The Blindest Side

Say what you will about Jay Leno, you can't say the guy isn't blessed by good timing (scheduling timing, that is).

The man who lucked out by booking Hugh Grant on "The Tonight Show" following the latter's solicitation arrest in 1995--which forever turned the tide in the Leno-vs.-Letterman ratings battle--and scored Kanye West on the premiere episode of "The Jay Leno Show" the day after West's ass-bananas Taylor Swift-usurping at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards has today completed somewhat of a hat trick:

On the very day that Conan O'Brien proved himself the bigger man by rejecting NBC's offer to remain the host of a bumped-to-12:05 version of "The Tonight Show" that would've accommodated Leno's merciless, self-serving quest to return to the 11:30 slot, who happens to be the lead guest on the canceled "Jay Leno Show"?

None other than Sandra Bullock, who is currently receiving acclaim for starring in a movie that made a lot of money for numbing NASCAR fans to their vague awareness of their own latent racism. Just as Leno used to be funny, Bullock once starred in Speed (which kicks ass).

Conan O'Brien Schools Jay Leno in Dignity; Comedy To Continue To Suffer as Result

Jay Leno hasn't been funny on television since he snookered the "Tonight Show" gig out from under the heels of the vastly-more-deserving David Letterman in 1992. In the years hence, Letterman has continued to rock-the-party hard (perchance a little too hard?) while Leno has stripped away every last piece of himself that used to be funny in order to cater to the George W. Bush-fetishizing, teabagging middle-Americans (who hate that goddamn nigger president SO MUCH--but not 'cause he's a nigger but 'cause he's whatever Glenn Beck says he is on the magic talkin' box) that've kept him chin-deep in vintage automobiles.

Leno chose to retire from "The Tonight Show" in 2009--a decision that he had announced five years in advance. When the moment arrived to hand the mantle to O'Brien, Leno--in all his narcissism--balked, making a deal with NBC for a new nightly show that would air before O'Brien. Now that "The Jay Leno Show" has spectacularly (and predictably) failed and with NBC proposing to keep both Leno and O'Brien via a Slap Chop bastardization of "The Tonight Show", Leno has one move to make if he has any modicum of decency and/or respect for his predecessors, his anointed successor, and the art of comedy as a whole--and that move is to actually retire.

So of course, he's not doing that, and Conan O'Brien is leaving NBC.

May Conan find a new show on Fox and crush Leno in the ratings.

[NYT via Movieline]

[UPDATE: In addition to my just being mean about Jay Leno, allow me to supplement it with some more nuanced thoughts from a top-shelf comedian (play the audio at the bottom of the linked page).]

And Now They Stink

Remember that decade (that is technically still this decade) when the Patriots were good?

Ah, memories.

Seattle Schadenfreude

From birth to present, I've been a New England Patriots fan. Following the team's first (non-joke) Super Bowl appearance in 1997, Pete Carroll became their head coach; he skillfully took them from good to mediocre, to bad, to a joke (again) in a scant three years.

The year after I graduated from the University of Southern California, that very school (because Yahweh knows I'm a football fan and hates me) handed Patriots-ruiner Pete Carroll the reins of its vaunted football team.

Over the next eight years, I was left to impotently try to explain to my fellow alumni that Pete Carroll was a terrible football coach while he ostensibly "led" USC to two national championships and received (unwarranted) credit for returning the Trojans to prominence.

Finally, in 2009, the emperor's new clothes were revealed as USC sucked goat balls. And what has Pete Carroll done as a result?

He has bailed, taking a wholly-undeserved sick contract to coach the NFL's Seattle Seahawks.

While I feel bad for the football fans of Seattle and the meager-hope-trumping failure that they will experience in 2010, I am very excited to say to Pete Carroll:

Best of luck in in the Pacific Northwest, you mealy-mouthed sonofahamster. The ghost of Drew Bledsoe's career-that-could-have-been awaits you on "ESPN Purgatory".

Cold as ICE

Is there anything more American than the New England Patriots?

There is if you ask America's Immigration and Customs Enforcement--who, on Thursday, detained dozens of Guatemalan workers that were en route to Gillette Stadium to shovel snow for this weekend's playoff game.

Or maybe ICE is just a bunch of Ravens fans.

[via Deadspin]

An M. Night Shyamalan New Year

Imagine that you're a racist, hate-spewing archconservative radio personality. Now imagine that Barack Obama has been hospitalized with chest pains. Would you make fun of that situation?

If so, you're Rush Limbaugh--and you're in the hospital with chest pains. BURN '010!

Tabloid Culture Sneaks In a Late-Year Victory

Regarding Brittany Murphy's death on Sunday, Courtney Hazlett of MSNBC.com's "The Scoop" made sure to mention that "there are speculative rumors of the usual Hollywood chemical abuse beginning to circulate".

Go get 'em, Courtney! You know all about these "Hollywood" people off of whose lives (and deaths) you make your living by blindly judging. They're the ones keeping you from your true calling of...

What, exactly? The Traveling Ass-Clown Circus? I'm not sure that's a real thing.

Professional Sports + Monogamy = Frowny-Face Emoticon

First we had this...now we've got this.

Attention, extraordinarily-fortunate men and women who make up the tiny percentage of humankind that gets paid crazy-good money to engage in recreational activities that the vast majority of married/engaged/in-a-committed-relationship men and women support entirely with hefty chunks of their comparatively much-smaller salaries just so that they can occasionally escape to a fantasy world beyond their realities of quiet desperation while likely living to engage in said activities--for free--on the weekends:

Either stay single or choose a new career path. Should work out better for everybody.


[UPDATE (7:35 a.m. PST): The above blitheness aside, there's nothing funny about Chris Henry's subsequent death. Better odds he'll rest in peace than people will stop being lunatics.]

[FINAL POST TITLE]: Domino's Changing Recipe

[OPTIONAL POST TEXTS (all hyperlinks lead to same page)]:

(A) Domino's had a recipe?

(B) Now what brand of pizza will I continue to not eat?

(C) [something about "The Noid"]

I think I like 'C'; I just haven't worked out all the details yet.

Hillary Clinton's Preferred Alternate Universe Discovered in Bush Country (and none of the preceding was a lesbian joke)

On Saturday, a lesbian won the mayoral race of the largest U.S. city to ever vote an openly homosexual candidate to that office--which I think is awesome.

That city, however, is Houston--which flies in the face of my beloved, east-coast-bred and west-coast-nurtured, hippie-liberal stereotypes of the home state of the Worst President Ever.

But, taking into account that Houston Mayor-elect Annise Parker beat out a black person for the job, it kind of makes sense:

The George Bush-loving rednecks of Houston--faced with what they no doubt viewed as a "lesser of two evils"-type of situation--obviously opted to stick it to the American Negro President and that uppity bitch (and current U.S. Secretary of State) who once challenged the former for the Democratic presidential candidacy by voting for a woman with short blonde hair and a penchant for pantsuits instead of a colored fella.

My liberal bigotry is once again validated; all is right (and/or wrong) with the world.

Old Men, Take a Look At Us Now

It was reported on Wednesday that the Boston Red Sox have reached a preliminary agreement with the Texas Rangers to trade Mike Lowell for minor league catcher Max Ramirez.

The deal could still collapse--because Mike Lowell is an old man with a bum hip--and the emotional side of my Red Sox fandom kind of wants it to. On the other hand, Mike Lowell is an old man with a bum hip and the Red Sox desperately need a new catcher because their current one--whom I love dearly--is an old man with a bum everything.

I don't know how to feel...other than old.

[UPDATE (12/20): No deal.]

Metroville's Movie Corner 2026: Shia LaBeouf IS Terry Francona in 'Reverse the Curse'*

I've been telling my wife for years that Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona is an older version of Shia LaBeouf. At last, I have found two video clips of the aforementioned individuals that (sort of) prove my case:






*(That might not turn out to be the exact title of the film; perhaps it'll be based on Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan's book.)