jim mcgreevey

Jay Leno's sit-down with Chris Rock on Thursday's show felt like it didn't really need Jay. Chris was just doing his act, which is fine since he's a comedian. If Joe the Plumber was just doing his stand-up act on Jay's chairs, that would be another story, and quite possibly another universe.

But as another great talk show producer once said, "A host with less talent would have interrupted him."

Rock's comedy was on the money, an expected bit of entertainment from a man who knows more about comedy and writing than you or I ever will. His bit about recently arrested film director Roman Polanski was particularly funny, especially since it's starting to become "The Michael Jackson Death Coverage 2: Electric Bugaloo" on the press. That's what late night is supposed to do: soften the blows the real world brings.

Remember the days when people used to talk about David Letterman's Top Ten List? You'd be at work or school the next day, and someone would inevitably bring up one of the better lines from the previous night's Top Ten, or talk about the whole list if they did a weird one. Nowadays, of course, no one talks about the Top Ten anymore; heck, it's so old hat that even Letterman doesn't care about it anymore, often delivering it in a perfunctory "I'm just giving the audience what they want" manner.

But the Top Ten from last night was one of the rare instances where the writers really did a great job, coming up with a funny, edgy list. The topic? "Chapter Titles in Jim McGreevey's Book." The book in question is The Confession, where the former New Jersey governor writes about how he kept his homosexuality secret until a scandal forced him to come out of the closet. They invited McGreevey to come on to read it, but for some reason he didn't bother. Looking at the list, I can see why he might have had a problem. So they had staff writer Gerard Mulligan read it. The list is after the jump, directly from the Late Show's website: