Tonight, Tonight, won't be just any night
Tongues certainly are wagging about the Tonight Show story. (In case you've been locked in a trunk by armed desperadoes for the past couple of days, NBC announced this week that Jay Leno will be "retiring" from the Tonight Show in 2009 — five years hence — with Conan O'Brien moving up from Late Night to replace him.)
Personally, I find this bit of pop culture folderol a yawner. I've never been a big fan of Jay Leno, finding him at best mildly amusing most of the time. (However, the "Headlines" segment Jay usually does on Monday nights, where he displays odd and errant items clipped mostly from newspapers, consistently delivers five of the funniest minutes on television — because it's real.) And I must confess to never having watched Conan O'Brien's show for more than a handful of minutes — his brand of snarky and witless humor just doesn't do it for me. So I really couldn't care less who's hosting the Tonight Show. No one's a match for Carson.
If I watch late night talk at all — and "watch" is giving my action far too much credit, because it's more like "have on in the background while I'm working" — I'll turn on David Letterman. I usually find Dave's show worthwhile, because he manages to convey an arch (but not too arch) disdain for the trappings of the format while at the same time paying respect (but not too much respect) to its traditions and style. Plus, he's funny. Dave's nightly "Top Ten" is more often than not as hilarious as "Headlines," and Dave's writers (a) actually come up with the material, rather than cull it out from viewer submissions, and (b) do it every weeknight.
I also have a soft spot for Letterman, because I met him a few times eons ago, and he seemed like a decent, down-to-earth guy. When I was at Pepperdine University in the very early 1980s, I was one of the radio broadcasters for the Pepperdine baseball team. During home games when I wasn't on the air (we had two broadcast teams, and I was the number two guy on the "B" squad), baseball fanatic that I am, I'd hang out in the stands and watch the game. Letterman and his then-girlfriend, comedy writer Merrill Markoe, lived in Malibu at the time, and would drop around to watch also. I recognized Letterman from his abortive daytime talk show that ran for a handful of weeks in the spring and summer of 1980. So I would sidle over and sit near them — for weekday games, there would never be more than a handful of people at the ballpark — and chat Dave up about baseball.
Even when Dave introduced himself and his companion to me by name, I never let on that I knew he was a celebrity (and of course, he wasn't yet the household name he would become in a couple of years when Late Night began), and we never had a conversation about anything other than baseball — except for the one time he mentioned being from Indiana, and I mentioned that I had (and still have) relatives in Kokomo.
Both Dave and Merrill (no looker, she, but very smart...sort of like Dave himself, now that I think about it) seemed like genuinely pleasant people. (And not especially humorous in normal conversation.) Of course, with superstardom and mega-fortune, Dave may have changed. I'd hope not.
Personally, I find this bit of pop culture folderol a yawner. I've never been a big fan of Jay Leno, finding him at best mildly amusing most of the time. (However, the "Headlines" segment Jay usually does on Monday nights, where he displays odd and errant items clipped mostly from newspapers, consistently delivers five of the funniest minutes on television — because it's real.) And I must confess to never having watched Conan O'Brien's show for more than a handful of minutes — his brand of snarky and witless humor just doesn't do it for me. So I really couldn't care less who's hosting the Tonight Show. No one's a match for Carson.
If I watch late night talk at all — and "watch" is giving my action far too much credit, because it's more like "have on in the background while I'm working" — I'll turn on David Letterman. I usually find Dave's show worthwhile, because he manages to convey an arch (but not too arch) disdain for the trappings of the format while at the same time paying respect (but not too much respect) to its traditions and style. Plus, he's funny. Dave's nightly "Top Ten" is more often than not as hilarious as "Headlines," and Dave's writers (a) actually come up with the material, rather than cull it out from viewer submissions, and (b) do it every weeknight.
I also have a soft spot for Letterman, because I met him a few times eons ago, and he seemed like a decent, down-to-earth guy. When I was at Pepperdine University in the very early 1980s, I was one of the radio broadcasters for the Pepperdine baseball team. During home games when I wasn't on the air (we had two broadcast teams, and I was the number two guy on the "B" squad), baseball fanatic that I am, I'd hang out in the stands and watch the game. Letterman and his then-girlfriend, comedy writer Merrill Markoe, lived in Malibu at the time, and would drop around to watch also. I recognized Letterman from his abortive daytime talk show that ran for a handful of weeks in the spring and summer of 1980. So I would sidle over and sit near them — for weekday games, there would never be more than a handful of people at the ballpark — and chat Dave up about baseball.
Even when Dave introduced himself and his companion to me by name, I never let on that I knew he was a celebrity (and of course, he wasn't yet the household name he would become in a couple of years when Late Night began), and we never had a conversation about anything other than baseball — except for the one time he mentioned being from Indiana, and I mentioned that I had (and still have) relatives in Kokomo.
Both Dave and Merrill (no looker, she, but very smart...sort of like Dave himself, now that I think about it) seemed like genuinely pleasant people. (And not especially humorous in normal conversation.) Of course, with superstardom and mega-fortune, Dave may have changed. I'd hope not.
SwanShadow was randomly pounding the keyboard at 3:22 PM
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