Name: LN with David Letterman July 12, 1982
Uploaded: 2015-08-30T08:00:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'LN with David Letterman July 12, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'LN with David Letterman July 12, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-30. Transcript available.

LN with David Letterman July 12, 1982

from New York the city where people run for fitness and to get away from guys
with knives it's late night with David Lederman tonight blues rock and roll
singer James Brown and balloonist Larry Walters the man who soared to 16,000
feet over California in a lawn chair and now a man who lights up a room just by
licking a switch David Lederman
thank you very much ladies and gentlemen welcome to the show and a fine show
indeed we have for you as you may or may not know this program originates here
in New York City and
because New York is interested in bringing in a lot of tourist
business during the summer they like to from time to time release a list of
things
they're proud of and another one hit the streets today so to speak New York
City is first in this
category in this city there are more people on the streets to whom you would
not like to give mouth-to-mouth
on the streets to whom you would not like to give mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation than any other community of comparable size and uh
let me uh before we really get rolling in believe me rolling is the correct
term tonight
say hello now to Mr. Paul Schaefer ladies and gentlemen
hi David hi everybody we are excited we're all leaving the business after
tonight that's how
excited we are this is the culmination for this band did you have a good uh a
good uh what did we
have it wasn't a holiday was it it was a weekend yeah yeah you had a good
weekend we had a swing
and a weekend we did very nicely uh believe uh those of us who played softball
now did you play
softball or not I I couldn't make no you didn't play softball I love the game
though yeah Paul is a
big softball fan now Hiram uh you're not wearing shoes tonight are you Hiram at
the at the risk of
embarrassing our a talented guitar player he's not wearing shoes ladies and
gentlemen so
I want to say David you are the only guy in town who'll hire this guy too
oh we uh we got a great show for you here and uh just keep reminding yourself
yes this is network
television tonight the hardest working man in show business James Brown a
couple of weeks ago a
gentleman who lives in Southern California I'm I'm certain you heard of this
read about it saw it on
television hooked some balloons to his lawn chair went up in the air about
three miles Mr. Larry Walters
is here tonight uh also a man who uh manufactures and distributes cells uh bugging
I guess anti-bugging
devices he's the vice president of communications control systems Carmine
Pelosi is here we're going
to take a look at some more international symbols and what else have I left
anything else out oh it's
a fine show you came on a good night ladies and gentlemen I've already
introduced Paul haven't I
that's kind of an awkward move for me now here isn't I
don't know what to do
yeah I can I can completely screwed that up by uh introducing uh Paul uh
introducing earlier but
uh we'll make it up to you don't you worry ladies and gentlemen well
all of us here at the office are still reeling from our network Christmas
special that took place
last Friday and and if these dummy telegrams from our prop department are any
indication
it looks like the rest of America has also been talking about it too so let's
take a look at a couple
of them to see uh what they're saying here says uh dear Dave congratulations on
your wonderful
Christmas show I particularly like the guardian angels singing Christmas carols
especially since they
once saved my life on the subway but what happened when Larry Melman was
supposed to read the night
before Christmas signed a puzzled fan that's just one telegram another one says
dear Dave loved your
Christmas show my favorite was Jane Pauley since she saved my life once with
her with her tips on
hair dryer safety and by the way what was the deal with Mr. Melman reading the
night before Christmas
was this some kind of private joke or or what and it's also signed a confused
viewer well if you
were watching Friday night indeed we did have our first Christmas special and
Larry Bud Melman was
going to read the night before Christmas to a lot of little children who were
eagerly looking forward
to that event if you saw it you know that something hideous went awry and so to
explain that incident
we'd like to introduce the two people responsible for it late night production
late night production
assistants who in order to protect their future careers we're just going to
call Babs and Jude
they're over here in the shadows
first of all uh uh Babs uh welcome welcome to the show and uh what was uh uh
what went wrong
exactly when Mr. Melman started to read the night before Christmas
well um actually i had thought that the uh towards the night before Christmas
was on cue cards
and i didn't have it put on cue cards because i thought we um we had the book
of the poem yeah
so this is a just a wires were crossed jude thought that the man would read the
night before Christmas off cue cards
you thought he would read it right out of this book right here well not that
book yeah uh now for uh
just tell us what this book is exactly well i had put on the promise that we
needed a book but i didn't say
what book we needed i just said i just said we needed a book so they they just
picked any book and it
happened to be in uh a french catechism book
okay so essentially that's what happened uh the kids were assembled larry budd
was going to read the
night before Christmas out of the french catechism book no cue cards no right
okay let's uh let's
show you how that went uh this was friday night from our gala christmas
spectacular and uh just take
a look at the monitors larry budd melman ladies and gentlemen
there's a night was a night before christmas not a creature was stirring not
even a mouse oh now i gotta
read spanish not a creature was stirring not even a mouse oh god and sunny claus
came down the chimney
he came down the chimney came down the chimney came down the chimney came down
the chimney oh god
so as i was saying before not a creature was stirring not even a mouse
and it turned out to be a very merry christmas ho ho ho
it was magic wasn't it
it was indeed magic
and and that's that's what happened and i want to thank you uh two women for uh
having
having the courage to come forward to tell your story here tonight
and i let me just say that they do wonderful work and we're proud to have them
on our staff
we're going to pause and we'll be right back to meet mr larry walters the armchair
balloon
hello
hi there welcome back to the show we have a uh
we have a uh fine program uh for you folks tonight uh we're going to meet the
man who went up in the
armchair or lawn chair a couple of minutes from now the godfather of soul james
brown is here and
they called me that for a while but no title has been passed on and james now
holds that honor and
also carmine now this is carmine o pelosi is that his name carmine o pelosi
good old irish name
the old pelosi family he'll be here to talk about uh communications uh bugging
systems and protecting
yourself in this day and age of hatred and tyranny what a nasty way to start
the show isn't it well
uh my my next guest uh last week a man from southern california grabbed the
attention of the world when
he fulfilled a dream he had had for 20 years a dream of soaring three miles
straight up in the air
sitting in a lawn chair we're going to take a look at some videotape of that
accomplishment right now the
voices you're going to hear are of my next guest in the air and his girlfriend
on the ground this would
be mr larry walters going up in the lawn chair
run this inspiration you're eating me over but what no i can hear you okay
evidently i lost my glasses
run cut it and then come down you gotta come down if you can't see cut them
down i've got my other
glasses i can see perfectly don't worry is everything okay everything's a-okay
notify all the proper
authoritative authorities etc i'm headed towards uh i can see marine line right
now
hey you can see marine land they're heading toward oh my god you're going
towards the ocean already
okay here have you have you have you have you um you get towards the ocean you're
going to be
marine wait i'm stuck are you okay i'm making a turn i'm going inland notify lax
over
sounds sounds just like nasa doesn't it well uh we're delighted to have this
gentleman with us
tonight please welcome larry walters
this is a phenomenal thing where did you get the idea to do this uh when did it
hit you you said it
was a 20-year dream yes sir uh hit me when i was a young boy about 13 years old
i was in an army navy
surplus store saw a weather balloon dangling from the ceiling and i just got
the idea
to put uh to inflate these balloons and i figured if i had enough of them it'd
lift me
that it was just you know the float yeah i was fascinated by it and i fulfilled
a 20-year dream
have you done anything else in attempting to uh make your dream come true
between before now
well the main thing i did uh at the urging of an associate ron richland who
also at tape you saw
he was he's the man responsible for it i'm sorry both he and my fiancee carol
van duzen who put up
the money for the entire project could not be here but uh at his urging i took
a parachute course
and i had a very good parachute on very reliable and i was prepared at one time
i was thinking of
actually using it at 16 000 feet what kind of planning goes into this because
when you say you
hook balloons to a lawn chair it doesn't sound you know like first of all like
neil armstrong probably
wouldn't be involved there the thing is i call it american ingenuity yeah that's
what i call it sir
and uh you can you heard the audio tapes uh i was in i had confidence myself in
the craft
and i knew what i was doing yeah i really know what i was doing uh now when
when you took off there uh
you you actually lifted off prematurely didn't you yes yes sir uh the idea was
to be tethered at a
hundred feet for approximately an hour and about a half hour before launch we
were going to notify faa
and a few airports and let them know this launcher was going up with all these
balloons
right now but uh unfortunately which is only tape the tether line broke
prematurely
and that's when my whole ground crew panicked and uh now how did the why did it
break there
there was no one to take the slack up on it it was a 550 pound test island line
and the wind was blowing
rather strong over the uh just above the uh about maybe the first couple
hundred feet and uh it just
took that cluster up and me in it and uh snapped that line and we have it on
tape and film and uh that's
it sounded like a gunshot when that line snapped uh how many balloons did you
have approximately 43 sir
and they were filled with helium gas helium uh did you was that an estimate
were you just guessing
that 43 would get you up oh no no we had done much prior testing prior to this
we had uh test
inflations we we knew that each balloon would lift approximately 14 to 15
pounds and so we just
multiplied that and now is it is it expensive to get that much helium uh well
like i say uh carol
she financed that she bought all the gas and uh anyway the gas the balloons uh
came to three thousand
dollars and she bought my parachute for me thank god bless her and uh that was
another eight hundred
dollars and you know she went heavily into debt now to see my dream come true i
read a figure this
afternoon that said the whole project cost around fifteen thousand that is
correct because we were
going to originally go from mojave desert and it was carol's idea to launch
from her backyard
only because there was a hospital about a half mile down the road really yes
sir uh now what was your
once you went up uh what was your means of controlling the lift or descending
or okay i had complete control
the craft and we have tapes audio tapes yes i did i had complete control of my
craft and uh i mean even
one when the line snapped and you know i even i didn't expect that yeah but i
had completely controlled
control 