The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

I find this confusing and sad. America, do you really like Jay Leno better than Letterman? My God...why? I find the guy incredibly unfunny, he mumbles and rushes through many interviews, he has Gilbert Gottfried as a regular, Stuttering John as an announcer...ugh. I find Leno does one funny thing, and that's "Headlines," and he has nothing to do with the humor of that (other than mugging for the camera and really overexplaining the jokes).

Anyway, Leno has increased his ratings lead over Letterman, and the news is even more incredible because CBS is a primetime ratings powerhouse and NBC, well, isn't. So I guess people really do change the channel.

I must be in the sappy Christmas spirit already because this story gave me a warm, happy feeling inside. Tonight Show bandleader Kevin Eubanks held a jam session for three dozen firefighters that helped save his home from the recent wildfires in California. Eubanks also invited firefighters and their families to call the Tonight Show offices for tickets to the show. It's always nice to see firefighters getting a well-deserved pat on the back.   

Did anybody catch The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night? Yeah, I don't normally watch him either (Letterman fan), but when The Donald is on you gotta watch. I was convinced that The Donald's hair and Leno's chin were gonna get in a fight, but they didn't. But what did happen was that Adam Sandler did a walk-on to autograph this motorcycle that Leno's auctioning off to raise money for Hurricane Katrina. Sandler walks out (the tourists cheer and applauded) and he signs it (same as all the other celebs), but then he says that he's willing to auction off a make-out session for charity too. The bidding starts and gets up to $250 with this 40-ish woman winning. She comes up and they "make-out" on the couch with Sandler pseudo-dry humping her to the audience's delight. I normally pass this stuff off as "pre-arranged spontaneity" but it looked truly spontaneous because the Tonight Show cameras had trouble keeping up with the action.

Oh, will you looky here: both Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe are on the late night shows tonight! Oh thank you talk shows Gods!

Crowe is on Letterman, while Cruise visits Leno. Gee, what will they talk about, I wonder? Will Crowe take out a cell phone and throw it at Paul Schaffer? Will Cruise jump on Leno's couch and start humping it? Ladies and gentlemen, get your remotes ready! 

So what's this all about, Motley Crue filing a lawsuit against NBC? On the 2004 New Year's Eve Jay Leno show, Crue lead singer Vince Neil let the F-word fly, and NBC then banned the group from future appearances on the network. Neil and crew (crue) have said that the network did it just to please the FCC and that banning them from the network has violated their first amendment rights, hurt the band and hurt its record sales. Hey guys: there are worse things than being banned from Jay Leno's show. 

 Our weekly preview of what's coming up on the late night talk shows.

• The Daily Show: tonight it's Byron York, author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy; on Tuesday, Senator Bob Dole; Wednesday has author John Avlon, and David Duchovny talks about his new movie House of D on Thursday. 
• The Late Show With David Letterman: Letterman returns with all new eps after a week that had a mixed bag of new eps and repeats. Tonight Robin Williams talks about House of D; on Tuesday Mickey Rourke from Sin City; on Wednesday Duchovny comes by to talk about X-Files 2.  Just kidding! He'll talk about House of D I'm sure (t's all D all the time this week); Anthony Lapaglia and Ana Gasteyer pop up on Thursday, and Friday's show will feature Kristen Chenoweth from The West Wing.