Everyone is out to spite everyone: Jay Leno ruined 90 minutes of Conan O'Brien's life; Lindsay Lohan is refusing to eat and John McCain isn't letting his wife go on that fun TV program.
Look into the eyes of Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton, and what do you see? A wild sycophancy that has led the man to the edge of a nervous breakdown, perhaps?
Conan O'Brien is considered one of the big losers of Jay Leno's decision to stay on at NBC, because Jay will eat up his audience, steal his guests, and keep him out of the spotlight. How did Conan handle the issue last night? With a simple bit involving newspapers that is way funnier than anything Jay Leno's slackjawed writing staff has ever come up with. Click to watch Conan's moral victory.
So, the new Jay Leno variety hour. Are you dying to learn more about it or what? Ha, network statistics show that you are! Advertisers are also very enthusiastic about the move of the not-quite-funny entertainer into prime time. Perhaps the enthusiasm stems from the fact that Leno now has a mandate that his show not suck quite so much as it currently does. Is this guy trying in vain to rip off the Daily Show, or bring back vaudeville?:
To fully appreciate this, we'll ask you now to stop whatever it is you're doing—don't worry, we'll be here when you get back—lay your head down on your keyboard, and drift off to sleep. (Feel free to take whatever prescription sleed-aids you might require to make this happen. Just no fistfuls washed down with a liter of vodka! The weekend is still three days away.) Then, have a co-worker or cohabitant click play on the video above.
So SAG's fucked. Wait—did we say "fucked?" There we go again—needless doomsday prophesying where Obaman cool-headedness is clearly required. What we meant to say is: "SAG's probably fucked." Yesterday brought a confluence of Pop Culture Doomsday events that not even a walrus blowing like Bird could have foretold:
Jay Leno is moving to 10 p.m., every god damn night of the week! That sure is something. You never realize how many people love Jay Leno until something like this happens (or until you find yourself in a comedy club in Winston-Salem, talking to the owner, Roy). NBC is obviously happy about it—and so is Jay, or he would have taken his middling act elsewhere—but, as in everything in showbiz, some people got screwed in this deal. After the jump, the biggest winners and losers of the Return of the Chin:
Jay Leno will stay at NBC and move to 10pm weeknight slot after Conan O'Brien takes over his Tonight Show in June, Broadcasting & Cable and Nikki Finke are reporting. Everyone thought Leno was probably going to end up at ABC after he said in a July interview "I am definitely done next year - with NBC." But NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker persuaded him to stay! Probably with wheelbarrows full of money. The big loser in all this? That would probably be embattled NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, who just survived a major corporate bloodletting but suddenly finds himself with five fewer hours a week to program. And to think he was having so much fun skiing in Utah this weekend!
Hugh Jackman picked up his Australia co-star Nicole Kidman's infamous late-night slack Monday on Conan, offering his host an impromptu run through some of the perplexing Aussie phrases littering his Outback epic. The accompanying tutorial includes a few samples for your learning pleasure, but please: the Sexiest Man Alive's choice of "budgie smuggler," "shut the door," and any other homoerotically-tinged vernacular herein are purely coincidental. Expect Jackman's beleaguered wife to mount yet another vehement bathroom-stall defense of his straightness by the end of the business day. [NBC]
So much has gone down on The View since Rosie O'Donnell quit that it feels like ancient history when O'Donnell reopens those old wounds for some extra publicity, but we made an exception yesterday because her reaction video to Barbara Walters's smackdown was succinct and cute. Sadly, if O'Donnell's appearance on Conan last night is any indication, the View-Bashing Express in her head is running on a circular track.Instead of coming up with some new jokes (as we've heard comedians are wont to do), O'Donnell did an almost verbatim reprise of her shtick from the rosie.com video. Intern Stacey Fitzgerald put together a comparison clip above; let's hope that by the time O'Donnell relates this story to Ne-Yo and Liza Minnelli on Rosie Live, she can at least work in a pirate shirt joke or two.
This past weekend, a hip hop blog called Nah Right posted a YouTube interview with ?uestlove, a member of hip hop live band supergroup The Roots. And he said that The Roots were retiring from touring in order to become the house band for Jimmy Fallon when he takes over Conan O'Brien's late night show next year. But that video was quickly pulled, so everyone has been scrambling to find out whether this apocalyptic... thing is actually true. NBC has no official comment, but we hear that it probably is. Essaywhuman?!!!??! This is one of those things that proves you're getting old. I've never had a group that I actually like go the late night house band route. Springsteen fans saw Max Weinberg take his act to Conan's show; and I'm sure there were some jazz heads who were flabbergasted to see their main man Kevin Eubanks signing up with Jay Leno. But The Roots? The Illadelph generals opening up for that stuttering mop-headed ball of suck, Jimmy Fallon? It's kind of tragic. On one hand, we'll get to see The Roots on TV every night; on the other hand, Black Thought opening for Jimmy Fallon every night is the cultural equivalent of Miles Davis playing his horn on the subway platform to back up a semi-trained dancing spider monkey. To the extend that The Roots are a hip hop group, it's pretty fucking shocking. To the extent that The Roots are a hipster group, that's the end of that. They still give one of the best live shows anywhere, and the thought that the only way to see them live any more will be in the middle of the afternoon in a Midtown studio between periods of Jimmy Fallon snickering at his own cue cards is just an atrocious thing. But they're old and so are we, so everyone is tired. Now I will go and cut myself repeatedly.
Everybody's in line to vote right now, and cellphone cams are sure to make this one of the most citizen-documented voting days in history. In line at 71st Street polling station in Manhattan, it's the cutest Irish-American voter ever—late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien. (Photo courtesy of commenter Clarence Rosario.)
With less than a week to go before the presidential election, all of America is waiting, pondering the same pressing question: will the fate of Sarah Palin be wrapped up in a final, valedictory Tina Fey performance or will Kristen Wiig have to start practicing her "You betchas!" for the next four years? Until that day comes (and until 30 Rock has its TV premiere), Fey is milking her impression for all its worth, and last night, she talked to Conan O'Brien about what happened behind the scenes of her run-in with the actual Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.It turns out that Palin, who had correctly researched that the child of her tormentor was named "Alice," asked after Fey's daughter, who had been sent home earlier that night. This disappointed the vice-presidential candidate, who claimed that she had readied pregnant Bristol ready to "baby-sit" Alice. The tale sounded fishy to Fey, and it raises our suspicions as well. Sounds like you dodged a bullet, Tina — the fruit of your loins almost got fired, Palin-style.
It's hard to tell if magical things just happen to Tina Fey, or if the magic is in the comedy writer/producer's telling. The movie Psycho transforms her three-year-old daughter into a miniature murder detective; she has a life-changing hug with Oprah Winfrey; the Republicans nominate a vice presidential nominee who looks almost exactly like her. And then there was the anecdote the 30 Rock star shared with Late Night host Conan O'Brien last night, in which Sarah Palin offers up daughter Bristol to babysit Fey's daughter on the set of Saturday Night Live. The incident would be a stretch even as the premise of an SNL skit, but there you have it. Click the video icon to watch.
Dennis Quaid completed publicity rounds for The Express last night with a visit to Conan O'Brien, who veered a ways off the script with a shout-out to Quaid's sultry 1987 potboiler The Big Easy. We had forgotten until that moment how mesmerizingly awkward his New Orleans detective's bastardized Cajun accent was, but with the aid of his unfailing actor's recall and an apparent nip or eight of green-room white lightning, the one-time King of Mardi Gras stunned the audience silent with a garbled scat that makes his Express turn look cardboard in comparison. "That was kind of schizophrenic," concluded the rattled O'Brien. Sure — that's one word for it. [Late Night with Conan O'Brien]
After the landmark ratings success that was the 2008 Summer Olympics, NBC was anxious to capitalize on the momentum they had built leading into the fall. However, despite all that promotional exposure, Beijing Ben and the NBC team haven't yet been able to convert in the ratings department: Knight Rider tanked, Chuck and Life both saw their ratings dip from their 2007 premieres and The Office could only muster a third-place finish in its lovey dovey season premiere last week. However, there is a bright spot; the network has gotten big bumps in both the awareness and ratings department thanks to the white-hot star power of homegrown talent Tina Fey. While fans will have to wait until the end of the month for 30 Rock to return to the air, NBC has been satiating America's desire to see its new Emmy sweetheart by repeatedly trotting her out during its late night lineup. She has appeared as Sarah Palin on SNL not once but twice and, last night, she made a cameo appearance along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a bit that can only be described as the ying to Ricky Gervais' and Steve Carell's faux Emmy duel yang. Watch NBC's clear cut MVP hitting another one out of the park after the jump.
We were so wrapped up in all that Letterman/McCain business, we almost forgot about this nice little surprise from last night’s Conan. Fresh off his best actor Emmy win for 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin stopped by the Late Night set unannounced for a brief round of “In The Year 2000.” It seems like Alec’s been rocking those Buddy Holly glasses even more these days, which is always fun. Plus, he actually gets off a couple of decent jokes. Check in after the jump to hear his zinger about li’l Bristol Palin (with a bonus Kirstie Alley-is-fat chestnut by Conan thrown in for good measure). [Late Night With Conan O'Brien]
While controversy isn't something we'd normally associate with Conan O'Brien, apparently NBC's Los Angeles-area station disagrees. After performing last night's monologue on Late Night, O'Brien repaired to his desk to begin what sounded like an innocent joke about "celebrity douchebags" like Spencer Pratt and Dog the Bounty Hunter. That's when Channel 4 News abruptly cut in, with anchorwoman Colleen Williams warning the audience that "right now in New York," O'Brien was about to make a joke about colliding trains, and that KNBC found it inappropriate to air in light of the September 12 train collision that killed 24 people in Chatsworth. Williams then showed excerpts from John McCain's speech yesterday about the economy, which was funny, but not really ha-ha funny. Watch the weirdness happen up above. [NBC]
