Live from the Apple Store--It's Stephen Colbert!

Tonight, my journalist friend Neil invited me to a special event at the Apple Store in Soho, where Stephen Colbert (one of my real-life idols) was appearing live to read from his new book, "I Am America! (And So Can You!)."

 

The book is available in "book" format, but since it is the year 2007 and we were at the Apple Store, it's also available in "audio-book" format as a downloadable track from iTunes.  (You can't get Stephen to autograph a downloadable audio file, however--I found that out the hard way.)

After reading several (hi-LAR-ious!) excerpts from his book, the Colb-inator actually broke character and became plain old Stephen C., the humble comedian.  It was riveting, as I had never seen him out of character before.  He was then interviewed by some dude named Jesse in a tweed jacket.   (Apparently Jesse hosts some Apple podcast or something--I wouldn't really know, as I don't speak "computer-geek-ese.")  After the interview, there was a Q&A session, and I got to ask Stephen a question (the last question of the night, actually--lucky me).  I prefaced my question by noting that Stephen had come to prominence as a performer relatively late in life ("Not that you're old," I added, which got a laugh from the crowd, and a faux-rebuke from Stephen to "Watch it!"); I then asked, "How did you stay motivated during the lean years?"  He paused for a split second, and then said "Fear. It's a great motivator. And medications help too."  He got a HUGE laugh, naturally.  

Take that, bears.