Jimmy Fallon, the hangdog comedian from Saturday Night Live and Fever Pitch, will be taking over Conan O'Brien's late night spot sometime next year. (Hamilton is really excited about his house band!) The actual start date won't be until March probably, but in the meantime Mr. Fallon will be rolling out a series of 5-minute-long 'webisodes' (annoying modern slang for short things on the internet), starting tonight at 12:35 am, on NBC's website. It will be a great chance for the audience to figure out what they'll be getting with Jimmy, and a really great chance for Jimmy to fuck this whole thing up before he even makes it to air.

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.

Sitting down with Rolling Stone for a rare interview, David Letterman opened up on his two-step process of alienating and courting some of his most famous guest-emies—towering pop culture figures like Madonna, Oprah, and Richard Simmons—as well as his own plans for retirement. ("I would like to go beyond [my contracted] 2010, not much beyond," he told them.) He was also asked to weigh in on the curious scheduling shift going on at his old network NBC, where top ratings-getter Jay Leno is being forcibly vacated to make room for new The Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien, and his Late Night successor, Jimmy Fallon. No one is more confused about the changes than Letterman:

"It's not funny yet. I'm working on material and it's really hard. Right now I've got half an hour and I've got two songs. Each song is 10 minutes each. I really have 10 minutes of stand-up. Pretty sad." [Newsweek]

Confirming rumors that his appointment as Conan O'Brien's Late Night successor was a "done deal," a press event at 30 Rock today presided over by dark SNL overlord Lorne Michaels, NBC rock star Ben Silverman, and badly-in-need-of-a-distinguishing-nickname Marc Graboff, made official their intention to hand over the 12:30 a.m. programming block to one Jimmy Fallon. Goodbye, Masturbating Bear and Pimpbot 5000, hello, masturbating Barry Gibb and '80s radio hits set to "You Can't Touch This." From The Observer:

Back when David Letterman was hosting Late Night, I looked forward to nothing so much as an appearance by superstar Chris Elliot. For instance, his stint as "Chris Elliot Jr." during which he would deliver a spot-on Morton Downey Jr. impression, with Dave standing in for whatever pablum-puking liberal was that night's foil. Here Chris goes after the fat cats behind 7-11.

Easily the biggest news that came out of Wednesday's mass return to the airwaves by late-night's long-sidelined talk-show hosts was the unexpected appearance of David Letterman and Conan O'Brien's competing Strike Beards, a solidarity-signifying facial hair trend so hot that the clean-shaven visages of Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel now seem to indicate a conspicuous lack of support for the hosts' still-picketing writing staffs. (The embattled Carson Daly, we've been told, plans to smash his trusty Norelco electric shaver on his next show in an attempt to prove his commitment to the WGA cause, no matter how unflattering the resulting patchy growth may be.)

· Overcoming the apparently mild inconvenience of putting on shows without their striking writers, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien still triumphed over fully staffed talk-show rivals David Letterman and Craig Ferguson in Wednesday night's Nielsen battle. In fairness to the WGA-approved programs, however, it should be noted that many viewers might have chosen to tune in to Leno out of irresistible curiosity about how unfunny the host would be on his own. [THR]
· Though the Golden Globes briefly harbored hope that the Writers Guild might give them a waiver for their rapidly approaching awards show, the WGA isn't going to cut them a break and still plans to picket. [Variety]

For those of you whose DVRs lack the capacity to capture all of the action from tonight's much-ballyhooed Return Of The Late Night Talk Shows, we've got you covered: In just a few short hours, we'll be posting clips from the monologues of each host frog-marched before the cameras—even Craig Ferguson, probably!—to see how each handles the delicate matter of explaining to America why they're back at work while their writers are still outside on the picket line without actually using the words, "The network threatened to execute every below-the-line employee if I didn't come back tonight." (Or in the case of Letterman and Ferguson, we'll look at how they show off the competitive advantage that cutting a deal with the WGA affords them.) See you then for what promises to be a magically awkward evening! [Bearded Letterman photo: AP]