Name: David Letterman on Celebrity Cooks, late November 1977
Uploaded: 2016-01-10T16:26:20.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman on Celebrity Cooks, late November 1977' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-01-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman on Celebrity Cooks, late November 1977' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-01-10. Transcript available.

David Letterman on Celebrity Cooks, late November 1977

The End
How are you? How are you? It's nice to see you. Thank you, thank you.
There aren't as many of us here today as there normally are.
We usually have people in here that are hanging from the rafters, but Vancouver
has got another snowstorm.
They've got about four flurries of snow, and it's a huge blizzard.
It ties up. The whole city has come to a halt. I've never seen anything like it.
We had a snowstorm here about a week ago, an inch of snow.
Headlines the next day, B.C. crippled by snow blizzard. It's ridiculous.
Anyway, you look lovely. I'm glad you're here.
I hope you're all having a good time at home because we've got a terrific guest
for you today.
One of the television industry's most accomplished writers.
And he's also a very talented and witty comedian.
He's written for people like Joey Bishop on The Tonight Show, for the Paul Lind
special,
for Dino Mike, Jimmy Walker in Las Vegas.
And most recently, he wrote for the Super Stunt TV special was on just recently.
Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm Canadian welcome to our David Letterman.
Hi there. Sorry about the number of folks I was...
Sort of on the ride committee and the telephone wires, bad communication here.
I'll have more people there next week.
Okay. How you doing?
You know, I'm all right. I can't complain. How about yourself?
I'm all right.
Good, good.
I'm just going to take a seat here and listen to you.
Merrily, it's my show now. Is that correct?
Yeah, it's all yours.
Okay, fine. Fine. Thank you so much.
Okay, baby.
Thank you very much. How about a nice hand for Bruno taking a seat over there?
Nobody sits down quite like that man. You know what I mean? Wonderful job.
How many of you have never been here before?
Applaud if you've never been here before.
Okay.
Now, how many of you have been here before?
Applaud if you have been here before.
Okay, now, how many of you who have never been here before are tonight here
with somebody who has been here before?
Okay, that's a little confusing now.
Listen carefully.
Out of that last group of you, how many of you are in this country illegally?
Could just...
Hey, fine.
My name is Dave Letterman, and we have a minute or two here.
Let's just go around the room and have each of you folks stand and introduce
yourselves
and tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe your plans for the future.
Staying at a wonderful hotel here, they have a jacuzzi, one of those whirlpool
bath things.
You know what those are?
And it's really a cheap jacuzzi, though.
When everybody gets in the water, we have to take turns going...
You blow back in the tube.
Do what, ma'am?
You blow back in the tube.
That's right.
I saw that man earlier, that woman earlier in the jacuzzi.
At any rate, I was watching the television news last night, and they said that
the most popular
news publication in this country is those magazines you can buy in the grocery
store checkout lines.
You know, do you read those things?
Saw one last week.
Terrific headlines.
How to lose weight without diet or exercise.
Pretty much leaves disease, doesn't it?
Yeah.
They said that the number one cause of crime in the world now, they think, may
be television
game shows.
Apparently, people watch game shows, and it makes them very greedy, so they go
out and commit
crimes.
I think that could be true.
About a month ago, I was in my bank, and a guy ran in and held it up, and he
takes a bunch
of hostages and locks them in the vault, you know?
And he says, all right, cops, listen up.
I've got ten people in here.
I'm going to read you a list of my demands.
Play it safe, and nobody gets hurt.
First of all, I won a $50 gift certificate from the Spiegel Catalog Company.
Spiegel featuring over 50,000 quality gift items.
I like television game shows because I think they're, you know, a lot more
dramatic than
they used to be, more exciting.
And so on Tuesday afternoon, the guy says, all right, Mrs. Timmons, you've
selected our
most difficult category, things that don't belong in potato salad.
Here's how we play.
I'll read you a list of ingredients.
You tell me what doesn't belong in potato salad.
You're the new queen of England.
Ready?
Here we go.
Take your time.
Listen carefully.
Potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise, machine gun bullets.
During this game show, they had this great commercial on for a cooking oil, and
it's kind of
like a family-oriented commercial.
You have three people and it's mom, dad, and a little kid.
And dad, like a jerk, says, hey, what's our little skeptic up to today?
Mom gets real excited, and she says, why, she's frying a loaf of bread in
cooking oil.
Yes, it does my heart good to see a family who knows how to get the most out of
their food
dollar, you know?
Go to the grocery store, spend 80 cents on a loaf of bread, bring it home, let
your kid
fry it in a quart of oil.
Well, then, what do we do with a loaf of fried bread?
Hi, honey, I'm home, boy.
I am starved.
Gee, we got any of that fried bread left?
Hey, why don't you heat up some root beer?
We'll have a party.
Barbecue some waffles.
And, of course, fast food places that advertise are always terrific, like
Colonel Sanders,
you know, is now selling ribs.
Who wants to eat chicken ribs, anyway?
One of these days, you'll be hearing, ah, the Colonel's got beaks.
Yeah, take some coleslaw, some mashed potatoes, and what's that?
Give us a bucket of beaks, all right?
We've got a bag of feathers for the kids.
And, well, you know, now, of course, you can eat breakfast at McDonald's, too,
huh?
Boy, there's a dream come true, huh?
I like watching a lot of television.
I used to work as a newscaster at this TV station that was Eyewitness News.
Are you familiar with that concept?
Try and make the news as funny as possible, see?
So, one day in the city where I worked, there were three murders,
and the news director didn't think it would be too amusing to have the anchorman
report all three murders back-to-back,
so they gave one to the sportscaster to do.
The guy was reading baseball scores at the time.
Well, first in the National League, it was the Mets over the Braves 3-2.
Reds got past the cards 5-4, and the Dodgers murdered the Giants 9-0.
Speaking of murders,
looks like 45-year-old Eddie Poster won't be going out to the old ballpark
anymore.
No, he was gunned down last night during a liquor store hold-up.
Once again, final score, liquor store won, Eddie nothing.
Oh, you folks are terrific. Thank you very much.
That's marvelous stuff.
Do you have a lot of food stuff, or do you just bring that for this specific
show?
I didn't realize that until I got here, but apparently I do have a lot of food
stuff.
I'm interested in the fact that you write for so many different people, so many
different communities.
Do you, is it difficult?
You just, I mean, you write in your style, and they use it whether they like it
or not,
or whether they pick what they like, or do you have to write for a specific
personality?
Real easy, you save the funny stuff for yourself, and then you give the junk to
the other people.
All right.
Yeah, and they pay top money for it, too.
You've been invited on, though. You want us to go to a commercial?
All right. Dave and I will talk a little bit when we're in the kitchen.
Some more questions I want to ask.
We'll be back right after these messages, and that's where we'll leave behind
the counter.
All right, let's do this, David.
Keep on putting stuff on the side.
Got everything you need there?
Yeah, we got everything. We have everything.
Want a little taste of wine?
No, maybe a little later.
A little later?
Okay, I'll put mine aside, too.
Well, now, go ahead.
No, no, no.
Go ahead and get sloppy drunk if you want.
No, not me, pal.
Make a fool of yourself.
No, not a bit.
No, I'll just let it sit. Well, I might have just a taste.
You don't know what you're missing.
Yeah.
All right.
What are you going to cook?
Today, I was, of course, first of all, I guess you folks read in the paper,
I was going to prepare cream of monkey soup, but the, uh...
Hold on, you want me to slip this up a little higher? Excuse me.
There you go.
But the price of monkey being what it is, I've decided on something else,
and, uh, today, uh, Fettuccine Verde.
Now, how many of you know what Fettuccine means?
Nobody here knows.
It means bowling, and Verde means green, bowling green.
You familiar with the city of Bowling Green in Kentucky?
Fettuccine Verde is a small town in the Alps of Italy.
And, honestly, this is back in 1610, where Leonardo da Vinci first drew up the
plans
for the first practical automatic bowling ball return.
Hence, this is a dish in that celebration.
And, uh, it literally means every year on this date, as a matter of fact,
the townspeople gather together and make what they call green bowling balls,
and you'll see the significance of that statement a little bit later.
Okay, here we go.
I guess I start, huh?
What we need here, we need, uh, what is this, about two and a half cups of
flour.
This is just your plain, ordinary flour that you see on the street.
All right, now, uh, you take eggs.
Take some eggs.
These are plain, ordinary, these are chicken eggs, apparently.
And, uh, you just, you just, what do you do with these?
You just...
Zat them in there?
Yeah, you bust them in there.
Oh, really?
Oh.
There's a drawer right here.
I just throw this stuff in there.
Good.
It's never cleaned out, is it?
Never.
All right, there you go.
Three eggs.
The recipe actually calls for two eggs, but, uh...
Well, it will use three.
Yeah, okay, there you go.
Now, you, uh, in the meantime, you've let your spinach cook,
which I believe the spinach is not cooking over there.
Is this correct?
That's not spinach, no, we've got cooked spinach there.
What's going on in there?
Well, let's, um, we've already made some,
just in case, uh, something goes wrong here.
Okay, here you go.
See, these are already cooking.
Now, actually, you're supposed to make a little well in your flour.
So, I'll, uh, see.
I'll, uh, there you go.
Just pretend we've got a well in there.
You take your spinach.
This is chopped spinach.
Can you see?
This provides the color green for this.
And then you, uh, there you go.
And now, what you do, you get your hands in here
and start squeezing this sucker.
A little salt.
Where's the salt?
Yeah, salt.
Here we go.
Let's see, just salt it right in there.
Oh, okay.
Man's salting my hands, ladies and gentlemen.
Okay, there you go.
And for those of you who like a blender,
if you'd rather have a blender, you can do this.
Okay, now, what you want to do, what you want to do is, uh, is eventually, this
would take
about several days, an eight-man team working around the clock to get it where
you need it,
but we don't have that much time.
But eventually, what you're going to do is turn this into a green, uh, bowling
ball.
Just, well, I think you can begin to see how that would work.
Does that need any liquid right now, or?
No, no, no.
No, actually, it's, yeah.
The flour would absorb it sooner or later.
And, uh...
It just takes a little while.
Yeah, yeah.
And what you're making here is just noodles, see?
Every, just...
Green noodles.
Green noodles, that's right.
And, uh, well, yeah.
Let's, uh...
Yeah, we got the idea now.
I get mine from the factory.
I never really have to do this.
Okay, there you go.
Just...
There's a sink back here.
Why don't I...
I'll tighten this up a little.
I'll get the other stuff.
I mean, if you want to wash some of that off.
What do you think?
No, well, whatever.
I don't care.
I have this apron here, I suppose.
Well, it'll come off.
Let's see.
I'll tell you what.
Use that.
Get some of it off of that.
Yeah, there we go.
And I'll just put that...
Oh, thanks.
Now, that eventually would become one of these babies over here.
This is what we have.
Here, now, here.
Here.
Here, see?
There it is.
The green bowling ball.
How many of you remember earlier when I mentioned that?
A few of the more alert members of the crowd do remember it.
Now, here's what you do.
You serve this 