It looks like we've got the makings of a fight on our hands.
Robert Halderman, the man accused of extorting David Letterman and turning the always funny Late Show into a storm of innuendo and gossip, wants his case to go to trial and most likely won't accept a plea deal or make some sort of arrangement with prosecutors.
So far, he's got two things going for him: a whirlwind of press surrounding his case and the fallout of his arrest and money. The New York Observer reports he's raised almost $100,000 in legal funds for his case.
I hope this doesn't happen, but is it just me or is it starting to look like Halderman's trial could actually hurt Letterman and company more than it helps him?
If you're a fan of the band Weezer and the laziness empowerment blanket the Snuggie and have been hoping for a way to combine the two, you're in luck.
Weezer fans might have been curious to know why the band was wearing the popular blanket during last Friday's Late Show with David Letterman performance. The band has not only released a new line of the sleeved blanket, but they also have their own legitimate infomercial that tells you how you can buy the band's new CD Raditude and your own "Weezer Snuggie." WARNING: After watching this video, the phrase "Weezer Snuggie" will not leave your brain for at least the next three hours. Viewer discretion is advised.
Today I made an executive decision and gave the podcast an oh-so-creative name: "The TV Squad Podcast." This was after we recorded it on Tuesday, so I still refer to it by its old APB name. If you have any suggestions, let me know at tvsquad [at] gmail [dot] com.
In this episode, Late Show writer Bill Scheft joins me, Danny Gallagher and Kona Gallagher to talk about his new book Everything Hurts. Of course, there's lots of good behind-the-scenes info about what it was like to work at The Late Show, especially on how the events of the past month affected the staff and the show's writing, including the monologue.
He also tells some funny stories about being canned from Sports Illustrated (and spawns a new catchphrase), feeding lines to the guy who played Mike Singletary and more. It's 45 minutes of fun.
After the interview, Kona, Danny and I give our picks of the week. Run time is 1:03:02.
It turns out the David Letterman sex scandal hasn't reached its climax. It was just napping.
The National Enquirer reports that the Late Show host may have been caught on camera getting it on with a member of his staff.
The footage in question came from a surveillance camera in the show's offices that Letterman and his "much younger female co-worker" did not know had been installed in the building. The tape may be released when Robert Halderman, Letterman's extorter, goes to trial or when some sick son of a bitch with nothing but time on his hands and bandwidth to waste decides to post the thing on the Internet. For the sake of humanity, its vision and waning sex drives, don't. Just don't.
Word of our podcast revival must be spreading like an Alaskan oil fire because we've just booked our first celebrity guest...and it's a biggie in my book. Late Show writer and author Bill Scheft will join me and TV Squad bossman Joel Keller on next week's APB Podcast. We'll talk about his work on David Letterman's late night show and the changing landscape of late night TV as well as his newest novel, Everything Hurts.
If you've got questions for our guest (and I'm sure you do), leave them in the comments section below and we'll ask them to our gracious guest when we record the podcast at 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Oct. 27. I'm sure you're all dying to know the answer to one big question, so don't waste your time by posting it below: what the hell does Bill have against 49ers coach Mike Singletary?!?
I don't mean the endlessly publicized sex scandal or the Sarah Palin controversy. I don't mean the ham-fisted and unfunny political commentary -- or even the strange tales of stalkers around every corner. I mean what happened to the guy from the mid-late 1980s who seemed so above and beyond any such tired showbiz cliches?
When Letterman followed Carson during the Golden Age of NBC late night TV, his show was admittedly quirky. But it was one of the best examples of post-modern comedy in the medium's history. Late Night with David Letterman not only mocked TV entertainment while being a part of it, but the show made fun of the very idea that people get paid to gab or act silly in front of millions of people.
There are very few recurring television moments that instantly grab my undivided attention: seeing an undead Billy Mays still pitching Oxy-Clean, Twilight Zone episodes that pwn Nazis, late night Skinemax.
Now you can add Don Rickles to that list. He's become a staple of late night during the early Tonight Show because he's engaging, colorful and damn funny. Every time he stops in at Letterman's Late Show, I have to stop what I'm doing and watch and that includes running a pregnant friend to the hospital, although it does ruin some of the comedy for me. All that screaming.
He's also great at roasts, not because he's a great insult comic but because he can be just as down to Earth and genuine with the people he's skewering. His best roast is one that never made it to television: a roast of Get Smart's Don Adams at the Playboy Mansion.
That bastion of journalistic excellence, Entertainment Weekly, unveiled their new cover and (surprise!) Letterman made the cover. It features the Late Show host without pants, which in any other context would be the lowest selling issue of EW since Ernest Borgnine forgot to put on underpants.
My problem isn't with the picture, although it seems it probably should be. It's the headline. Is "Oh, Dave" the best they could do? Hell, "Where the Wild Things Are" would be ten times better and save a fifth of the print space. Write a better headline in the comments section below and we'll feature the best ones in a future post.
One notably close figurehead in David Letterman-gate seems to have gone overlooked, a shiny bald one.
Letterman's longtime sidekick and band leader Paul Shaffer has just released a new memoir called We'll Be Here the Rest of Our Lives about his rise to late night music infamy. He talked more than a few ears off about his own life in music, but he's kept very hush-hush on the whole Letterman brewhaha.
"You know, I just can't talk about it," Shaffer told a Time reporter in a recent interview. "There is a legal proceeding going on. I've been advised that I can't comment on that stuff."
He couldn't even tell Harry Smith on CBS' Early Show on his own network just what the mood is like around Late Show central. However, the rest of both interviews offer a very interesting peak into a life in music that has spanned just about every end of the TV dial and a very funny diversion from Smith's persistent reporter powers to get something out of him about the whole scandal. Something tells me Shaffer would have made one hell of a good press secretary.
It's become the new scandal of the week of the century that just won't go away. Now TVTattle.com has discovered that Stephanie Birkitt, the "former" Late Show employee who had a fling with host David Letterman, is still getting credit in the show's closing credits.
The image above lists Birkitt, the girl who also worked in front of the camera as Vicki the prize girl during the show's "Know Your Current Events" bit, as Letterman's assistant.
Talk about a scandal that literally just won't go away. Of course, there are a number of explanations for this (it's just an inside joke, it was a mistake, etc.) Keep watching the closing credits and see if her name still pops up under the "assistants" slot and be sure to let us know below if you see it.
You knew that after a weekend of blackmail scandal news and tabloid stories, David Letterman wasn't going to open his show on Monday just telling jokes about Chicago losing the Olympics. In fact, he started off the proceedings with a bang, asking the audience, "Did your weekend just fly by?"
Then he proceeded telling some pretty funny jokes about the scandal; he spent the weekend "raking my hate mail," that it was "chilly outside the house and chilly inside the house," and that the next phase is to go on Oprah and sob. He even acknowledged his odd comedic predicament by trailing off on jokes about Bill Clinton, Mark Sanford and Eliot Spitzer, realizing that he's not in the position to poke fun at those folks.
But then, after the break, he sincerely apologized to his staff for putting them through this mess, and said he had a lot of work to do to repair things with his wife, Regina Lasko. It was at that moment (video below) that I realized that Dave needs to stop talking about this mess... immediately:
So just who had the unbelievably huge Mammoth balls to extort late night legend David Letterman? You're looking at him, not his balls thankfully.
Robert "Joe" Halderman, pictured at the right sitting in his unholy beach chair of evil, is the man the Manhattan District Attorney's Office brought extortion charges against for trying to score more than $2 million from Letterman as part of a blackmail plot.
Letterman admitted on the air that he had a sexual encounter or encounters with members of his staff, and that Halderman used the info he had on those encounters as leverage to extort money from him. I've got three to one odds that the "Fire David Letterman" club awards Halderman their "Humanitarian of the Year Award."
I had a really hard time finding an image to include with this article. I went through every newspaper article that had "The Jay Leno Show" in the body of its text. I did searches on Google Images until Google got sick of me clogging their bandwidth. Even my editor Jane Boursaw couldn't use her super press connection powers to find one stinking shot of Jay blowing his nose in between sets from Friday's show.
Perhaps that's because Friday's late night appetizer on NBC wasn't really all that eventful. Don't take that to mean that it was totally dull, drab or boring, just a typical show for Jay and company.
And given some of the past episodes that sucked out loud, there's nothing wrong with being typical. Compared to the Pee Wee Herman debacle, it's a Devil's Tower sized step up.
By now, you've probably heard about David Letterman's affairs with female staffers, and someone's attempt to extort $2 million from him. I watched The Late Show With David Letterman last night and wasn't sure what to expect. He usually confronts these sorts of things right up front, talking directly to his audience and viewers, and he did just that after the opening monologue.
He played it all very light-hearted, saying that the grand jury was probably shocked to learn he was having sex, and that the moment he knew something was amiss, he started thinking about every single bad thing he'd ever done in his life.
The funny thing is, the studio audience just lapped it up, applauding at just about everything Dave said. He didn't say exactly when the affairs happened, but I'm guessing in the not too distant past. He said, "Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would. I feel like I need to protect these people. I need to certainly protect my family."
He married Regina Lasko in March, but they've been together a while, because they have a six-year-old son, Harry. I wonder if Regina will be as forgiving as the studio audience.
NBC must be doing a lot of regretting these days for moving Jay Leno to 10 p.m., and not just because it screws up the perfect headline alliteration with his former competition.
The margins aren't very wide, but it must hurt when a rival is kicking your lily-white hide and he's not even throwing any punches. It's like getting your ass kicked by a one legged Stephen Hawking.
It looks like we've got the makings of a fight on our hands. 
Today I made an executive decision and gave the podcast an oh-so-creative name: "The TV Squad Podcast." This was after we recorded it on Tuesday, so I still refer to it by its old APB name. If you have any suggestions, let me know at tvsquad [at] gmail [dot] com.
It turns out the David Letterman sex scandal hasn't reached its climax. It was just napping. 
Word of our podcast revival must be spreading like an Alaskan oil fire because we've just booked our first celebrity guest...and it's a biggie in my book.
What happened to David Letterman?
That bastion of journalistic excellence, Entertainment Weekly, unveiled their new cover and (surprise!) Letterman made the cover. It features the Late Show host without pants, which in any other context would be the lowest selling issue of EW since Ernest Borgnine forgot to put on underpants. 
One notably close figurehead in David Letterman-gate seems to have gone overlooked, a shiny bald one. 
So just who had the unbelievably huge Mammoth balls to extort late night legend David Letterman? You're looking at him, not his balls thankfully. 
By now, you've probably heard about 
NBC must be doing a lot of regretting these days for moving Jay Leno to 10 p.m., and not just because it screws up the perfect headline alliteration with his former competition. 
Sesame Street's 40th: Five biggest controversies
Press Kits Unwrapped: The Prisoner
Ask TV Squad: Eureka, The Prisoner and more!
