A Cure for My Malady: Sending to Dave

Someone once said that if you can't seem to do something and you're ready to give up, just do it. Well, I took their advice, whoever they are. I've finally sent.

Yesterday, I sent Dave this whole book, including a brief but direct cover letter (see below). It's true! This is probably the only true statement in the whole book. I tricked a neighbor lady into delivering it with her mail. But that's not the point. The point is, I sent. Now I'm waiting.

Remember when I was just postulating, speculating about my expectations concerning sending - the interview, the huge petition, the head writer's job, the walk-ons - all that? Well, now that I've actually sent something, my expectations are much greater.

My ascent to head writing will be much quicker and less tortured than I first imagined. I've sent the letter/book. Two days from now, the Letterman lawyers'll be calling me to offer the head writing spot. Naturally, I'll take it, and my first change will be to put Dave in suspenders and short-shorts. This change will revolutionize the show, and I'll gain national acclaim as the golden boy of TV comedy. Vanna will hire me (on the side) to spruce up her image, and I'll make her dress up as a can of fruit cocktail, with 2 cherries for eyes. Another tremendous success. Soon, my client list will include such megastars as Michael Bolton, Mickey Rooney, and Sade. Dave will be denying reports that my income exceeds his, but he'll gain a sudden interest in endorsing pet products and that stuff mechanics use to degrease their hands.

As the new toast of New York, I'll be on speaking terms with Bryant Gumbel and Willard Scott, and Murphy Brown will do a whole show on how I save the world from a plague of locusts by dressing Murphy up as a giant locust-vacuum. In six months, I'll amass a wearying pile of awards and back-slappings. I'll be bigger than the Beatles, and with better hair. I'll bet you a dollar.


My Acceptance Speech at the Emmys:

[humbly approaching the podium]

"Well thank you, Woody, Hillary. Boy, I don't know where to begin.

[pause, in awe]

"Standing here, holding this award, looking out at you all, I am reminded of a remark General Robert E. Lee made on the eve of his greatest victory: "A single battle is but a fleeting achievement. But de-pantsing all your enemies afterward is an accomplishment you'll cherish always." I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'd like everyone in the audience to take off their pants. Pass them down to the right there, and lay them in the aisles. I'll wait.

[pause two minutes, more if the Fat Boys are in attendance]

"All right, now. Woody, would you go through the pockets, and get all the change for me? No, leave Pee Wee's pants alone. I'm not hurting that bad.

Let me tell you a story to take your mind off the cameras. Just pretend they're not there. When I was about 12, I think it was, I remember seeing Dolly Parton at a fundraiser that was being held in our town. And I remember thinking to myself, "That's what I want to be. A big-chested woman with too much makeup." It never happened, but that's not the point. The point is that you have to go to fundraisers, because they help people. Don't you see? Don't you see that fundraisers can make dreams come true? If I had had a fundraiser to help me get my writing on TV, I'd never have had to prostitute myself by writing a book and sending it to David Letterman, and then waiting like a sheep for Dave to make his Almighty judgement on my television worthiness. I could have held my head up high, written a bunch of teenybopper slop and drivel, and be standing here before you tonight without having to go through all the hard work and disappointment. I'm surprised at you all. You selfish, selfish 'celebrity' personalities with your diamonds and Mercedes, just letting me waste all that time struggling under the weight of school loans and credit card debt, when a simple telethon or all-star gala could have provided me salvation. Screw you all.

[while being led away] "No, I'm sick of it..."


Life Goes On: After My Career With Dave

Naturally, Dave'll want me to retire with him, like that other guy and his partner did. But naturally, I'll be looking for something more, an ever-greater challenge.

Sure, I'll have loved the perks this life has offered me: taking as long as I damn well please at the drinking fountain, meeting Joan Embry of the San Diego zoo (without paying admission), having other people load my staples, being approached for donations by groups like Up With People, getting paired with someone unknown (but really smart) for the $10,000 Pyramid, having the authority to call the cops on my quiet elderly neighbors "because they're making too damn much noise", writing self-indulgent books while in a drunken stupor and having people dub them "witty and insightful", being congratulated on posing for a nudie mag, having researchers from tabloids and detective agencies go through my trash, keeping my car washed, having hundreds of thousands of plastic action figures of my likeness being bashed around by kids the world over. It's enough to make you swoon.

But damnit, I've got responsibilities to the world. I promised my third grade teacher, when he used to keep me after school, that one day I'd come back and put in a really nice room for kids who had to stay after school, and it would have Nintendo® and a big screen TV and a superheroes playhouse and no grownups would be allowed in and you could eat whatever you wanted and spit it on the floor. Also, I promised my reverend I'd build him a new church, to replace the one he said he lost somewhere in a bus station (he thinks). Actually, I've never seen him in a church. He was always just outside in the park, screaming at people. Hm.

Anyway, besides the good works, I'd want to have my own TV show. Not a talk show, but a sitcom. Norman Lear would produce it, and it would involve me and my parents' old garage, and it would be a buddy cop kind of thing. We'd wander the streets looking for crime, and we'd trap criminals by telling them that there was a lock that worked on every single jail door in the world, and it was inside the garage. I want Whitman Mayo to do the voice of the garage.

Then, after a good 10-year run with The Garage and I, I'd move on to do my own Sunday night movie and maybe then go for the ultimate prize in television entertainment: voice-overs for commercials. That's when you're big-time.

TV leads to other things, and my political career would be almost as legendary as that guy from Love Boat's. I'd get into some really big scandals, and misappropriate things, and just generally go nuts there in our nation's capital. Then, without a word, I'd leave D.C. one day in an RV and create my own mobile ministry. I'd go on to develop a cure for antibiotics, and write one of the all-time great Russian novels, and then I'd retire.

Oh it all sounds so grand, so ethereal, so impossible. But it might just happen, you know. Stranger things have been known. This is America. You can do anything here. In America, people send things to other people in the mail, and it gets to them, usually intact. In America, a guy named David Letterman could rise up from the ranks of weatherman, develop his own unique brand of humor and stick himself to walls with velcro. In America, a skinny little glasses-wearing, hairline receding, working-in-a-library-for-the-past-four-years-cuz-I-went- crazy-on-my-Visa-one-year-and-can't-pay-it-off kid from the suburbs could even become a star. Or maybe he'll just get sued.


The Letter I (Finally) Sent to Dave



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