First time he’s skipped school in 20 years
See, I don’t know why they say this in the news. His heart surgery was indeed a sick leave. That was the first time he’d been off since he came on the air(except vacation, of course).
By the way, he hasn’t had eye surgery, just had something a little off with his eye.
What was really interesting is that earlier in the evening the Trio network played Bruce’s very first appearance on Letterman.
What? You didn’t know that Trio (“the arts network”) is re-airing “Classic Dave” every night? Yes, that’s right, back when the Top Ten list was a silly little thing tossed off right after the monologue, back when Dave still sometimes wore sneakers, back when Paul had hair.
Anyway, they replayed Bruce (who also had hair) when he was promoting “Moonlighting” in 1985, well before “Die Hard” was a gleam in anybody’s eye. I don’t know if it was a coincidence or if they specifically grabbed that one out of the vault knowing he’d be the guest host later, but it was really fun to see him 18 years younger as a young buck and then again today as an established megastar. What was really interesting is that in his first appearance as a guest, he kept asking Dave, “How’m I doin’?” whenever one of his anecdotes didn’t draw the expected laugh from the audience, and then in his stint as guest host he repeated the same question to Paul a couple of times.
As far as how he did as guest host, it was entertaining, though clearly seat-of-the-pants stuff. jackelope is exactly right: Dave makes it look easy. I can’t imagine how much pressure one must feel being obliged to fill 45 minutes of high-rent broadcast time even once, let alone night after night after night. Bruce did okay, but it was pretty obvious just how much work was involved.
As far as a one-time lark, I liked it fine. Not sure if it would be a good idea to repeat the experiment, though.
(I must say, however, that I would have conducted a better interview of Dan Rather on the Saddam thing. That was the sole major disappointment of the night.)
In short, while I can think of a hundred celebrities who would have done a better job than Bruce (say, Billy Crystal), I can think of a thousand who would have been a lot worse (e.g., Whitney Houston). Basically, I gotta give Bruce respect for being willing to catch such a huge hail-mary ball on such short notice.
Agh! I missed THIS???