You know, Dave Letterman had a pretty good week.

When Letterman announced that tonight’s “Late Show” would include Julianne Moore plus Morgan Spurlock plus the winner of the National Spelling Bee plus a performance by the cast of “South Pacific,” I thought, “well, that’s a pretty full show. No room for anything else.”

But about 15 minutes in, I was proven wrong. Some city slicker did a walk-on to promote the release of a new DVD edition of one of his most popular movies.

I love the way that Paul Shaffer sometimes plays “Thanks for the Memories” to accompany such surprise walk-ons, a joking reference to the days when Bob Hope would be taping one of his NBC specials and would turn up on the Carson show unannounced.

UPDATE: The announced guest list turned out to be a red herring: the spelling bee winner wasn’t the real spelling bee winner but a thirty-something actor doing a comedy bit.

This week’s Late Show Rewind (the weekly highlight reel posted at the “Late Show” web site) starts with the hysterical “Jamba Juice” incident featuring Dave, Paul and eventually Kevin Spacey, and it also includes a great zinger from Harrison Ford, and Dave’s (bleeped) slip of the tongue pronouncing “Sex And The City.”

In honor of the fact that she just bought all of his company except the restaurants, here’s a Top Ten list from Emeril and Martha:

http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/video_player/index/php/947179.phtml

Bruce Willis is on Letterman tonight — not as a panel guest, but sitting in with the band!

Frank Caliendo is hilarious. (Be sure and wait for the Charles Barkley impression if you haven’t seen it.)

Throughout the run of “Late Night with David Letterman” on NBC, and on CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman” from 1994 through September 2001, the opening announce, by Bill Wendell or later Alan Kalter, would include two different jokes — a humorous description of New York (”From New York … one of the most exciting cities in the Tri-State area …”) and then a humorous description of Dave (”and now … a man who thinks he can buy his way into the Baseball Hall of Fame … David Letterman!”)

When “Late Show” returned to the air following 9/11, the humorous description of New York was eliminated, replaced by “From New York … the greatest city in the world …”, which has been in place ever since.

As a result of the writer’s strike, both Letterman and Leno have reached much farther back into the archives than usual for reruns. Tonight’s Letterman, for example, is a 1998 episode featuring Cher as the guest. I hadn’t seen any of the old-old reruns until tonight, and I was startled to discover that they have dubbed “the greatest city” phrase over the New York joke in the opening credits. Alan Kalter’s voice sounds different saying “the greatest city in the world” than it does for the rest of the announce.

I understand the sentiment that was involved in eliminating the New York joke — even though there’s no lack of New York-mocking humor elsewhere in the show — but eliminating it even from reruns seems like overkill somehow.

Meanwhile, Leno, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel have all announced that they will return to the airwaves Jan. 2 without their writing staffs. Letterman, from all accounts, is working on an agreement with the Writers Guild of America that would allow him, as well as Craig Ferguson, to come back in January with their writing staffs. (Letterman can make such an agreement because he owns his own show, as well as Ferguson’s. Leno, O’Brien and Kimmel’s shows are owned by their respective networks, which aren’t making any deals with WGA at the moment.)

If Letterman’s deal happens, it will be interesting to see if Letterman plus his writing staff can trump Leno in the ratings, something that hasn’t happen since the first year or two of Letterman’s tenure at CBS.

Well, I posted that video of Letterman’s writers earlier today, and they all expressed great gratitude to the boss for his support. Bill Scheft has even been quoted as saying that if Dave went back on the air without writers, as some of the late night hosts did in 1988, he might be a great ally to the WGA cause, railing about the situation on the air.

Now, it turns out that Dave may be back on the air in January — with his writers — by cutting his own separate deal with the WGA. Unlike Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, whose shows are owned by NBC, Letterman owns both his own show and “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.” So Dave’s company Worldwide Pants, according to the USA Today report linked above, can make its own interim deal with the WGA if both parties are willing.

UPDATE: Here’s a New York Times report that is (surprise, surprise) more informative and detailed than the USA Today report.

Aaron Barnhart of TV Barn and the Kansas City Star interviews Letterman’s writers on the picket line:

Variety has a fascinating story about a topic I mentioned in one of my newspaper columns: how soon the late night talk show hosts might try to come back and do their shows without writers. Apparently, no one wants to be the first one to cross the picket line, so there may be some sort of informal, under-the-table agreement by which shows from more than one network would resume on the same day next month:

In an interview with Time.com, a striking “Late Show” scribe said he and his peers “would have no problem” if Letterman returned sans scribes.

“David Letterman on the air without writers, p***ed off and talking about the strike, would be the greatest ally the writers could have,” he told the magazine.

I think the “war on Christmas” brouhaha from a couple of years ago was way overblown, and overhyped by talk show hosts and religious broadcasters who thrive on controversy, but I couldn’t help laughing at this quote from comedy writer Mike McIntee, who does the “Wahoo Gazette” blog at the “Late Show with David Letterman” web site:

Lowe’s is calling their Christmas Trees “Family Trees.” Hmmm. From now on, I think I’ll call Lowe’s “Home Depot.”

Thanks to Newscoma for alerting me to the fact that the “Late Show with David Letterman” writers now have a strike blog. Also, although ‘coma didn’t mention it, although Michael McIntee’s “Wahoo Gazette” at the official Letterman web site is in reruns, so to speak, McIntee is posting new little introductions to each day’s re-post.

I watched last night’s Letterman tonight, and Dave, interviewing Joe Torre, referred to his departure from the Yankees as a “divorce,” prompting Torre to quip that there was only one more issue to be resolved: “Who gets custody of Billy Crystal?”