Give me some skin.

I think I'll make a deal with my son, just to get him to drop the whole tattoo argument. He's not 18 yet, so we still have 15 months before he goes all human canvas on us.

Here's the deal: you can get a tattoo now if your parents get to pick the design.

Dave and Stephanie and Regina and HR

I don't judge anybody by their sex lives. As far as I'm concerned, consenting adults can consent to whatever they want. Just please don't tell me about it. Still, I'm glad I'm not married to David Letterman, whom I never met despite having once shared a corporate suite and bleachers with him at the Indy 500 – entirely another story. Anyway, I suspect poor Regina Lasko, who waited the guy out for twenty years, has long made her peace with his philandering. It seems he likes funny, smart, nerdy girls who wouldn't be out of his league in the real world. The crew and production team must be crawling with them. So what's Regina to do if the Late Show women are there for the picking, like craft service M&Ms? As the old Irish proverb says, "What cannot be cured must be endured."

But that's all between Dave, Regina, Stephanie, the tabloids and only Dave knows who else. It's the work thing that bothers me. Some office romances are kinda kosher. Like Sam in Accounting and Jan in Human Resources. But the head honcho mousing around with assorted female staff members is completely uncool. Dave's ladies, however innocent or sincere, will have a red I-had-sex-with-David-Letterman-to-get-ahead on their foreheads for the rest of their careers. Women who won't play with Dave, or are too old, or otherwise not Dave's type will be bitterly resentful and despise Letterman - not really an emotion one wants to elicit in one's employees. Men will state ruefully that they can't get ahead at The Late Show because they don't have tits.

I don't know that any of the above is happening at The Late Show but on the work front I've seen it all. There's never any hiding these relationships. The couple smolder at each other, close a lot of doors, have too many private jokes. People notice, people talk. Incessantly. "What a lousy decision. Wonder if it was HER idea." "Did you hear Martha got promoted? Wonder if SHE slept with him too." "No, I'm not going to the conference. The boss is bringing her boy toy."

When employees conclude that the playing field is not level, they lose faith in the company leadership. The boss has proven him/her self all too human, and people start to question management's decisions. If the economy is good, intelligent employees may feel they have to leave to get ahead. Meanwhile, the slackers find it easier to stay under the radar or rationalize their lack of advancement. Bad for morale, bad for productivity, bad for quality control. There is simply no upside for an organization when the person at the top is fooling around with the staff. Unethical. Disruptive. Tacky. Really stupid human trick, Dave. By the way, did you notice that honey in the editing suite? A little broad in the beam, but I hear she went to Columbia.

Yes, I know, Regina. He makes you laugh.

Boom!

I just don't get this youtube video all my friends are posting. It's set to Dueling Banjos and stars a Caucasian rube (I'm a Caucasian - I can say that) who is about to demonstrate the efficacy of some home made fireworks in what appears to be his dining room. Instead of the discrete shower of sparks he promises, the guy makes a huge boom and startles himself silly. Except that when the boom cloud clears, he appears to be wearing a different shirt which I don't think we're meant to catch. This is not a genuine wack job, it's a dweeb with a twisted sense of humor. He looks like David Letterman's slightly unhinged younger brother who lives in their mom's basement. The twisted sib makes fireworks and wishes he had Dave's sex life – or wishes he could have sex for once in his life. (Don't start a rumor - I made up the thing about DL.)

Anyway, real or fake, I see nothing funny in watching someone risk burning down his house, possibly singe his face (or duck on cue?) and make a complete ass of himself. If this is real, it's tragic. If it's not, it's just dumb. Now let us put aside the idiotic specifics of setting off fireworks in your home and simply look at the fact that this person comes off like a complete fool. Why is that funny? Some people are accident prone or clumsy. Yours truly, for example. I have inadvertently embarrassed myself on more than one occasion.

Once, I was participating in an ad agency creative exercise. We were divided into teams and each one had to put on a group presentation before the agency and a panel of judges from upper management. We were pretending to sell some kind of software - the details elude me - and we had determined that the overarching benefit, the one that could serve as an umbrella for all the others, was adaptability. So I decided to dimensionalize adaptability and add drama to my part of the presentation. As I was making the case for staying agile in a changing marketplace, I pulled a ball from my pocket with the intention of throwing it at my creative director friend in the judge's panel. "And you have to (BALL TOSS) think fast...". Only my aim has always sucked, and instead of lobbing the ball at my friend, I spiked it into the lap of our frail and delicate head of account services who almost fainted from the shock.

Oh, I hear you laughing. Go ahead. Chortle away. I will maintain my solidarity for that terminally immature fellow and his home made explosives. Not funny. And even less amusing if they're shooting the video at his mom's house.