Top 10 Things We'll Miss About David Letterman

10. The Grin.

The early Dave, with his auburn mane and gapped teeth, looked like nothing less than a grown-up version of Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman. Indeed, every night, as he flashed that mischievous smile and took a sledgehammer to the rules and conventions of television, his slogan might have been, 'What, Me Worry?" Later, Dave grew cranky and started to worry about an awful lot, but even when railing at stupidity or running out of patience with guests, that impish grin remained.

9. The Music.

Dave (and his talent bookers) had an excellent ear for new music. Bands from R.E.M. to Weezer to Future Islands made their TV debuts on his stage. He was especially fond of roots-rock, alt-country, Americana, and other non-Top-40 musics that got little play on other late-night shows. And then there were the unique, must-watch events that wouldn't have happened elsewhere. In 1987, Letterman reunited a reluctant Sonny & Cher for the first time in more than a decade, to sing "I Got You Babe." He famously devoted an hour to Warren Zevon and his music when the maverick songwriter was dying of cancer in 2002, an episoe that's one of the most bittersweet, joyous hours in TV history. Tom Waits showed up last week to perform a farewell ode to Dave; who else would he have done that for? (Indeed, who else's show would he even visit?) And of course, there was Darlene Love belting out her half-century-old signature hit "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)" every December (she has said that, out of respect for Dave, she'll never perform the song on TV again). Plus, you had Paul and the band, who could play pretty much every tune composed since the birth of rock 'n' roll and who could back anyone. True, Jimmy Fallon can book pretty much anyone to sing on "The Tonight Show" (even Barbra Streisand), and he has the Roots, but for sheer breadth, it's going to be hard to top Dave's musical legacy.

8. The Supporting Players.

Everything was found comedy to Letterman, and that included the people around him. He turned stage manager Biff Henderson, announcer Alan Kalter, stagehands Pat and Kenny, neighboring merchants (sandwich maker Rupert Jee, souvenir sellers Mujibur and Sirajul), and even his own mom into comic all-stars. The ultimate human-as-found-comic-object was clerk Calvert DeForest, the bizarre little old man who played Larry "Bud" Melman on the old "Late Night," who'd be sent out to do things like greet arriving passengers at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The one ringer was Chris Elliott, who became a bona fide star doing bits on "Late Night" like pretending to be Marlon Brando or living in the studio as the Guy Under the Seats. Every late-night host now has his own ensemble of semi-pro players, but except for Elliott, we'll never see any of Dave's crew again.

7. The Old-Schoolers.

Letterman has said that one reason he's retiring is that the 68-year-old host feels late-night is a young person's game now. Which is fine, and you certainly can't fault Dave's peers for their pursuit of the fresh and new. But Letterman's "Late Show" has become what Carson's "Tonight Show" once was, the last place on TV still hospitable to old-school talent. Not just oldtimers like Tom Dreesen or Regis Philbin (who appeared on "Late Show" some 136 times), but the performers who've been visiting Dave since they were rising young stars 30 years ago -- Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Michael Keaton, Bruce Willis, Martin Short, Julia Roberts. They'll appear on other talk shows if they have something to plug, but it won't be like visiting Dave, where they could just show up anytime and feel at home.

6. Paul Shaffer

Don't forget, Paul Shaffer has been with Dave every step of the way, and we'll be losing him, too. He's been an ideal foil; while Dave has spent a career deconstructing the falseness of showbiz, Paul has been an ironic parody of showbiz glitz, phoniness, and excess. The one thing he's been sincere about is the music, both as a keyboard virtuoso and a bandleader of the most versatile ensemble on TV.

5. His Interviewing Skills.

US Presidents and much much more at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.

4. Those Unexpected Personal Moments.

Letterman may have been more guarded than any human who's spent 33 years in our living rooms, hiding his private self beneath layers of irony and shtick. So when he did open up and share his true feelings -- bringing on the doctors who performed his life-saving quintuple-bypass, weeping with Dan Rather in the wake of 9/11, reveling in the birth of his son Harry, or calmly offering the remarkable revelation that he was being blackmailed over having had affairs with his staffers -- it made for shocking, liberating, compelling television.

3. His Willingness to Try Anything.

Letterman idolized Johnny Carson, but he still upended all the rules Carson had set for doing a talk show. Everything on Carson's "Tonight Show" was cool and controlled, while Letterman was anything but. Following the examples of TV pioneers like Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs, who created comedy bits before the rules were set in stone, Letterman was open to any idea, whether it was dropping melons out a fifth story window or wearing a suit made of Alka-Seltzer and jumping into a tank of water. Later, on CBS, he made the stretch of 53rd Street outside his stage door into his laboratory, a place large and open enough to stage Civil War re-enactments or to make hundreds of fountains out of Diet Coke bottles stuffed with Mentos. Anything could be good television, and good television could be anything. It's a lesson not lost on Letterman's followers, who go out of their way to create stunts that will go viral, but there's little they're doing now that Dave didn't try first.

2. The Reliability.

Do anything on TV long enough, and you become an institution. That's not necessarily a bad thing. As with Johnny Carson, it eventually became comforting to know that, even if you weren't always watching, Letterman would still be there every night to put you to bed. He was never the reassuring voice of conventional wisdom the way Carson was, though he was the first late-night comic to return to the airwaves after 9/11, and his remarkable monologue that night, when he acknowledged that he was no more able to make sense of the attack than anyone else was, proved surprisingly comforting and cathartic. And while he pretended not to be that Carson-esque voice (he kept saying, over the years, that he was just a dumb guy from Indiana, as if he'd just gotten off the bus in Times Square), his monologues did take on a sort of curmudgeonly, heartland common-sense irritation with the craziness of world events. He'd have thought that assessment of his persona was corny, but it was true.

1. The Attitude.

Dave is often credited with ushering in the age of irony, though he was less about irony than irreverence. His approach to comedy and to television was rooted in a deep skepticism, one whose response to rules, conventions, and authority (including the authorities who signed his paycheck) ranged from disrespect to outright mockery. As Letterman matured, he did find institutions and people who were worthy of respect, though he continued to direct his most merciless mockery at himself. In any case, that attitude became the defining mode of comedy on TV and in movies -- and, for a time, all of pop culture. (We Gen X-ers didn't trust anybody -- except maybe Dave himself). To the extent that that attitude lives on, both in the talk-show hosts who openly emulate Dave, and in the culture at large, that's one thing about Letterman we won't actually have to miss.