
And I've told you the story about the worst Christmas party we ever had.
I want to hear about that.
It was a long time ago, and we made the mistake of having it indoors.
And after this, we decided to have them outdoors, where people could burn off
some of the alcohol.
And a very dear man, Al Marr, an old stagehand who worked at NBC, was there,
and he had been drinking.
And Al enjoyed a drink, as everybody does now and then.
Sure, of course.
And Tom Brokaw, our good friend from NBC, was there.
And toward the end of the evening, Al Marr turned to Tom Brokaw and said,
Why don't you go f*** yourself?
That was the thing.
So we just don't...
After that...
After that, we said...
No, we're not going to...
Tom Brokaw is one of our favorites.
Well, so was Al Marr.
We liked them both.
It's just one of those things.
And from that point on, every Christmas party was outdoors.
We'd go skating.
And there would be hot chocolate.
Sure, that's how that happened.
Now I understand.
Okay.
Alec Baldwin and the lovely Shakira on the program.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's tonight's top ten list.
Let's go.
Well, it's that season again.
It's the season of the office Christmas party.
The category tonight, things you don't want to hear.
At your office Christmas party.
Things you don't want to hear.
Okay.
Things you don't want to hear.
Because people get drunk.
Yeah.
There was a...
We had a Christmas party years and years ago.
And we had the show over at NBC.
And every year we'd have them inside.
Yes.
And this one Christmas party, people got so drunk and so many unpleasant things
happened.
That from that year on, we started having them outside at the skating rink.
Yeah.
And it was, remember, Al Marr, one of our favorite stagehands over there at NBC.
And Al had been drinking all night.
And a tremendous guy.
And Tom Brokaw and his wife, Meredith, came late to the party, about 10, 30, 11.
And Al walked right up to Tom Brokaw and he said, why don't you go yourself?
And it was, it was because of that.
And since then.
That's right.
Yeah.
So we, from that point on.
Always had them.
Outside.
Always outside after that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was, but there were no hard feelings afterwards.
Oh, yeah, no, because Tom is a lovely guy.
Tom is a lovely guy.
Yeah.
And Al Marr, a lovely guy also.
Sure.
Just that he enjoyed a little and why not?
That's what happens, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I was at a Christmas party last night.
I got, came late to an office Christmas, not ours, but one from a sister
network of our organization.
And a gal said, let's do shots and dance.
Wow.
Yeah.
Very nice.
Yeah.
And did you do that?
Well, I said, you're 22 and I'm a 56-year-old man with two children.
Uh-huh.
She said, I don't care about that.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I got carried away.
I was just, I'm still thinking about it.
That's all right.
I haven't been able to get it out of my mind.
Yeah.
It just happens.
That's also a great story, Paul.
Yeah.
Not like the Alma.
Nobody said, go f*** yourself, but it's still a wonderful, you know, thought
that I have
in my mind.
She was a lovely girl, too.
I'm sure she was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Anyway, things, things you don't want to hear at your office Christmas party.
That's one that you do want to hear, by the way.
I think that one you do want to hear, yes.
But this, I'd be happy to hear that.
Yeah.
This is things you don't.
Let's do shots and dance.
Dance.
Yeah.
It would be something if Al Mar had said that to Tom Brokaw.
You want to do some shots and dance, Tom?
Then you'd have something, wouldn't you?
Top 10 things you don't want to hear at your office Christmas party.
Here we go, number 10.
I think the icing on this cake is white out, number 9.
The bar will be open from 9 to 9.05, number 8.
I've never seen chunky eggnog before, number 7.
My New Year's resolution is to stop videotaping the men's room, number 6.
Ooh, another windbreaker with the company logo.
This will help me put my kids through college.
I'm trying not to have my feelings hurt, but have you?
Number 5.
You're supposed to sit naked on the Xerox machine, not the shredder.
Number 4.
Put on Regis Philbin's Christmas album.
Number 3.
Why is Shecky naked?
You've got to know him.
Yeah, exactly.
Number 2.
There's Letterman.
Get him!
Oh.
And the number 1 thing you don't want to hear at your office Christmas party.
Yeah, a glass of watery cider and a cookie makes up for a year of bulls**t.
So, the next year and from there on after we had the party outside.
Outside, yeah.
Where people could skate and burn off some of the alcohol.
Yeah, it diffuses the energy.
Yeah, a little bit.
What I want to know is, I'm sure everyone here is on the edge of their seat,
what happened
to Al Maher after the Christmas party?
I can't believe that.
He had a long, lovely career at NBC and I...
NBC where, in Anchorage?
No, no.
He still worked there.
Everything was fine.
He was still at 30 Rock?
Forgive and forget.
Yeah.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
I can't believe you were at the Christmas party.
Like, he's sitting there having a drink going, "Who's the most important person
on the
skating rink?"
Wait, there's Brokaw.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
Who the hell would ever do that?
But we loved Al.
Yeah.
Everybody loved him.
Regarding Al Maher, the stagehand.
He is retired.
Al Maher is retired.
And there's another little bit of information.
One time, he took a leak in the backstage sink.
So there you go.
Can you see this guy now?
He's like, what?
He's like 75 years old.
He's living in like, you know, Daytona Beach.
And he's in a library going, "Where's the head librarian?"
"Go yourself."
He's just addicted to that.
It's Dave's Gift-a-Palooza.
Ah!
What a show we have for you folks.
I want to tell you something.
I know a lot of you people just came in here because you get tossed out of bars.
But this...
You've had a little too many.
Why don't you go home and sleep this off?
And you come right in.
We're happy to have you.
What a show we have for you tonight.
One of the greats in the world of television.
One of the greats in the world of journalism.
One of the greats in the world of just being a guy.
You know, if you want to be a guy, this is a guy you want to be.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, boy.
I know what you're saying.
Take a look at the spectrum of guys.
On the one end, you have guys like Richard Simmons.
That would be...
On the one end.
That's one end of the spectrum.
Yeah.
On the other end, you have our guest tonight, Tom Brokaw is joining us on the
show.
There you go.
I think what I'm going to do now is tell a holiday story because it is the
holidays.
And it happened just about this time of year, many, many years ago when Paul
a