Colbert's joy machine

[bronze_ribbons]

The subject line is not a direct reference to a gig that draws in Mirren and Field and Janney, but this passage I came across while looking up the Mirren clip, which follows a description of a frenetic day chez Colbert at work, which included micro-involvement in "every aspect of preparations" and the writer (Joel Lovell) marveling at Colbert's combination of focus and elation:

It's a little after seven, and the sun's starting to set over the Hudson River. There are several bottles of expensive bourbon in his office, and he pours a glass for each of us and then sits down and exhales.

"That was fun," he says. “What you just saw me do--the number of things you saw me talk to people about, the number of different things--you saw like four different tags on a single idea.. . . That's it. That's what liking process gets you to, the ability to process a great deal of information. And everybody in this building can do it. Everybody was jumping in. Everybody had ideas. Everybody was saying, 'What is an unasked added value that I can give the show?' And that is true joy. That's the joy machine."

He used to have a note taped to his computer that read, "Joy is the most infallible sign of the existence of God."