Once more into the late late breach
My appearance on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, on Friday 2/19.
This is the second time I’ve done Craig’s show, and clearly (and flatteringly) he enjoys it as much as I do. I get the sense from him and his producers that he doesn’t really like the standard late night chat show stuff… asking starlets about their latest film, etc. He’d much rather come up with amusing random nonsense, and since so do I, we get along. I think he was doing what I was doing, which was counting up the amount and variety of cultural and literal references we could cram into the five minutes allotted.
By the way, on the way out, I realized that Newton’s First Law of Motion was really, of course, “Chicks did the long ball.”
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Getting in the second law was simply a moment of true beauty. Well played.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Wow - Copernicus, Thermodynamics (Maximum Entropy), T. Swift…J. Swift, Confederacy of Dunces, and the infamous “ball” vaccum spelling out surrender Osama somewhere out in the desert! Who else could talk about such a variety of subjects and make us laugh SO much! You are brilliantly funny! You held your own with the “Cheeky Monkey”.
I am glad that you got to appear on the Late Late Show during it’s “Twitter” phase, because I think that twitter may have caused folks to take a second (or even a first) glance at WWDTM and your work. I know that it did for me. “Heck I’m online anyway, might as well take a look”, I said. And I am glad that I did because I simply am overjoyed that someone else out there thinks about “amusing random nonsense” like I do! There is nothing I like better than intelligent people talking about any and everything…I learn something…I laugh…and I have a great time! Thank you for that!
Sincerely,
Cathy
(AKA @cathyheath43 on twitter - See? Twitter is good for something after all, huh? LOL)
February 24th, 2010 at 6:22 am
Peter-
Fantastic! Quite witty! So, I will dive right in—
Would you please do a brief email interview for our running blog? We, of course, love Wait, Wait and we thoroughly enjoy your writing about running—–
www.aboldpace.com
February 24th, 2010 at 9:29 am
I’m a fan of Craig’s and I’m appreciate his intentional ripping up of the question card at the beginning of every interview. He’s not going to ask for the interviewee’s prepared anecdote, he’s just going to talk to them about stuff. Just like Stephen Colbert’s style, sometimes this works out great, and sometimes it flops, but it’s really good when it does work, much better than standard late night style.
February 24th, 2010 at 11:37 am
It’s always a treat to see which guests can step it up and play Craig’s game. No surprise that Peter thrives there. But who knew Gabourey Sibide (”Precious”) was so damn funny?
February 24th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
I’m a big fan of Craig’s but I think he’s never better than when he’s in good company, which has been definitely the case the couple of times you’ve been on the show. He recently did a no-audience one-hour long interview with Stephen Fry and it was excellent. I have already emailed the show suggessting they do it again having you as the guest. Would you be interested in doing something like this? I think it would be great!
February 25th, 2010 at 10:57 am
You’re perfect for that show. Craig is by far the most entertaining and intriguing guy on late night TV. And you’re right - he doesn’t do the regular butt-kiss Q&A with the actor/actress flavor-of-the-week. It’s actually pretty entertaining, in a wicked way, to watch a hollywood-type who doesn’t get it. The very fact that he did one show the other night, a la Tom Snyder, one guest, no audience makes me want to watch. Change is good.
February 25th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I recall the nearest you got to science at Harvard was Physics for Poets, or maybe a biology survey course by Stephen Jay Gould (who left us much too young). Where did you learn so much about entropy, and especially about advanced concepts like the effect of young chidren on increasing entropy in the universe?
March 5th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Peter: you and Craig are a guest/host match made in heaven. despite all of craig’s protestations of having left school in the 8th grade, he is incredibly erudite, or at least willing to entertain he knows some stuff, doesn’t know a lot of stuff, and is willing to be schooled by his guests. I think YOU should be the second “experimental” guest (the first being Stephen Fry–[ooh la la] brilliant!
if you haven’t seen them: craig’s monologue eulogy to his father [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJWlNPq0ftM ] and his mother [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-6FLb3je4g ] are [aye carumba] funny and sad and touching. his apology to britney spears [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bbaRyDLMvA ] is…. i have no words.
i like following both @petersagal and @craigyferg on my twitter….
March 9th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
I liked that you represented for Chicago by wearing a Marshall Fields jacket!
March 20th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
You did miss “draw a line in the sand”, but other than that… nice work.