"gesundheit"

Friday's Late Show marks a milestone for David Letterman. It will be 20 years to the day since Letterman made his late night debut, as host of Late Night on NBC. He moved to CBS in 1993. Friday's show will mark Letterman's 3,558th broadcast.

20 years. The prince of late night, second only to Carson (Johnny), pre-taped and almost legal. Yeah, he's not likable, even misanthropic, but without Letterman, there'd be no Conan or Stewart, and as for Leno, well, how can you respect a guy whose entire comedic repertoire consists of pointing out typos in newspapers and mocking public stupidity? Letterman has always been America's reliable anti-host. Over the span of two decades, he's given us top ten lists and stupid human tricks infinito, modeled special suits like the nacho cheese suit, convinced us that Larry "Bud" Melman was a real person, played unsuspecting victim to the now infamous secretly staged fight between Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler, sent his mom to the Olympics, asked us if we wanted to buy a monkey, survived Madonna and quadruple-bypass heart surgery, executive produced Everybody Loves Raymond and Ed, publicly challenged Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush, lead the way in humorously dealing with September 11…and he's still here, still concluding our broadcast day, better than ever, and not giving a fuck as only he can do. Here's to you, Dave.