I have a new producer, Eric, who is very helpful. I can say, "What if we do something like this?" and then a little while later he'll email me a graphic. And if I say "Glenn said something ludicrous on Wednesday" he finds it. I like that. It makes me feel powerful like Donald Trump - but with much less money and a wife who's not an opportunist.

Lately I've begun re-visiting my phobia about the IFP - the little earpiece that I have to shove down my aural canal in order to hear Glenn and the control room. They tell me that the earpiece is "cleaned" frequently, but I've yet to see anyone actually caught in the act of hosing it down. Every time I shove it in my ear I wonder who was sitting there before me, and if his or her ear wax is now mingling with mine. Today Renée Zellweger was wandering the building, so I tried to convince myself I might now share DNA with her, as opposed to some portly biofuel lobbyist Wolf Blitzer was interviewing.

The bit about the sailors at the end was tough. I wanted to make a joke about "seamen" but I also wanted to it to be directed at Glenn, and not seem to be poking fun at the military. But it also had to be tactful - I don't find blue humor that funny unless it's used in a clever manner. In the end I gave up because we'd already been talking about transsexuals, and I figured I should just forget launching into a seamen/semen joke with a guy who doesn't go to R-rated movies.