Grown Up Gossip & Internet Villainy
Today,?the news that the world has been speculating about?for weeks was officially verified. No, Justin Bieber is not the true father of Kim Kardashian’s unborn child, and, no, Justin Timberlake has not been named honorary President of the World … though either one is perfectly feasible.
Today, it was finally confirmed that Jay Leno and his enormous jaw are?being replaced on?The Tonight Show by Jimmy Fallon and his cuteness.
Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t a very good actor and a worse politician. However, all you stoners who have chuckled your way through various lines from Predator or Conan The Barbarian can now breathe a little easier.
If you’re lungs aren’t shot from hammering bongs every night this month.
Basically, Arnie has claimed that no one cares if people smoke marijuana in an interview on a popular US chat show. He said that in an interview, rather than said that no-one cared if you were in the very specific situation of being stoned during a chat-show.
Right now, Jay Leno needs a friend. Well, OK, not a friend as such. What Jay Leno needs is a sycophant with a guitar.
This isn’t usually a problem. Because no matter how many painfully unfunny jokes he tells, or how many soul-crushingly mediocre local newspaper headlines he reads out, Jay Leno knows that his bandleader Kevin Eubanks will get a kick out of them. Because Kevin Eubanks is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most easily amused man on the face of the planet.
But now it’s been reported that Kevin Eubanks has had enough of Jay Leno. Apparently Kevin plans to leave Jay Leno’s new Tonight Show at some point in the near future. We’re not sure why, but he probably wants to move onto a job where he gets to laugh at things that are slightly funnier than Jay Leno. Like, you know, terminal illness or the collected works of Sylvia Plath.
Did you see the Super Bowl yesterday? Oh boy, that sure was some game – the way that one team beat another team?
Amazing. And the Super Bowl half-time show, where half of The Who sang some songs in a fairly nondescript manner? Wowsers, talk about entertainment. And then there were the Super Bowl adverts, like the one for Dockers where nobody wore trousers, and the one where Toyota hilariously apologised for recalling five million cars because they were potentially lethal. Classic Super Bowl.
But the biggest Super Bowl moment probably came with the 15-second commercial for David Letterman‘s show. Why? Because it reunited Letterman with his arch-enemy Jay Leno, which is a big deal if you like that kind of thing.
These are interesting times for Jay Leno. Sure, he’s always been an odd-looking, charmless, unfunny man.
But people liked him. Now, though, thanks to the palaver over NBC and The Tonight Show, that’s all switched around. Because he’s seen, rightly or wrongly, as the man who forced Conan O’Brien off the air, Jay Leno has emerged as the villain of the piece – a reputation not helped by the fact that he looks like the sort of person who’d sneak into your house and night and stab you through the eyeball with his chin.
Anyway, in a last-ditch attempt to win the public over again, Jay Leno has appeared on Oprah to say that he’d like to talk to Conan O’Brien soon. That’s more or less what he said, anyway – what he said was a bit more whiny and annoying. And unfunny, too. Don’t forget unfunny.
This Jay Leno/ Conan O’Brien thing is still rumbling on, even though it’s been going for three weeks.
Or five years. Or 17 years. Or wherever you want to draw the starting line. Anyway, it’s been going on for so long that a pattern has developed – Conan O’Brien uses his show to bash NBC, Jay Leno uses his show to sort of bash NBC but not enough for anyone to be convinced and the whole world remains fixated on the saga of two middle-aged millionaires who read Tiger Woods jokes from pieces of cardboard for a living.
But last night the formula changed. Jay Leno used his show to put his side of the story across. And there wasn’t a single joke in the entire segment. Which, come to think of it, isn’t that unusual for Jay Leno.
Americans just love their late night TV talk shows. It’s huge over there: even bigger? than apple pie, white picket fences and an incomprehensible urge to waggle their willy at underdeveloped Middle Eastern countries.
Which means the reports that one of the shows’ hosts might be quitting because another one wants his old job back are completely overshadowing the rest of the world’s news (you know: earthquake kills hundreds in Haiti, a man with implausibly white teeth won’t be presenting his talent contest next year, yadda yadda yadda).
Read on to find out how this battle of the wills (and chins) may play out.
You know how bad films often end with the villain coming back to life after it looks like he’s been killed?
Jay Leno does. He’s just like Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze, only with a deadly razor-sharp chin and bad jokes instead of metal claws. Fans of late night television probably thought they’d seen the last of Jay Leno when he left the Tonight Show last year to start his stupid new 10pm programme. But – and brace yourself for this – he might be back soon.
According to reports, Leno may soon leave 10pm, reclaim the Tonight Show and push NBC’s late-night schedule back so far that Jimmy Fallon‘s show would air to an audience exclusively made up of badgers, werewolves and weeping, emotionally distressed would-be murderers. So it’s not all bad news, then.
Kanye West has already apologised once for hopping onstage at the MTV VMAs and stamping on Taylor Swift’s heart.
But that’s not enough. Because, as we all know, an apology isn’t really an apology if it’s bellowed across the internet, peppered with several thousand exclamation marks and features the word ‘BOOOYAAAWWWW!!!!’ or any related forms thereof. Which is why Kanye West apologised again on TV last night.
If fact, Kanye West announced that because of his VMA behaviour, he’s going to “take some time off and analyse… how I’m going to improve”. So that’s the last we’ll see of him, then.
Have you heard the news? Mel Gibson has got his new girlfriend pregnant! Wait, you had heard the news?
You’d heard the news because it’s been widely known for weeks? Fine. But have you heard the news of Mel Gibson’s impending fatherhood as told by a jittery, shifty-looking middle-aged man who looks as if he harbours several controversial beliefs regarding the Jewish faith? You haven’t? Good, because Mel Gibson did all of that himself on Jay Leno last night.
And the truth is that Mel Gibson got her pregnant and soon he’ll be a dad again. And that’s it. Ta-daaaah!
