Yes folks, it is Iman’s staycation time. During the summer I take a week off work and hang around the city, going to concerts, TV tapings, hanging with friends and basically doing what pleases me most: listening to music and staying out past my bedtime.
Three years agoI went to Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night Show on my Staycation (the night before U2!) , had a great time as well, (read all about it here) got to high five Jimy and watch him team up with Justin Timberlake plus Emmylou Harris did a coupla songs and finally I was actually in the show for a new York second.
So I was psyched to get my first viewing of The Tonight Show since Leno was finally fired. I watch the show from time to time and though it isn’t Carson by any means, it is the best Late Night Talk Show around right this minute, Fallon can’t sustain prolonged viewing, his insistent obsequiousness gets to be a drag as an interviewer and his main schtick, getting celebrities to play games after the break isn’t taht funny… more lazy than amusing.
Still, Thursday nights show promised Jeff Tweedy, Kesha and Morgan Freedman and I invited Jahn Xavier to join me and he seemed to be looking forward to this: “It turns out that the guests are Jeff Tweedy and Morgan Freeman. What are the odds that on this particular evening the guests on a mainstream talk show would be two people that I actually RESPECT? Way cool! And then there’s Ke$ha, and that should be fun too.”
So why, four hours later, is Jahn snarling “I’m gonna get you for this” at me?
Jimmy was filming two shows and running late and not only did we not get Jeff (who Jahn loves but I don’t much care for) but we got stuck in a line for an hour waiting to get in, and then we got got, well, let Jahn express it to you: “I got the taping of TOMORROW’S show, with two actors I couldn’t get give a fuck about and Martha Fucking Stewart making a Cuban sandwich. Ugh.”. Going through a lie detector frustrated Jahn so much he ended up fighting with security, “I didn’t call you a Nazi” Jahn snapped at one guard, “I called the security like Nazi Germany”.
Poor Jahn, though I am a somewhat impatient guy myself and I gotta tell you, Jahn was funnier than Fallon and that calmed me down.The newly built Tonight Show has that new car smell and state of the art feel, it is all zooming cameras and wood panels and for some reason the audience was gorgeous leggy 20 something girls, who you just know are off to Happy Hour next with a change of clothes in a bag on their shoulder.
The Roots opened the proceedings with a pretty good vamp featuring an excellent tuba player and Jimmy Fallon’s monologue featured a running gag about selling crack at a McDonald’s. But the Jon Hamm interview and skit (essentially Jon and Jimmy spitting food at each other) proves once and for all that Fallon has given up all pretense and actually interviewing anybody and a Brit Marling interview seemed to baffle her as much as it did me.
Worst of all was a Cuban sandwich cooking contest between a vaguely indifferent Martha Stewart and a boyishly infectious Fallon.
And then they let us out row by row with a disgruntled Jahn and a still somewhat amused me.
Next: Letterman before he closes up shop, I hope.
Grade: C
