Humor & Life Quote by David Letterman

Letterman’s joke works because it hijacks a postcard sentiment and steers it into a dead end, fast. “Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles” tees up lifestyle-copy expectations: soft light, perfect weather, seasonal vibes in a city that famously doesn’t really do seasons. Then he hits you with the deliberate wrongness: birds don’t change color like leaves, and they definitely shouldn’t be “falling from the trees.” The line turns a cozy autumn cliché into a tiny apocalypse, and that tonal whiplash is the punch.

The intent is pure anti-romance. Letterman is parodying the way we talk about nature as if it’s a curated experience, especially in a place like LA where “fall” is more branding than biology. By swapping in birds for leaves, he exposes how interchangeable those stock phrases are; you can plug in any noun and the sentence still sounds like a greeting card until the logic collapses.

There’s also a sly LA dig embedded in the morbidity. If autumn in New England is a riot of color, autumn in Southern California can feel like an imitation of the idea of autumn. Letterman’s version isn’t just missing seasons; it’s malfunctioning. Birds “changing color” and dropping suggests pollution, heat, or some offscreen catastrophe - an exaggerated echo of environmental anxiety, delivered with that signature deadpan shrug: even the wildlife is doing bit parts in a fake fall.

It’s the classic Letterman move: puncture the sentimental, keep the syntax, let the absurdity do the humiliating work.