♪♪
-Last "Corrections" of March.
So, I started our last "Corrections"
welcoming back Shoemaker,
who had been out with a leg injury.
I welcomed him back by singing a few lines
from Eminem's classic song "Without Me."
It was pointed out to me that if I was
true to those lyrics, I would have said,
"Guess who's back.
Back again.
Shoemaker's back.
Tell a friend.
Guess who's back, guess who's back."
I knew that.
I have historically -- While I love that song,
I have had an issue with those lyrics,
because Eminem tells us, "Shady's back,"
but then continues asking us to guess who's back.
It's a little bit like...
♪ "Guess which hand" ♪
♪ It's this hand ♪
♪ Guess which hand, guess which hand" ♪
I also was told I did two less
"guess who's backs" than I should have.
We did make a cut for the purposes of time.
We are trying to maintain the internal momentum of
"Corrections," and in doing so, there are going to be times
where you make an edit and you lose a
couple of "guess whose backs," just to keep things moving.
Because there's a real value, I think, in these
feeling like they're moving from bit to bit
and not just getting bogged down in one bit.
So, sometimes, you're going to cut a few bars.
That's the price.
Shoemaker is still back.
First full week having Shoemaker in the building.
And I will say it
and I hope it does not come off too emotional.
The novelty has worn off.
[ Laughter ]
He has his cane.
And the thing about it, he's using the cane less for
walking and more for, like, clearing a path.
It's a lot of this.
Not endearing.
Someone -- This happens every so often.
Someone prefaces a correction saying --
addressing it to "whoever -- whatever --"
excuse me --
"intern is in charge of reading these."
No intern.
If I made an intern read what you wrote,
it would violate child labor laws.
They're all adults.
It's just this whole thing is so inherently childish.
I had a drink with me last week and I said --
I described it.
I said it was a gin martini.
There was some outrage.
A lot of you angrily protested
that you never need to say "gin" before "martini."
And I agree with that
It's just with -- I wanted to clarify
it was not a vodka martini, what with current,
you know, world events.
I think it's important, you know,
that people know the sort of sacrifices...
Haven't had caviar in over a month.
Shoemaker keeps telling me he has a local caviar guy.
And I'm not -- I won't say what happened to the last guy
who used Shoemaker's caviar hookup,
but he's survived by a wife and two kids.
Well, we all -- Oh, you don't want to laugh at that?
We all miss Ray.
But he said to me, on his deathbed,
after eating Shoemaker's caviar,
his last words,
he said, "Use this in 'Corrections.'"
Oh, we were once corrected -- This was months ago --
that it was Alice Cooper bit the head off a chicken,
Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat.
Those aren't the exact details.
But we had gotten the creature matched with the wrong rocker.
And I made the assumption at the time
that I didn't know much about that jackal,
but I will boldly state that it was a stepdad
who made that correction.
And then we heard a couple weeks ago
from that jackal who had, I guess,
gone back and looked and said, "I'm happy to tell you that
that's wrong.
I am a stepmom."
And we thought that was super-cool.
And then I, you know, tried to guess what that
stepmom would say when she said goodnight.
And I went, "Rock 'n' roll."
A bunch of you jumped out and said this is "rock 'n' roll."
This is "I love you" in American Sign Language.
And I know that.
And it's so crazy to me
that so many of you do not think
stepmoms are capable of love.
And you know whose fault it is.
Disney.
Stepmoms call it "the Disney fallacy."
I'm on some Facebook groups.
Well, speaking of ASL, I watched --
After the Oscars -- I will admit
it took the Oscars for me to do it.
I watched "CODA."
What a wonderful, wonderful film.
I -- Audible sobbing.
And it is not a depressing film. It is so uplifting.
It is such a wonderful film about family.
And I think that is the magic and the value
of the Oscars is, you see something Oscars,
and it makes you go back and revisit something
that you maybe missed, which "CODA" was for me.
I also went back and watched NBC's 2015 limited series
"The Slap."
I should explain that.
The network reached out and said that
"Corrections" wasn't topical enough.
So, this is a...
The -- I wrote -- So, I wrote a kids' book,
and one of the things I've been saying about the
kids' book is -- I'm proud of a lot of things about it --
is that it's the first kids' book --
the first illustrated kids' book that has a bear
and a rabbit in it.
And a lot of you were like, "Oh, there's a bunch."
But here's a picture of my book right there.
No, wait. That's not mine. Hold on.
This is -- There we go. That's -- Hold on.
This is...
What are we do-- Guys...
Hold on. What is -- This is...
Why -- Who would put them in this order?
This is...
Alright, there we are.
The first -- Who stacked these?
Oh.
It was Jimmy Reilly.
And if there's a rule at NBC, it's don't cross a Reilly.
[ Laughter ]
Because there's...
there's one around every corner.
That is -- If you want to know what the base of power is
at 30 Rock -- True story.
I once saw Jimmy Reilly
pass Lorne Michaels in the hallway,
and Jimmy said, "Hey, Lorne."
And Lorne said, "Nice to see you, Mr. Reilly.
I mispronounced the name of the character
Saruman -- Saruman from "Lord of the Rings."
Saruman. I don't know.
It's so embarrassing to me, because I did see the
film, and, obviously, they say it in the film.
Although, if they didn't say it in the first 15 minutes...
[ Snoring ]
I admitted that I don't get my tuna from the grocery store,
but rather the omakase menu at my
favorite sushi restaurant.
A few of you said -- A few of you food snobs
said there's no such thing as an omakase menu.
Omakase is the absence of a menu.
It roughly translates to "I leave it up to you."
I have been trying the...
I have been trying the oMckase menu at McDonald's.
[ As Johnny Carson ] Have you heard about this?
Have you heard about this, Shoemaker,
the oMckase menu.
[ Normal voice ] It's only available at the drive-through.
It's $50, and they just -- They hand you a bag
with food of their choosing.
I've done like eight or nine time --
Every time, it's been a Filet-O-Fish.
Just one, like, not from that day.
But it's worth it for the surprise,
that excitement of getting a bag,
and not knowing until you open it up.
I mean, it's Filet --
You kind of know it's Filet-O-Fish as soon as
it gets in the car.
So, I said "light-motif," and then I was
told it's "lei-motif."
You don't say the "T."
Whoo! Thank you to the German viewers
of "Corrections," who jumped out and said,
"That is a German word, and you say the 'T,'"
because in Germany, you say...
[ German accent ] ...all the letters!
[ Normal voice ] Which is better.
Thank you. It's not like French words.
[ French accent ] "Eh, this is not the 'T' to say."
Mm...Merch Madness.
We're down to our last four mugs.
You've been voting @SeaCaptainPolls on Twitter.
We're down to our final four, our final four mugs.
This was an underperforming mug
that didn't even get out of the final 16.
Jackéel.
I feel like this wasn't appreciated, but...
I'm going to send it to Emily Spivey.
I feel like she'll still appreciate it.
So, we're down to our final four mugs.
Which mug is going to win?
Omakase.
Hey, some people have said -- it's very hurtful --
that this is a rip-off of Conan O'Brien
did a section -- a segment, excuse me,
called "Corrections," which is a fantastic bit
that I love.
I do feel like this is different enough,
but I appreciate that, you know, it has the same name.
And moving forward, you know,
when we come up with anything,
we're going to try to avoid that error in the future.
So I apologize for that.
I want to read some comments we received this week.
I guess you could call it viewer mail.
Someone wrote, "I never comment.
This was the funniest goddamn thing I've ever watched."
Asterisk.
Then you look down.
Asterisk. "I'm super-high and kind of drunk right now."
Just give the compliment.
This is -- I wanted to get this word for word.
"WTF did I just watched that was horrible."
Well, I understand someone like you,
with no imperfections...
[ Laughter ]
...wouldn't understand "Corrections."
And then someone else -- You know what?
I'm going to do two nice ones and one mean one this week.
Someone wrote, "Best thing network TV
has allowed in a while."
Not technically.
Oh. Finally, I showed a second letter from E.B. White
last week, and there were a lot of accusations
about me having written these letters,
due to the fact that there were a litany of
errors in them that people feel like
ol' "Elements of Style" wouldn't have made.
You know, instead of a 1 in the date,
E.B. used a capital "I."
He forgot to sign last week's letter.
In last week's letter, he called a key --
He called a typewriter key a button,
which a lot of people said he would never do.
One person said it couldn't have been a letter from E.B. White,
the E.B. White Collection at Cornell,
because they would never have given you the original,
which I had.
And I do think -- Looking back,
I do think it was a new librarian
who gave me that, because when I went.
back this week to see if there was another letter,
she was gone.
This sort of young, you know, perky librarian I dealt with.
Obviously, she messed up and she did lose her job over it.
And it was a very -- The woman this week was
a very officious, very stern woman,
what Shoemaker likes to call a battle-ax.
And she did -- She gave me another letter
and she made it very clear, the steps I had to take to
look at a letter like this.
So, you know, obviously, to prove this is
a real E.B. White letter,
I'm gonna make sure we get it right,
because that's what we're here to do --
get things right.
We're not here to mess around,
especially with something as historic as a letter like this.
So we're going to take our time.
It's not like Ben Stiller is here.
He is? [ Laughter ]
Who was supposed to...
Oh, Jimmy? Well, that's fine.
That's fine.
Oh, I wouldn't -- Don't even tell him.
Okay, here we go.
Here's the letter -- here's the letter from...
Let's see here.
Oh, boy. Hold on. I got to do it this way.
Here we go.
"Dear Kay, it has been --"
Oh, first of all, we see here, because, again
April 2nd of 1953.
"Dear Kay, It has been a week.
I wanted to share some exciting news.
I have started a new book about a pig and a spider.
Spoiler alert -- the spider doesn't make it.
Already laughing thinking about how hard
it's going to make kids cry.
Also found out this week that typewriters
have keys and not buttons.
And, yeah, I misspelled "typewriters"
in the previous sentence,
but I don't have time to start over.
I work at 'The New Yorker,' lest you forget.
P.S. I'm not signing my letters anymore,
because, not to be a dick, my signature is super-valuable,
and I can't just give it away."
This is crazy.
I just noticed -- Hold on.
This is -- It seems like there's something else here.
Can we see this?
Alright, you guys can see it. I'm going to read it now.
"Kay, you must never show this to anyone.
I typed it super-small so only you would see it.
In my last letter, I, on purpose,
wrote "typewriter button" instead of "key."
This was a trap.
If anyone in your life pointed that out to you
as a mistake, they are a jackal.
And you should take all steps to get them out of your life.
All the best, E.B. White."
Whew! What we're learning about this man.
Well, I think...
I think this one went really well.
Um...
I feel like there's something else.
But, alternatively...
there might not be.