Friday Fives – late night edition

Who was your guy?  (Carson, Letterman, Leno, Conan… pick one and expound)

Letterman. Growing up, there were only 2: Letterman, and Carson. Carson was for a different generation. Carson was for our parents. PLUS… I have been to a Letterman show. LONG ago. It was a morning show. That is how long ago. Here is what I remember about it. Nothing about the show, in that it was about 35 years ago. I remember trying to get in. You had to be at least 12 years old. I was only 6 or 7. I was a very short kid. So short that I walked right under the ticket takers arm… he never saw me. Never took my ticket. Quite literally I was flying under the radar.

Super Memorable talk show moments?

It’s infamous now, but when Jerry Lawler smacked the shit out of Andy Kauffman on Letterman. We know now it was a stunt. I was watching this on tv, and I lost my shit. It was very, very believable.

Ever been to one in person?

Yeah, and not just the Letterman one, above. I went to see Arsenio Hall show back in college. We were on Venice Beach on vaca and some PA was handing out free tix. We went the first night, and it was overbooked, so they bounced us back a day. No problem at all for us, but they felt super bad. They told us if we come back they will take care of us… and they did. We went in first, and got first row. I was on TV, when they pan the crowd at the beginning.

The guests were Dennis Miller, and Anna Nicole Smith, so that was awesome. This was back when Dennis Miller was funny, and not a right wing nutjob. He swore, too, which blew my mind. Of course, they beep it for broadcast, but it felt scandalous to hear an f bomb in person.

OH… and we saw Conan in person. Not a taping of his show, but when he did the comedy tour in-between shows. That was great. Also saw Craig Ferguson do a club set a few years back, he is great.

Who don’t you like, of the classic hosts… and why.  Be specific now

I think Jimmy Fallon is just great for his new job. It seems like the genre was built for him. He is such a joyful and happy fanboy that it absolutely comes across. So, no one I don’t like…. But I could see Jimmy Fallon doing this for 30 years.

I like them all. There is no one I don’t like.

Did you know Paul Shaffer isn’t just Letterman’s hacky piano guy.  He was also the band director or SNL, the Blues Brothers, the Grammys, the R&R HOF jams.  Is he in the Rock Hall of Fame?  He should be.  Oh, and he wrote ‘It’s Raining Men’.  And you know he’s funny, he’s Canadian.  I guess there isn’t really a question there, but I thought Paul should be acknowledged for his tremendous contributions.  I mean… he put the Blues Brothers band together.  It was all him.  He couldn’t be in the movie because of conflict of interest legal mumbo jumbo.

And… he was in Spinal Tap. What is there not to love?

Ok, since that last wasn’t a question… or anything… really… who do you see still standing in 30 years?  This includes James Corden and Steven Colbert?

Jimmy Fallon.  He is a natural.

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Me? I’m Gate-Strong®

Recently, we have been hearing the term ”strong’ as a suffix for everything involved in adversity.  Colorado had the terrible floods, and at the benefit concert, we were ‘ColoradoStrong‘.  After the Boston bombings, the terrorized but resilient people of Boston were now Boston Strong.  You get the idea.  I am not sure if these terms are one big long word, or two smaller words.  I guess I am not ‘Grammar Strong’.  Remember where this suffix comes from?  It was Lance Armstrong, who started his charity – LiveStrong.  It’s a great story.  Dude defeated friggin brain cancer to become the best athlete of our generation.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have ‘gate’.  I not a fan of this one, because it (like above) is just too easily applied.  Anything even a little scandal-ish becomes ‘gate’.  Lono started jamming words together in that paragraph above.  It’s Grammar-Gate.  We got to hear this one trotted out with the Chris Christie scandal.  They are calling it Bridge-gate. Do you know what happened?  it’s pretty funny.  The Gov of New Jersey, Chris Christie, had a tiff with a mayor across the water.  So, to be a dick, he shut down the bridge to that city under the guise of construction. Effectively, Christie just closed that whole city… just because he could.

Here is a better take on it from last night’s Fallon.  He did another classic and brilliant parody of Springsteen’s Born to Run about Bridgegate.  Oh, and he did it with Bruce Springsteen.  You know Bruce, he is mister New Jersey.  When Bruce Springsteen starts publicly mocking the head of New Jersey… that is bad for Christie.  Especially since Christie is publicly a very big Springsteen fan.  Well…. was anyway.

So, why does anyone care?  Well, because Christie is going to run for President next year.  This single issue may be enough to shut the whole thing down.  So, he gets the ‘gate’ prefix.  I remember Bill Clinton had some scandals.  There was the Whitewater investigation.  The prosecutor, a total dick by the name of Kenn Starr, spent nearly a billion dollars and turned up nothing.  NOTHING.  They called it ‘Whitewater-gate‘.  They should have called it ‘Starrgate’

So… why do I write about this?  Besides the fact that I want the lazy ass media to stop using those cop out phrases, there is something larger at work here.  See, one of those scandals refers to a once beloved public figure who disgraced himself after it was revealed he spent YEARS and MILLIONS lying and covering up his dirty deeds.  What’s worse?  He spent all his time screwing anyone who challenged him or called him out.  You did not cross this guy, ever.  He will fuck you up!  Hence why the suffix has survived so long and so far.

Wait, which scandal was I talking about again?  See what I did there?  Shouldn’t the suffix ‘strong’ come to represent the same tawdry douchebaggery that ‘gate’ does?  What do we call the Lance Armstrong scandal.  Strong gate?  Nope.  They are calling it ‘showergate‘.  Wtf? I think if we called it ‘strong-gate’ the terms would cancel each other out.  Worse, it would cause a linguistic implosion the likes of which only the Swiss know over at the Hadron Super Collider.  You don’t want to be responsible for that.

Me?  Me, I ain’t scared of you!  I’m Lono-Strong®.  No… wait… I’m GateStrong ® My spell check, on the other hand, just shit itself.

Friday Fives

1. What sitcom perfectly depicts your life?

Two Broke Girls.  Not sure if you are familiar with it.  however, once I describe it you will be FREAKED by the similarities.  Two hot girls who are in their late 20’s waitress in a divey greasy spoon restaurant outside of NYC.  Their upstairs neighbor is a feisty polish cougar, and their ambition is to get out of all this and open a cupcake shop.

The parallels almost terrify me.  I have considered legal action, but it is kinda fun watching my real life play out on the screen.  It is like watching my own auto-biography.

2. What TV moment really made you smile?

Chris Cornell covering Pearl Jam’s ‘footsteps‘ the other night on Jimmy Fallon.  It’s kind of a surreal full circle moment.  Chris and Eddie sang that song together on the Temple of the Dog album, but with different lyrics.  So, there are 2 songs which are musically identical.  One is Pearl Jam’s ‘footsteps’, and the other is Temple of the Dog’s ‘Times of Trouble’.  Eddie Vedder sings on both.  Make sense?

3. You are stuck in the world of your favorite movie/tv show, what do you do

duck dynasty?  I would go fishing.  They own all that land.  Think of fishing on your own land;  You could cheat SO hard.  You could have fishing competitions with buddies.  You can get all liquored up on the boat and drive back to the house, because you are on private property the whole time.  Dynamite fishing?  You bet your ass!  Literally shooting fish in a barrel?  Positively!

4. In the movie Die Hard, Hans dies while falling backward while Beethoven’s Ode to Joy plays loudly in the background.

How does your death scene montage play out?

something like this.

5. Baseball’s World Series is on, no one seems to care. What other former major event still keeps going, to your amazement?

I have zero interest in all sports except NFL football.  I don’t even watch college football.  For example, I don’t even know if Basketball is being played right now.