Scottishy Goodness

I finally got around to reading Craig Ferguson's book Between the Bridge and the River over vacation. I've had it since it first came out, but it kind of sat around for a while because I figure that since I own it I can read it anytime, as opposed to things I have checked out of the library and need to return in three weeks. I liked it a lot, although I suppose it isn't for everyone.



I also liked the fact that I finally got to see a new Late Late Show last night. CBS reran his first episode the night before, and I had forgotten how in the beginning it was really still Kilborn's show, just with a new guy reading the cue cards. This article from the The Los Angeles Times elaborates:

If you watched "The Late Late Show" in January—when Ferguson took over from Craig Kilborn, who left in late 2004—you saw Ferguson attempt a standard monologue. And fail. Coming from a role as the zany department-store manager Nigel Wick on "The Drew Carey Show" from 1996 to 2003, the sitcom actor looked uneasy, like a guy pushed onstage at a comedy club's open-mike night. The jokes he told were quick strikes at familiar subjects, and even the show's then-head writer, Hugh Fink, knew it wasn't working. The producers tinkered by cutting the number of jokes, from 12 to 10 to five to three, but the results were the same. Viewers were yawning.

Then, on Jan. 23 this year [2005], Johnny Carson died. "Late Late Show" executive producer Peter Lassally, who had helped mold David Letterman and, before him, Carson, told Ferguson to use his next monologue to share his feelings about the TV icon. Ferguson didn't know Carson, but like everyone else in the country, he felt as if he did. "Johnny Carson," he told the audience, "made America, for me, a small town and just a wee bit less frightening." Something clicked that night; Ferguson relaxed.

By mid-April, he and Lassally made the decision: no more tie and no more monologue jokes. "That's when the show took a real leap forward," Ferguson says.

— "The Late, Late Comer," Marc D. Allan, 18 December 2005

I like the show how it is now, complete with goofy impressions of Michael Caine and Sean Connery. Speaking of Connery: I came across Diamonds Are Forever on Spike the other day. I think I came in during a car chase in Vegas, while he was driving a Ford Mustang around the Strip.

I'm not really a Bond fan, but I was vaguely interested in the car, since it looked like one I saw get auctioned off on the Speed Channel the other day. (My dad and I watched a lot of the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction around New Year's.) I wrote a magazine article once on Bond cars — when the BMW Z3 came out and was used in Goldeneye, I was doing a summer internship of sorts at a magazine for body shop owners — but I don't remember that one. Looks pretty cool, though.