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Letterman's Best Joke

Last night I turned on the Late Show with David Letterman* on in the middle of a pleasantly not-annoying interview with Nicole Ritchie. At the end of the interview, Letterman said that his next guest after the commercial break would be Artie Lange. I'm a fan, so I decided to stick around. That is when I was taken hostage by CBS. Here is a timeline of what I watched, waiting for Artie:

     1:00 - Levitra - Good timing. Between Ritchie and Lange, no erection for a week.
     0:15 - Mastercard
     0:15 - OnStar with Kelly Ripa
     0:30 - Surf's Up
     0:15 - Big Brother 8 promo - 8! I didn't even know that was still on here.
     0:30 - Verizon something or other, with a Fantastic 4/Silver Surfer tie in
     0:30 - Terminix - Is that Jack McBrayer playing a cabinet?
     0:30 - Verizon FiOS
     1:30 - Abe Lincoln Movie Reviews - An actual segment.
     0:30 - Ford F-15 Trucks - They claim to have stronger engine bolts. Convincing!
     0:30 - A real estate agency that I've never heard of.**
     0:10 - Late Late Show promo
     0:20 - Pirate Master promo - Seriously? It's like a prank on the cast and audience.
     0:30 - hotels.com
     0:15 - Norelco
     0:15 - Pirates of the Carribean 3 - Sorry, Johnny. I'm going to watch Pirate Master.
     0:20 - CSI promo
     0:30 - Tuberculosis Traveler - A segment brought to you by Black & Decker.
     0:30 - MetLife
     0:30 - Mazda CX-9
     0:30 - Die Hard 4
     0:30 - iPhone
     0:30 - expedia.com
     0:20 - AFI's 100 Greatest Movies promo
     0:05 - Late Show bumper - Did you forget the show?
     0:30 - Iams pet food

That's twelve minutes of ads in between the Nicole Ritchie interview and the Artie Lange interview. Out of those 12 minutes of "programming," 8:30 were commercials, 1:25 were in-house promotion, and 2:05 were Late Show. Of the 2:05 that was actually the Late Show, 35 seconds were really commercials.

I have no idea how anybody could regularly watch this show without an assist from a DVR.

* NB: I would kill someone unimportant at Eddie Brill's request to be booked on Letterman. This may turn out to be a very bad idea.

** I got the time down by rewinding on my DVR and retaping with my camcorder. I was only taping for timestamps and didn't focus well enough to see the name of the agency. Not that you care.