{"id":3974,"date":"2026-01-03T23:59:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T23:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/riding-the-elephant-ferguson-craig\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T23:59:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T23:59:37","slug":"riding-the-elephant-ferguson-craig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/riding-the-elephant-ferguson-craig\/","title":{"rendered":"Riding the Elephant – Ferguson, Craig"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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<\/span>INTRODUCTION<\/h1>\n

From backstage I watched the tape run for the last show\u2019s introduction. I always assumed it was tape, even though it probably hadn\u2019t been for years. Tape is a thing of the past, a relic, redundant\u2014exactly how I should have felt at that moment. My time was up. I had done ten years, it was someone else\u2019s problem now. I should have been sad, even just a little, a touch of bittersweet melancholy at least. I had certainly experienced those feelings on the run-up to the show\u2019s ending, but in that moment I wasn\u2019t sad, not even a little bit. It felt like the last day of my grim high school. I was elated. I felt the fog clearing. Finally I\u2019d be able to see the horizon, get my bearings, and continue the journey.<\/i><\/p>\n

The tape ended and both drummers thundered out the beat. I walked out, waved to the audience, and climbed on top of that fucking desk to sing the last song. I stomped in time, doing what I have always tried to do: attempting to follow the beat while trashing the varnish.<\/i><\/p>\n

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\u2014<\/div>\n

I have never thought of myself as a late-night talk show host. I\u2019ve said that often to anyone who would listen, but I suppose it was a bit confusing, since all they knew about me was that I hosted a late-night talk show. The press was convinced that I was crushed not to be taking over for David Letterman when I left The Late Late Show<\/i> in 2014, despite my public insistence since 2005, when I <\/span>started in late night\u2014often quoted in their very publications\u2014that I didn\u2019t want the job. I didn\u2019t and I don\u2019t. You can check this online if you want, although I can\u2019t think why you\u2019d bother at this point. Certainly nobody seemed to find it necessary at the time.<\/p>\n

It seems to me people make up stories to fit their perception about you. They don\u2019t just do it about me, of course. It happens to everybody. I do it to myself. I\u2019m getting older now and the shadows are getting longer. When I look into them I see shapes move and stir and I think I remember what they are, but maybe I\u2019m just making it up to suit a reality about myself that I find comfortable.<\/p>\n

From January 2005 until December 2014 I hosted a late-night show on American broadcast television. I found it in turns rewarding, frustrating, difficult, easy, immensely satisfying, soul-crushingly dull, hilarious, and depressing.<\/p>\n

Sometimes all in one show. Sometimes all in one monologue. Sometimes all in one \u201cinterview\u201d (I have never really thought of myself as an interviewer, but if you talk to people on TV and the show title has your name in it then you are, by default, an interviewer, I suppose).<\/p>\n

The strict traditional format the show was produced under demanded that each episode begin with a monologue. A late-night tradition dating back to the early ratpacky nicoteeny alcoholic madmen days of TV. My first stumbling attempts were the clumsy reading of jokes written in black ink on giant white cards that were held just off camera by a very nice man called Tony.<\/p>\n

Tony\u2019s job was holding up jokes for me to read out. It didn\u2019t matter to him if the joke was good or bad, clever or stupid. He <\/span>didn\u2019t care, he passed no judgment. He was like a good undertaker, handling each case with professional detachment. He didn\u2019t get involved.<\/p>\n

I was expected to do the same. Sell the joke and move on, deliver the monologue. I tried but I was terrible at it, as the early reviews for the show gleefully and wickedly pointed out. I found myself saying mean and bitchy things about people or groups of people who I didn\u2019t know anything about. By doing the task assigned to me, I found myself espousing the rage and questionable morality of whatever writer had been lucky enough to find favor with the producers that day. I found I had to defend myself about jokes I made on TV when I didn\u2019t agree or even have much knowledge of the stance I had supposedly taken.<\/p>\n

I vas just obeying orders.<\/i><\/p>\n

It became evident to me that if I was to continue on the show, that if I were to espouse any rage and questionable moral judgment, it would have to be my own. Otherwise I was inviting a level of self-loathing that even an apostate Scottish Calvinist couldn\u2019t survive.<\/p>\n

I fired the writers I disagreed with and hired a few whose weltanschauung ran in tandem with or complemented my own. The monologue went from being a necessary chore to being a creative emotional outlet. When it was at its best it was more of an essay that contained the requisite amount of jokes. An op-ed column in a suit and makeup. Not every night, of course. Sometimes, like most people, I simply had nothing to say (hence the annual Latvian Independence Day<\/i> monologue was born). On some nights, though, maybe a dozen or so per year, it all clicked and I made <\/span>myself and a few others laugh or cry or think about things differently.<\/p>\n

The monologue didn\u2019t give me total freedom, of course. The concerns of the network or the FCC or the sponsors could be restricting at times. Performing stand-up in a theater or a comedy club with no cameras running is a more liberated vehicle of articulation, but it does require a certain singularity of purpose. It should be funny.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t miss doing the late-night show, but my brain has become used to the format of these monologues\/essays. So much so that the initial title of this book was going to be Mono-Logging<\/i>. But I thought that it sounded too much like a sophomoric euphemism for masturbation\u2014and maybe that\u2019s what\u2019s going on here, maybe I\u2019m just pleasing myself.<\/p>\n

Herein, then, is a collection of recollections and observations and\u2014occasionally, in the spirit of poetic license\u2014fabrications that don\u2019t fit in any other format but this book\u2019s. Not really monologues and not really essays, they have no agenda, not even comedic, although I\u2019d like to hope every now and then they raise a chuckle or two. These are stories that I couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t tell in any other way than the one in which I present them to you now. The timeline is not strictly linear because that\u2019s not how I remember things, so you can start reading the book in the middle if you want, but I\u2019d rather you didn\u2019t. You\u2019ll understand why when you\u2019ve finished it.<\/p>\n

I settled with the title Riding the Elephant<\/i> because it\u2019s the name of one of my favorite stories and also because it\u2019s a slang phrase employed by potheads to describe being stoned in a foggy and <\/span>confused way, though I\u2019m not sure there is any other way to be stoned. Foggy and confused is just how I remember things.<\/p>\n

It also seems to me that the phrase riding the elephant<\/i> contains a perfect description for a life which seems to take any direction it chooses, paying scant attention to my instructions or commands. The big gray fucker just goes where it <\/span>wants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Read the full book by downloading it below.<\/p>\n

DOWNLOAD EPUB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Preview INTRODUCTION From backstage I watched the tape run for the last show\u2019s introduction. I always assumed it was tape, even though it probably hadn\u2019t been for years. Tape is a thing of the past, a relic, redundant\u2014exactly how I should have felt at that moment. My time was up. I had done ten … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[231],"class_list":["post-3974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-craig-ferguson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}