LNT Week 8!

Sorry everybody. The Late Night Landscape is still a disaster zone. All of the non-CBS shows can’t get any real guests and Letterman is still not beating Leno in the ratings. It’s a Christmas miracle!! Have we sunk this far that people can’t tell actual celebrities apart from reality ones? We certainly can’t. These weekly LNTs take 8-9 hours of research just to figure out who the guests are each week so we can make fun of them. It’s ridiculousness. Do you realize how hard it is to make fun of someone when you have to explain who that person is in the setup of the fun making?

We have a solution though. The television networks break into 2 sets. It’ll be like the Premiere League. We’ll only ever have 3 real networks. At the end of each year, whichever network finishes third falls into the bottom bracket and whoever wins the bottom bracket gets promoted. This way instead of having to keep track of individual “celebrities” we can all just make fun of the hapless network execs who have no idea how to provide us, the consumers, with a product we want to consume.

Here at Late Night Thing HQ, we’ve always said that everything should be more like a sporting competition, well now watching TV can be too. Plus, those of us that love 30 Rock can get stuck defending our network’s demotion to the 3rd tier of the digital cable package just like Cubs fans have to defend their lovable losers after their yearly failure.

Monday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - TBA
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Katie Holmes, Frank Caliendo, Maroon 5
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - TBA
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Ben Kingsley, Laura Prepon, Lupe Fiasco
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Ice Cube, Carrie Ann Inaba, Xavier Rudd

STEPHAN: Dave must be pretty broken up by the Colt’s loss that he let that lineup through. The Scot has better guests at every posish. Kimmel has Ice Cube and no one else. And over at NBC, Jeff Zucker is still personally challenging everyone in America to not watch his network. Mission Accomplished, Jeffy!

ERECH: I’m not even sure if I know what to say anymore. CBS is bringing it, even fake Craiggers has real guests (and that never happens), but everyone else? Nothing. We get TBA. TO. BE. ANNOUNCED. You know what that means? I would bet anyone reading this, I will bet you a brand new 50 dollar bill, I will bet that TBA means ABSOLUTELY that Wolf from American Gladiators is going to be a guest on Jay or Conan this week.

Bet.

Tuesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - TBA
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Denzel Washington, Don Rickles
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - TBA
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Drew Carey, Seth Gabel, Kate Nash
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - TBA

ERECH: Oh, you’ve brought this on yourselves NBC. You’ve gone out of your way to spite us, to withhold from us, to be all SECRET SQUIRREL on us - so you’ve nobody to blame for this but yourselves. You Jeff Zucker, and your cronies Lynn Calpeter and John Eck, you’ve brought down the fury of LNT - prepare to reap the consequences!

Good job on the Golden Globes btw, nice 4th place run you took on Sunday, getting your ass handed to you by Fox of all networks. Zucker ftw.

STEPHAN: I don’t know if I can think of a better Letterman team-up. Rickles and Denzel are both in the top 10 of my “Celebrities I’d Like to Run into at a Bar” list. It’s pretty much the same as the “Celebrities That Should be Talking to Dave” list, so tonight should be a good’un.

Wednesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - TBA
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Michael Douglas, Katherine Heigl, Wyclef
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - TBA
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Jon Cryer, Blake Lewis
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - TBA

STEPHAN: All right, I give up. Who is Blake Lewis? Is he also friends with Paget Brewster? That’d be a fun theme night for Fake Craiggers’s show. Actually, that’d be a fun theme night for any show.

Maybe you could try that NBC. None of us care about your useless “Reality Stars”, so why not try bringing out some friends of people who won’t go on your show because of the WGA strike? It can’t get worse. It can not get worse. (It will probably get worse.)

ERECH: Unless one of the TBA’s have a special awesome guest, and we know that ain’t gonna happen, this looks like it’s going to be a specially lame night of tv. Not even Heigl’s spectacular chest can save Dave’s lineup. I mean, Wyclef has to know that if it wasn’t for the out-of-touch talkie-bookers giving him airtime, he’d barely have any career at all anymore, yeah? The Carnival part 2? How about you just put out a new Fugees album, and then go do your Ambassadorial work, or whatever it is you do when you aren’t appearing on Regis & Kellie Lee trying to convince us all about how much street cred you have at the same time. EEK.

Instead of watching TV tonight, I’m just gonna go brush up on my AMPTP hate-fuel some more, like this WGA FAQ by Robert Elisberg. Remember readers, your ignorance on this is what the AMPTP is hoping for, and why they’ll keep giving us Celebrity Dance Battlin’ (because who can’t relate to battle dancing?!) with a smirk, telling you to like it or else. It’s time to start writing letters folks, because if the AMPTP gets away with this in America to our rich and famous, just think of the example it’ll set for all these other lousy corporations that pay the boobs like you and me - just you wait and see all the great stuff they have in store for us next. The great David Letterman summed it up best, about those in charge of the teevee we watch every day and night - “money-grubbing scum”.

Stand up my people, if for nothing else so I have something to write about every week, yeah?

Thursday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - TBA
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Sylvester Stallone, the Teutul family, the Mars Volta
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - TBA
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Trace Adkins, Bonnie Somerville
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - TBA

ERECH: Seeing Trace Adkins on Fergie makes me wonder if Adkins isn’t the casualty of tonights “Celebrity” Apprentice - which I must with great sadness admit, I’ve been watching. ONLY, however, to see the madness which is Gene Simmons, doing battle with the equal madness which is The Donald. It’s like the 2 most insane, bloated, out-of-touch pseudo-celebs, puffing up their chests and trying to out-embarrass each other - in other words, AMAZING. If this show was just 10 weeks of The God of Thunder, is the only way it could possibly get any better, and the only way to ensure I’ll be watching this show all the way through - because the moment The Demon is gone, baby, so am I. I mean, aside from the fact most of these people are barely celebrities, and the other half of them probably have more money than the guy who they’re “interviewing” for in the first place - it’s such a ridiculous scenario I can barely believe it’s even allowed to be on tv - but oh yeah, Jeff Zucker.

Worst. Network. Ever.

STEPHAN: Remember when The Mars Volta was At The Drive-In? Those guys were the best. Then all that weed got to them and they started making 30 minute songs. Mistake. Oh well. The Teutuls are funny people and they’re always good on Dave. The best one was right after Bill Murray had been on their show. They (especially Paul, Jr.) still seemed starstruck and it was a nice, genuine moment. Maybe TV isn’t shitty?

Friday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - TBA
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Diane Keaton, Jim Gaffigan
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - TBA
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Ted Danson, Ali Wentworth, Dean Edwards
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - TBA

STEPHAN: George Stephanopolous’s wife is going to be on unscripted talking TV again? Good job, AMPTP! Do you see what you’ve wrought? We’re so desperate for people to say words that failed morning talk show hosts get to come back on the air. This is not the America I signed up for. (The America I signed up for was the America with The Magic Hour and the Pat Sajak Show. Man, bad TV used to be amazing.)

ERECH: Gaffigan better be doing some new material, because if I see him say hot-pockets one more time, I’m gonna hunt him down and club him to death with a bag fulla STILL FROZEN pockets, and then I’ll probably win an award.

Ted Danson is out pimping his new movie, Mad Money, where he plays Don Cardigan (opposite Queen Latifah and some other chicks) which for some reason opens today. Do you wanna know the only difference between Don Cardigan and Ted Danson? Ted doesn’t spell his name with a D.

Oh what a week, a horrible horrible week. At least we have nothing good to look forward to, thanks Corporate Asshats!

And that was the end of, if you’re keeping count, the 8th week of LNT. Be back next week when Stephan and Erech tell you what’s good in the hood on all your favorite laties, and then make Monica Lewinsky jokes in a bid to land those elusive scab positions at NBC. Oh they’ll sell-out, and big too - just you wait and see!

Read Past LNT’s:
Week 7-5
Week 7-4
Week 7-3
Week 7-2
Week 7-1
Week 6
Week 5
Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1