Week NEW!

And a new NBA season dawns. Nine months of pretending to find baseball interesting and two months of bad football and finally we have something good to watch. So many great subplots and so many great players. This season is going to be one for the books. It’s a perfect storm of entertainment. 1.) Everyone knows a lock-out is coming in 2011 and salaries are going to drop. This means we’re going to get everyone playing hard even during the regular season, trying to justify those exorbitant contracts. 2.) Several good teams got better. The Spurs had a great draft and Manu should be healthy for the first time in two years. The Magic not only are building off a big playoff run, but they traded Hedo for Vince Carter and cleared up their point guard situation. 3.) A lot of young players are ready to step up. Derrick Rose got some playoff experience to go with all that talent, no one can guard Kevin Durant, and look at the Clippers. They’ve got a bunch of young guys that play. That’s inexplicably a super fun team to watch, and barring injuries they have a legitimate playoff shot. 3.) Even most of the bad teams are fun to watch. Golden State may not be a good team, but Anthony Randolph is as intriguing as anyone else in the league. The Knicks run and gun and run (even if they don’t have any talent) so at least you get to see some scoring.

Oh, hey, there are talk shows too, and we’ve got some listings:

Monday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Dr. Phil McGraw
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Kathy Griffin, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, Wolfmother
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Charles Barkley, Cheryl Hines, Harper Simon
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Willem Dafoe, Tim Gunn, Har Mar Superstar
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Sherri Shepherd, Alex Dryden
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Edward Norton, Paul Shaffer, “Dancing with the Stars” castoff Natalie Coughlin, the Sounds
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Chris Pratt, Naked Girls Reading, the Like

STEPHAN: Letterman’s bringing out the big guns tonight! The Round Mound of Rebound is not only the best sports talking guy on television, but he and Dave are great together. Plus, there’s a decent chance they talk about Antoine Walker. (If you’re not aware of Walker’s situation and thus didn’t click the link, he made $110 million in his career, not counting endorsements, and is flat broke right now.) And even if you’re one of those terrible people who don’t like the NBA, Cheryl Hines is guest number two, and don’t nobody not like her. She is quite literally the best.

ERECH: Sherri Shepherd on 30 Rock is tolerable because the writing and editing is so good, you can barely tell she’s dumber than a sack of farts. Having to sit through a 10 minutes interview with her though is just torture, and last I checked that was ILLEGAL! I mean, does this ever not hurt your soul to watch?

Ugh. Top that one with the fact she isn’t even the dumbest person on The View either. JINKIES!

In non-ugh news, that Kimmel rerun is something I will check out tonight because I missed it last week or whenever it was on, and I like just about all of those people. Of course I’ll be changing channels back and forth to see Dave and Sir Charles own the night, but Stephan already explained why that’s the show to watch, and HOW!

Tuesday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Ewan McGregor, Tina Fey, Tim McGraw & Gregg Allman
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Garry Shandling, Paula Deen, Julian Casablancas
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Courteney Cox, Florence and the Machine
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Artie Lange, Olivia Munn, David Chang
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Alicia Silverstone, Salman Rushdie
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Dr. Mehmet Oz, the latest “Dancing with the Stars” castoff, Morningwood
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Yvonne Strahovski, Kris Belman, Mike Posner

ERECH: You’re not fooling me again, Leno! I can tell from this line-up that you have way too many people on the bill, so it’s gonna be Tina doing a remote or prerecorded segment, no way are you going to have all these people on at the same time. That is unless he switches from this nonsense variety show format he had going, to just doing a straight up Tonight Show rip-off full out. DO IT JAY.

STEPHAN: Is that Carson Daly episode really old? I’m pretty sure Yvonne Strahovski is from Chuck and that show isn’t coming back until March. I guess this doesn’t really matter though, since nobody actually watches this show. The rest of the NBC lineup looks pretty great though. Garry Shandling is a fascinating talk guy. He’s an enigma, yet he’s incredibly open. He doesn’t hide from questions at all, he’s just such a particular character that it’s hard to get a bead on him. And let’s not forget that he is Larry Sanders.

Wednesday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Chelsea Handler, Brian Williams
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Lindsey Vonn, Uncle Kracker
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Patrick Dempsey, Bud Selig, Sting
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Edward Norton, Hulk Hogan, “Weird Al” Yankovic
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Madeleine Albright, Rodrigo y Gabriela
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Atticus Shaffer, Flyleaf
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Kate Flannery, Kevin Christy

STEPHAN: It’s always strange seeing a band on Ferguson. His show has no live music and the entire show is him. It’s him with puppets and him with guests and him being extemporaneous. When a band shows up there’s no Craig, and it feels like a different show. Speaking of musical guests and different shows, Uncle Kracker on Conan and Sting on Letterman are both asking you to watch something else tonight. What exactly? Some child actor on Kimmel I guess.

ERECH: Fallon’s show looks too insane for me to not check out tonight. If there is any chance all 3 of the guests will end up on the couch together, I am going to be even more pumped. Can you just imagine? Oh the insanity that will ensue, YES PLEASE!

Thursday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Michael Moore
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Denis Leary, bat expert Rob Mies, the Swell Season
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Tom Hanks, Weezer
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Carrie Fisher, Sam Rockwell, Mastodon
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Newt Gingrich, Jessalyn Gilsig
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Jason Schwartzman, Rod Stewart
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Derek Luke, the Doves

ERECH: What, Craiggers is going all CSPAN on us this week or something? (I have nothing more creative to say about that listing but that.)

STEPHAN: Is Carrie Fisher really going to be before Sam Rockwell? This isn’t 1981 (or even 1985). Sure, Rockwell isn’t the number one acting star in America right now, but he’s been working and doing work at that. Plus, he gives a good interview. Carrie Fisher was on an episode of 30 Rock and wrote a book about being drunk. Not that that isn’t great, but really? Stupid television.

Wait, stupid television? The NBA on TNT is back tonight! That’s the opposite of stupid. Sure, that second game probably won’t be that great, but the opener gives us the Bulls playing the Spurs. It’s on, y’all!

Friday:

• The Jay Leno Show - John Cusack, Frank Caliendo
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Susie Essman, Alice in Chains
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Regis Philbin, Brian Regan, Weezer
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Wanda Sykes, Josh Charles, the Amazing Kreskin, Andrew Bird
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Lauren Graham, Fruit Bats
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Paris Hilton, Slipknot
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Masi Oka, Black Lips

STEPHAN: CBS night tonight folks. REGIS!!!! into Brian Regan can’t be topped (even with a Weezer shit cherry on top). Then the great Lauren Graham will be on Ferguson. For those of you not watching Ferguson on a regular basis, you’re probably sick of us mentioning his great interviews with hot ladies, but what do you want? He’s great at it. A lot of these ladies have nothing to say (I’m not talking about Lauren Graham who is delightful always), but Craig somehow manages to finagle a good interview out of them regardless. Watch him break through Gabrielle Anwar’s hot lady defenses, for example:

ERECH: I refuse to believe Kreskin didn’t pass away many, many years ago. No way is this the same guy. What is it, like his great nephew Mikey Kreskin, trying to cash in on his relatives fame the same way that Dacre Stoker jerk is trying to cash in on his. “Dacre”? Seriously. And people wonder why I gave up fiction years ago for the warm gentle glow of the teevee.

Also, that’s a whole lot of suck for 1 hour, Yimmy. At least Letterman’d torture that herpfactory the whole time she was on, I feel like Kimmel would pretend to be interested in her stories though. (even though we all know he hates this broad the same as we all do - which might make it worse!)

Closing out another week at LNT, notice how devoid the boys were of any references to Falcon Heene, the Letterman sextape, or the horrible rumors that Max Weinberg might be leaving Conan because he hates L.A. and misses Jersey. Nope, not a drop of any of that filth here, Late Night Thing keeps it classy, all the time, every time.

Speaking of classy, how about that balloon boy farting AND puking on national television - twice of the latter even! This is what we’ve come to folks, the total fallout of celebrity has finally relegated us all to ladies in waiting, attending to the base egos of the most awful white trash queens and queenettes this country has to offer. If having a strong economy means every jerk in any trailer park can afford to buy a handheld video camera capable of recording in HD from the local SuperTarget, then I think we can all agree it’s time to invest our money in POGS!

This country has become so devoid of purpose, reason and talent, that the infrastructure of our humanity has actually begun to collapse. We are officially into the post-reality era of infamy, where all it takes for someone to make a few bucks and get their name in the papers is by being a horrible, useless piece of refuse. Were it that was just a ponderous episode we all needed to observe, to further understand how the “other half” lives, it might be acceptable. What it really is though is a mirror to ourselves.

How many times in the last week have you been in the mall, on the bus or subway, walking in the park, and bore witness to what you could only conclude was the most awful human behavior by someone you had ever seen? Heck, how many times TODAY did that happen??

What makes that even worse, is the only thing keeping them from a reality show deal on Bravo was that you didn’t have a camera with you while you watched this behavior occur, and that now makes you the jerk for MISSING OUT!

Look, Late NIght Thing isn’t prone to these usual sort of fits of doom and gloom, but your heroes of late nightery have to take a stand. The bill for our 7 satellite dishes and 3 TiVoHD’s isn’t cheap, and I think that earns us the right to speak accordingly - more than 99% of all non-sports televised content is utter garbage. Be it the 800th rerun of The Cosby Show (we were fans right up until the 799th time) or a block of Maury Povich and Steve Wilkos, it’s useless. And lets not even get started on G4. BLECH.

Which is why LNT strives to support so vehemently what is good, and what we love, to get you the reader to pay attention to the best. Sure, we go on weekly tirades against these poor slobs who we’ve never met in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will have their eyes opened to all the stuff out there that is great. Television is a wasteland alright, which is why the oasises’s (esses’s) are so much grander to behold.

So save your hate mail, and your nasty comments, and your defense of the indefensible. We’ve heard it all before, and we’ve probably said worse about ourselves already anyways. We did get the gist of these complaints though, so soon LNT will put up or shut up - and start putting together a list of the best. The absolute best. And if you still want to watch NCIS New York, well then to hell with you.

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