Cold Open: Dave and Paul in the dressing room before the show.
Paul: "Thanks for the Christmas present, Dave. It was such a surprise."
Dave: "You're welcome, Paul."
Paul opens box to reveal a Christmas ornament.
Paul: "Yeah, I was especially surprised because you've known me 25 years and forgot I'm Jewish, you stupid, stupid 'givl.'"
Paul throws the ornament against the mirror and exits.
Dave: calling out to Paul, "Happy Hanukkah."

Dave says he lost his cool before the show, calling some kid in the audience a name. To make up for it, Dave gives him some gifts from under the Christmas tree.

It's Tuesday night and time to head over to Rupert's. Tonight we will be playing "What's On The I-Pod." While Rupert finds a contestant, we will continue with the show.

Dave spent the weekend watching some New York football. The surprising New York Jets continue to perform better than anyone expected and Coach Mangini has the team knocking on the door of the playoffs. The Giants, on the other hand, have been a disappointment. They had a great start, lost 4 in a row, won a game and then lost one. Rumors are circulating about players and coaches. One of Dave's assistant's went to the Giant game this weekend and saw something quite revealing about the team.
Dave phones his office and Stephanie answers. Dave greets her with, "Hey, how are you doing, Underpants"? After some small talk, Stephanie hands the phone to Amanda. Dave asks Amanda what she saw at the Meadowlands on Sunday. Amanda says she went to the stadium after the game around 8:00 PM. Dave asks, "Why after the game? You mean you didn't see the game?" Amanda explains she went after the game to support the football players. So what did she see? Amanda saw a lot of the players in the parking lot just hanging out. And then she saw Jeremy Shockey and Plaxico Burress chasing the head coach Tom Coughlin around the parking lot . . . chasing him with one of those air pumps. They were calling out to him, "Come here, grandma!" Coach Coughlin's reaction? He just quacked like a duck. Very odd. Does Amanda know what the problem is with the Giants this season? She thinks there's been too much horseplay. I think Amanda may be right.

The latest installment of the "Rocky" series opens tomorrow. It's getting tremendous reviews. Have you seen the promos they've been running?
Rocky footage - Announcer: "The greatest underdog of our time is back for one final round. Against all odds, Rocky takes on his toughest challenge yet . . . the Knicks! 'Rocky Balboa.' In theaters everywhere tomorrow."

Are you folks fans of the holiday classic, "It's A Wonderful Life"? Dave watches it every Christmas. This year, NBC has restored some previously unseen footage. We watch some of the newly found scenes from the film.
We see Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dancing in the school gym. The gym floor begins to open unbeknownst to Stewart and Reed which we see has a swimming pool underneath. They continue to dance and then suddenly fall into the open pool. I've seen all that before. What came next caught me completely by surprise. We see Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in the pool and then they are attacked by a ferocious shark. Poor Jimmy is bitten in half.
I can see why they cut this scene from the film.

OK, back to Rupert's and "What's On The IPod?" With Rupert is Ann Griggs of Arlington, Virginia. She is in New York visiting her mom. Ann says she enjoys the popular music, which is a great advantage when playing "What's On The IPod."
How to play: 1. Rupert will sing along to a song he has loaded up on his IPod.
2. Ann will have 30 seconds to guess the song.
3. Hint: the song is currently in the Top Ten of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Time to play. We hear from Alan the song Rupert will be singing.
In a whisper, he says, "Money Maker" by Ludicris, featuring Pharrell.
Everything is set. The 30-second clock goes up. Rupert places the ear phones into his ears and turns on the IPod. After a few seconds, Rupert begins to sing . . . . . "Money Maker. . . . ." DOH!!! How could we have "Money Maker" cued up to the spot where the very first thing Rupert will sing is "Money Maker"? The rest was easy for Ann of Arlington. After 30 seconds of Rupert's warbling, Ann correctly guesses the song: "Shake Your Money Maker." Ann wins, and she gets a back massager in addition to the Hello Deli deli platter.

TOP TEN: Ways the Knicks Can Improve Their Image
#6. Do what Kobe does --- start handing out diamond rings.

BEYONCE KNOWLES: She goes with Knowles when she's acting. You can see Beyonce in the sure-to-be-a-hit "Dreamgirls". It opens nationwide on Christmas day.
What is Beyonce doing for Christmas? She'll be going back home to Houston for a big dinner. Her mom likes making her Cajun turkey but Beyonce wants her to try the deep-fried bird. She's had it before and finds it the best. Dave has heard about deep-frying a turkey but the only thing he knows about it is that it's extremely dangerous. A big pot of boiling oil is an invitation for trouble. I've had the deep-fried turkey and I agree with Beyonce; there's none better.
Does Beyonce like to cook? She likes to cook but she isn't very good at it. She ran in to trouble trying to cook some frozen French fries. The fries had gone frostbite and when she heated them up, she burnt them. They ended up burnt like a charcoal briquette. She was kicked out of the kitchen for good.
Beyonce just returned from a trip to Africa, where she performed and worked to raise awareness of the world's water crisis and to help bring water to places in Africa in desperate need.
Beyonce was just nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical, for "Dreamgirls." The word on the film is boffo.

MARV ALBERT: He's the voice of the New Jersey Nets and is a sportscaster for the NBA and the NFL.
Dave has a beef about the NFL. He went to the opening game this year at the Meadowlands, the Giants against his Colts. Dave was stunned and disappointed at the amount of time the players stand around doing nothing. There is no continuity; no consistency. There is just too much standing around! In hockey, there is non-stop action. In soccer, there is non-stop action. In football, there are 22 guys standing around. "It is not the game we are led to believe!" cried Dave. I knew what Dave meant and agreed immediately. Marv, on the other hand, took a few minutes before he got a grasp of what Dave was getting at. Marv thought that Dave didn't like how the players stood around BEFORE the game. No no no no. If you have ever gone to an NFL game, you will see exactly what Dave described and it's all because of the TV Timeouts. The worst is when a team scores. After the field goal or touchdown there are a slew of commercials. Come back for the kickoff, which is often downed in the end zone, and you get another slew of commercials. And if a touchdown or field goal is scored near the two-minute warning, well then you're screwed. That's another bunch of commercials. I imagine the NFL hates it when a team scores right at the two-minute warning. I wonder what they do then? And with so many TV Timeouts and situational lineup changes, I can't understand how a player ever gets tired? And why is it when the offense goes on a long drive, the announcers always say the defense is getting tired, but never mentions the offense? Aren't they on the field just as long working just as hard?
What does Marv Albert think about the Terrell Owen/spitting at another player incident? Marv says first Terrell admitted it. And now, after someone got to him to suggest he change his story, Terrell is saying if it did take place it was an accident. An accident? What, accidentally spitting in someone's face like a Charles Nelson Reilly type of accidental spit? No, doesn't make sense to me. That excuse don't wash.
And what about the Knicks debacle? Marv says the Knicks have been a disaster for the past 6-7 years with terrible trades, terrible draft picks, and incredibly over the salary cap. Or does Dave want to know what Marv thinks about the brawl the other night? Yes, Marv, the brawl. Marv likens the donnybrook to the Pacers/Pistons fight a few years back. Dave blames the owners and the beer sales for that.
Beer sales . . . TV Timeouts during the NFL games . . . it's all about the same thing . . . to get more money out of our pockets and more into their's.
Before going to commercial, Dave remarks to Marv concerning his striped suit: "What are they doing, 'Guys and Dolls' again?"

And then we get to see Marv Albert's Best of the 2006 Sports Bloopers. I always enjoy these. In fact, I'm a sucker for any of those funny video shows. Heck, I even stop clicking the remote when I come across that Bob Saget show with the funny home videos. They always work for me. I love those, yet I hate the funny video shows that are set-up, like Punk'd and the Kennedy Experiment. They make me uncomfortable.

Act 5: "Today is December 19th, so remember: There are only five shopping days left until 'WKRP in Cincinnati' star Gary Sandy's birthday. What are you waiting for? Get going, America! We'll be right back."

THE DEARS: From their current CD, "Gang of Losers," The Dears from Montreal performed "Hate Then Love."

And that was our show for Tuesday, December 19, 2006.



Lead story in Tuesday's noon-time ABC news: Miss USA will retain her tiara and head to rehab. Phew! And I thought we had a war going on.

Finally! Boxing returns to the Garden.

It's a week before Christmas. Was there really any doubt that a guy named "Yul" would win Survivor?

Even though the New York Knicks are still a bad team, they are doing better than I expected. And I am happy they seem to be getting younger. And this is the time they usually make a terrible trade to put them deeper into the salary cap hole. That's why I expect them to sign Jon Koncak any day now.

Imagine if Bush was a woman or a minority. It would be decades before America elected another one as President.

Names of Things You Never Knew Had Names
FEAT - A dangling curl of hair.
FERRULE - The metal band on a pencil that holds the eraser in place.
HARP - The small metal hoop that supports a lampshade.
HEMIDEMISEMIQUAVER - A 64th note. (A 32nd is a demisemiquaver, and a 16th note is a semiquaver.)
JARNS, NITTLES, GRAWLIX and QUIMP - Various squiggles used to denote cussing in comic books

Hopefully the final chapter has been written about my kitchen sink. A while back I needed to put in a new faucet. I changed it, no problem. I soon discovered that the faucet didn't swivel. It was stationary. How can you wash a big pot in the sink if the faucet doesn't swivel to the left or the right? So we complained and the company admitted to getting a lot of complaints about it and it was a mistake in the design. They would send us a new model. A few weeks later I got the new model. I again put the new faucet in, no problem. But I felt I needed to tighten something underneath just a smidgen more. And that 1/8 of a turn led to complete disaster. The slight twist broke the drainpipe underneath the sink. To fix that, something else broke. After a few trips to Lowe's, more problems were met. I now needed new tools and new stuff for the sink. This went on all day. I eventually took the entire sink out and drove it over to my brother-in-law's. He did what was needed in this one particular step. When I got home with the sink, I finished the job. All that work was caused by my making that last 1/8 turn. And then there was the soap dispenser that came with the original faucet. It never worked properly. I found it easier just to take out the nozzle from the dispenser and wipe the soapy tube on the sponge. I knew I could live with this for a little while but I also knew it would one day get on my nerves and I would explode. That day came last week. Another phone call was made to the company. They admitted to getting a lot of complaints about it and it was a mistake in the design. They would send us a new model. A few days later, the ne soap dispenser came. I put it in and it works fine. And I now wonder why all this had to happen in the first place? Why can't the sink-people do it right the first time. If they have a product that stinks, don't ship it out. They figured it would be better FOR THEM to send out their faulty faucets and send replacements when the complaints came in. But I have that company-name burned into my brain and I will never buy from them again. So there! Oh, and after the initial problem with the faulty faucet, I went back to Lowe's and wrote with a permanent marker on the price display for the faucet: "Don't Buy This Product." I then browsed the outdoor home products. Before going home 20 minutes later, I went back to the faucets to admire my note on the price display. I was very happy to see the price display gone along with the all the faulty faucets. That was very satisfying. They knew the product was no good, but they did nothing until it was brought out in the open. Is that anyway to run a business? l.