From the home office in Wahoo, Nebraska, it's "Top 10 reasons why the soon-to-retire David Letterman's 4am episode remains one of my favorite Late Show eps"

10. The Top 10 List for May 14, 2004 was read by people working the graveyard shift.

9. I was too young to stay up and watch NBC's Late Night with David Letterman when it first aired. But I grew up watching the soon-to-retire Letterman's CBS show (if the words "Happy Da Birthday Ve" or "Dave and Steve's Gay Vacation" don't make you smile, you're clearly a Leno fan), and the May 14, '04 episode with Amy Sedaris and musical guest Modest Mouse, which Letterman taped earlier that morning at 4am in front of an amazingly awake (but not really amazing to most of New York) Ed Sullivan Theater studio audience, was the closest Late Show has gotten to recapturing the weirdness of Letterman's Late Night years.

8. Unless I'm mistaken, Late Show remains the only late-night talk show that ever taped an episode at 4am. "We thought it would be cool, just something different to try... The city is always interesting, but particularly interesting at 4am," said Late Show executive producer Rob Burnett to USA Today in '04 about the show's one-time decision to switch from Letterman's usual late-afternoon recording time to an ungodly hour.

7. Letterman made one of his grandest entrances by riding on horseback to the Ed, to the tune of Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra's rendition of John Barry's Midnight Cowboy instrumental theme. An underrated John Barry movie theme as walk-on music on a late-night talk show! Shaffer's walk-on music choices have occasionally been questionable (he once soundtracked black SNL cast member Ellen Cleghorne's entrance with "Jimmy Crack Corn," a song about a black slave, and then claimed it was because "Cleghorne" sounded to him like "Crack Corn"--I'm not making this up), but otherwise, they've always been clever, and I'm going to miss that part of the show, as well as Letterman's wit and snarkiness.

6. I stopped liking Sedaris ever since Angry Asian Man wrote in 2009 about her history of doing this, but the 4am show was worthwhile also because it featured the frequent Late Show guest, who wasn't accustomed to being in front of a camera at 4am, at her loopiest.

5. Shaffer soundtracked the porno video store part of Sedaris' 4am walking tour of her Greenwich Village neighborhood with the Vince Guaraldi Trio classic "Cast Your Fate to the Wind."

4. There was a segment about catching rats in Manhattan.

3. The rat expert's reply to Letterman's question about why he studied rats was "Because I hate them."

(Photo source: National Geographic Creative)

2. Everyone in the studio audience received an Egg McMuffin. I don't care for Mickey D's, but the only worthwhile part of the Mickey D's menu is its breakfast items. Want to scare away a hipster? Hurl Egg McMuffins at him.

1. Fucking Midnight Cowboy theme, y'all!

Speaking of John Barry, his score cues from The Knack... And How to Get It, The Persuaders, From Russia with Love, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Living Daylights can be heard during "AFOS Prime," from 4pm to 9pm Pacific and 11pm to 7am Pacific, Monday-Wednesday on AFOS.

Drums, please!

This week, Late Show with David Letterman is presenting its first-ever "Drum Solo Week," a series of shows in which Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra will put the spotlight on legendary drummers and percussionists like Sheila E., Roy Haynes and the CBS Orchestra's own Anton Fig. Because of "Drum Solo Week," it's time to revisit a killer two-minute drum solo that opens "Come Maddalena (Like Maddalena)," a cue from Ennio Morricone's lush score to Maddalena, an obscure 1971 Italian art-house movie in which, according to IMDb, Lisa Gastoni "takes the title role in uninhibited, full frontal nudity fashion" and falls in love with "a priest in doubt over his vocation." I've never seen Maddalena--I assume it's like The Thorn Birds, but without that creepy "he first knew her when she was a little girl" thing.

The soloist at the start of "Come Maddalena" is Morricone's frequent drummer during the '60s and '70s, Vincenzo Restuccia. His terrific drum work is also the highlight of "L'Ultimo," a Morricone instrumental that first appeared on the 1970 album Ideato, Scritto e Diretto da Ennio Morricone and was, according to a page about the 1970 LP, "composed for an unrealesed [sic] film whose title has been forgotten by Morricone himself." (I wonder why Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi didn't hire Restuccia as their percussionist during the recording of their Rome homage to '60s and '70s Italian film scores. Restuccia would have been perfect for that project.)

The groovetastic "L'Ultimo" sounds like something Marcello Mastroianni would have played in his convertible while driving around 1969 Rome with his 10th Victim stunna shades on.

My three favorite holiday traditions return tonight

For me, Christmas ain't Christmas without three things: 1) Paul Shaffer doing his hysterical impression of Cher singing "O Holy Night," 2) Jay Thomas telling an anecdote about an encounter with Lone Ranger star Clayton Moore, followed by Thomas trying to knock a giant meatball off the top of a Christmas tree with a football, and 3) Darlene Love performing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."

One of the suckiest things about the writer's strike was that it led to Late Show with David Letterman not being able to do its annual Christmas edition last year. Tonight, Cher and her muff, Thomas and Love are back.