On December 29th, 1997, I, Bill Lehecka, made my fourth trip to the Late Show with David Letterman. The situation surrounding this trip was interesting. It was two days after seeing the Knicks game, and I'd been home from college for about a week. For this trip, I took one of my good friends, Chris "CLV" Verdone. I've always wanted to take CLV to the show, but he's been busy. Finally, he was available. Also, a huge Nor'Easter was coming. It was set up to be an interesting evening.

One of the new aspects of this trip was that I originally received tickets to the show on December 16th. However, I would still be at school taking finals. This time, a number was sent to me if I needed to change my ticket date. I called it, and I changed the date to December 29th. I was instructed to arrive at the Theater at 4:30. Like the previous trips, I drove out to the Huntington Train Station and got the train into Penn Station.

For this trip, I decided to take a side trip to Rupert Jee's Hello Deli. I entered, and noticed how small it was. I went up to Rupert and ordered a Roast Beef Hero. It was tasty, I tell you. CLV didn't eat anything. i asked him if he wanted anything, and he said no. We then made our way to the front doors of the Ed Sullivan Theater to pick up our tickets. I was instructed to go to the side entrance. I went over there, and was further instructed to go to the Roseland Theater across the street. This was odd to me. But once I made my way over there, I realized that EVERYONE was waiting in here. I thought it was because of the Nor'Easter coming. Below is a picture of CLV waiting amongst the chaos. We finally waited in line to get our tickets.

Because of the impending storm, CLV and I waited inside the
Roseland Theater across the street.

We were given old Standby tickets while waiting in line. The color of that show's tickets was supposed to be pink, but we got the white standby ticket, as seen above. We then were instructed to go to the theater single file. At this time, it was raining pretty hard. The storm was coming. We got into the the theater quick, and we were seated accordingly.

We were seated in the same exact section I was always seated, on the floor, band side. I was very frustrated by this because this is the only perspective of the show I've seen in person. But I was happy to get out of the cold. The preshow started off the same way as usual. Eddie Brill came out to warm up the audience. The video was "Dave Talks to Kids" again. The preshow went as normal, the band came out, Paul came out, then Dave came out. Dave told us about the Nor'Easter coming, and he advised us we might have to sleep over. We chuckled. The question before the show was some guy asking what type of legal cigar Dave recommends, but the show was about to start, not enough time to answer the man's question. The show went on as usual.

The Side of the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Dave did his monologue without a hitch. Something funny, though, happened during the show. Dave all of a sudden changed his jacket into a white jacket. It was like seeing the old Dave all over again. I forget the comedy bits, oddly. The guests were Bridget Fonda, Matt Damon, and Allan Havey. With Bridget Fonda, she and Dave rarely spoke to each other during the commercial breaks. The whole interview was lacking. The audience was sleeping during this point. The second guest, Matt Damon, was excellent. He at least showed some life out there. Allan Havey was a good comic, as well.

This is the phone bank the show uses sometimes to get people
off the street for a comedy bit.

Well, the show ended, and we were ushered out. It was really raining out now, and CLV and I were looking for cover from the storm. We went into Joe G.'s Pizza (AKA DaValentino Pizza) and I had a couple of slices, which were excellent. After our meal, we went out again.It was raining so hard, everything got wet (which explains the condition of the ticket above.) We decided to make phone calls back home. In the photo pictured at the right, CLV uses the phone bank Dave has used in various skits during his tenure at LS. All in all, Chris and I enjoyed the trip. Granted it wasn't what I have been through in the past, it's always fun to take friends to the show. On to the New Year's Eve show, or do we?