Adventures in Single Life

How do you know when you have too much time on your hands? Well, I'll tell you.

Yesterday I was fondly remembering my favorite beverage from the mid-nineties, Clearly Canadian, and looking to buy some. I was saddened to hear that the company had folded a while back. But there's a new kickstarter-type program where they're taking advance orders for 25,000 cases and, once they reach their goal, they'll re-start production.

And it occurred to me, during as well as all throughout the completion of my purchase of one case of Wild Cherry, that, yes, this is the kind of stupid thing that someone does when they have way too much time on their hands. In fact, both this and the purchase of Castleton t-shirts are indeed signs to that effect.

This has been Adventures in Single Life.

I Never Went to Castleton

It's pretty amazing... just a few days ago I mentioned that David Letterman's autograph was the only autograph I own. I said it confidently because there hadn't been much activity in that area for about a decade. Little did I know that, at that very moment, another one was headed straight to me via the United States Postal Service...

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Time Chasers" is a classic and one of the best episodes in my opinion. It begins with a title card that Mike Nelson reads out loud as "A David Giancola Film.... is not something you'd want to see."

The hero of the film is Nick Miller, a 10-speed riding academic who has figured out the secret to time travel .... and yet his ventures into the future don't allow him to see the datedness of hockey hair (AKA the mullet). The movie was independently made and entirely filmed in the Vermont area. And so it's not surprising that Nick wears a Castleton t-shirt throughout MOST of the film (there's a brief shirtless scene). It looks like this (the shirt, not the shirtless scene)...

The ever-present shirt is often referenced by Mike and the Bots - Crow: "Remember when everybody got the 'Nick Miller' haircut and went around wearing Castleton t-shirts?" - and has therefore become an iconic image of the show.

When I saw that Edgewood Studios (the makers of the film "Time Chasers") were selling an official Castleton t-shirt, I bought one. And it came today. It also came wrapped around a piece of cardboard. "Probably to keep it from crumpling up", I thought. No, the cardboard was this...

That, my friends, is a flattened VHS cover of the film "Time Chasers" with a personalized autograph from the Director of the film, David Giancola.

So now I own two celebrity autographs (not counting Disney characters, which probably should count)... David Letterman and David Giancola. And if you were only going to get autographs from two celebrities named "David" it probably would be those two.

The Tonight Show - Thought at Work

Black Thought stops by Jimmy's cubicle for a little office chat.



This is a bit they do fairly often but this is one of the better ones.

Conan - Jordan Schlansky the Cowboy

Still in Dallas for a week of shows, Conan gives Jordan Schlansky a "cowboy makeover".



If I'm nitpicking, they already did the "shaving" bit, almost word-for-word.

Letterman's Retirement Announcement (Video)

David Letterman to Retire

During tonight's episode of the Late Show, David Letterman will announce his retirement in 2015.

One can't help speculating as to how much pressure (if any) he was under to retire. Low ratings have to be weighed against the problem that there's nothing else out there for him to do. I mean, in many ways he can do anything he wants but he always seemed to respect the fact that when Johnny Carson retired, that was it - except for a few minor appearances Carson wasn't seen on TV again.

And so it would officially be retirement - a concept that seems totally foreign to someone like Dave. After he came back from the writers' strike, he candidly joked that, as often as retiring people like to say, "I'm going to spend more time with my family", the reality of that situation is not all it's cracked up to be. And, of course, Letterman was the one who came back on air while the strike was still on-going.

It just seems like some people shouldn't stop working. Andy Rooney died one month after he left "60 Minutes", Fred Rogers was diagnosed with cancer just months after he went off the air. Let's hope this isn't one of those situations.

From the early 90's until about 2008, you would not find a bigger fan of David Letterman than myself. As long as you don't count Disney characters, I believe his is the only celebrity autograph I own. I watched every single episode that I could, night after night. I would tape the best bits of his show and play them back anyone who shared my comedic sense. You'll recognize that reflex as the blueprint of this very blog I'm writing today. You might find this hard to believe but I actually consciously thought during those years, "He's going to retire some day and talk shows don't get reruns so I'm going to watch every second I can while I can." But my viewership quickly diminished from 2008 until now as he became much more politicized and comedy took a back seat to espousing his political views. I don't think I'm alone in this because his ratings started diving around the same time frame. And so now that the retirement is a reality (the announcement at least) it doesn't feel like a major upheaval or an entertainment tragedy. I feel like the Late Show disappeared long ago and this is just going through the motions of making it official.