They Pelted Us With Rocks and Garbage

David Letterman said goodbye to his 33-year talk show career last week with a great finale. It's very strange now to see reruns of "The Mentalist" airing in the 11:35 slot on CBS each night in place of Letterman. I don't know why they couldn't have just aired classic episodes of The Late Show until Stephen Colbert makes his debut as the host on Sept. 8, but I guess there was some sort of stupid rights reason for the whole thing. Still, extremely off-putting, to say the least.

I went on in detail four years ago about my history with Letterman and how much he meant to me as a comedy influence growing up, so I won't rehash it now. Especially since there's been approximately 3,792 think pieces written over the last month about the man and his massive impact on comedy and the attitude of a generation.

I didn't watch the show much the last few years, but for me, the NBC Late Night period from 1982-1993 was the stuff. Thank Jeebus for YouTube, so we can still watch classic bits on demand. Even though he's not on TV anymore, there's still plenty to watch if you want to.




And some great human has posted entire episodes, which is the best goddamn thing ever:
Holy crap, here's the full first episode of NBC's Late Night: