Domino Guy on Letterman - Real or Not?

Wow, I hate being so jaded that I have to question everything I see, but that's how they want us to be, isn't it?

The other night I was sitting on the couch in the den while Sparky fiddled in his room at the front of the house and we were both watching David Letteman on two TVs. I don't usually actually sit and watch Dave except for his monologue, I usually listen to him from my office (I don't have a TV in there, we only have three televisions in our house). But there was a guy setting up dominos which is always cool to see, and Al Franken was going to be on so I got lucky and was actually watching the TV at the right time.

Dave was at his desk, doing his pre-guest part of the show, when suddenly someone started shouting off camera and Dave started looking around. I thought, OK, it's another weird comedy bit, they've been doing some weird ones lately - a guy runs on stage and a cop chases him and shoots him, and (I think this was on Letteman, I only watch him and Conan), someone dangles off of the balcony for no reason. And then there was the Monkey Calling bit... But then again, I actually saw David eat a charcoal briqette, so you never know.

But the domino guy's dominos had suddenly started toppling over before he was finished setting them up. So Paul and the orchestra started up the official 'domino toppling' music (click on Sabre Dance) that's been used for years on everyone from Johnny Carson to Conan O'Brien (he uses it for the Masturbating Bear skit). But the guy shouts at Paul 'No, stop the music!' and is grabbing frantically for the dominoes in vain, but the whole display is going over all at once. So the guy throws himself into the middle of the set-up and starts flailing around, which actually looks really painful but he seems more embarrassed than injured. And nicely in time with the whole fiasco, the band plays along with the chaos.

While I'm watching this I'm shouting across the house to my husband "Is that real?". If it is, it's a fabulous bit of comedy, worthy of anniversary show re-run (and now DVD) status. But I'm honestly not sure. Dave kept up with the premise that it was real and the poor guy tried to reset some of the dominoes while throughout the show. But it bothers me that I have to question something as funny as that. But while looking up info to post about this, I found another forum where they were disputing the same thing.

We used to accept everything (in context, at least) we saw on TV as being real, but since the growth of reality TV I tend to dismiss everything as being faked which is really very sad. But people will really do anything to be on TV, or for a laugh, even if they injure themselves to do it. And with the invention of Photoshop, you can't trust much of anything anymore. Fake photos, fake news, fake politicans (OK, that's nothing new).

But I dunno, I want to believe it was real. Not that it matters in any scale, it just bugs me that our whole world is weird now that we can't trust our perception about anything, everything is either a scam, a joke or propaganda.

Posted by Morticia at March 17, 2006 05:13 AM