Newsgroups: alt.fan.letterman,alt.fan.conan-obrien,alt.tv.talkshows.late,alt.zines,rec.arts.tv Subject: LATE SHOW NEWS 7/26/94 Summary: Send the message "subscribe late-show-news" to listserv@mcs.net to join the LATE SHOW NEWS distribution list! Followup-To: alt.fan.letterman Reply-To: late-show-news@mcs.net Distribution: Keywords: From Chicago: Where you always get more for your counterfeit money ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, July 26, 1994 Issue #23 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- THERE'S JOHNNY (REDUX) The third video in "The Johnny Carson Collection: His Favorite Moments from _The Tonight Show_" is easily the most entertaining of the three, which no doubt has something to do with the proximity of the excerpts to our time. Where the first tape is a wonderful relic from a completely different era in t.v., and the second is a snoozer from the off-putting seventies, this installment crackles with the performances of contemporary comics like Robin Williams, Sam Kinison and Drew Carey. We also learned a few things, for instance, that Charles Grodin was nasty to Johnny before he ever was nasty to Dave or Jay; or that Carson really got a kick out of Joe Piscopo's impersonation of Letterman, with Dave sitting over on the guest couch, visibly pained by the sight of Piscopo wearing a gap-tooth insert. We also realized we don't give Johnny enough credit today. When it comes to handling more than one guest at a time, he still has no equal. And it's hard to imagine anyone delivering that instant classic of an introduction, replayed here in its entirety, to then-Governor Bill Clinton, who the night before had put the Democratic National Convention to sleep with his speech nominating Michael Dukakis. VERY NIIIICE! Now that all the nuttiness surrounding the "Mujibur and Sirajul Coast to Coast" t.v. tour has subsided, a postscript. Of course everyone is happy for our two New York emigres. When in 1981 they reached the shores of America for the first time, these university-educated gentlemen undoubtedly felt they had achieved the height of fortune, considering the poverty and backwardness of their native Bangledesh. But to be handed an all-expenses-paid junket and made the focal point of a media juggernaut must have seemed simply fantastical. No wonder Mujibur was seen to be shaking his head and proclaiming, "I thank God. I thank Dave. God bless America." Still, it figured that someone would try to ruin the fun by interpreting the tour as a tasteless running joke done at the expense of bumbling foreigners. Michael Quinn of _Time_ magazine took up just this bailiwick in a provocatively titled piece, "The Amos 'n Sirajul Flap" (6/28/94), which told of negative reactions within the Bangledeshi immigrant community to M & S's portrayal on the program. Quinn reported how word about the two men has spread like wildfire among their countrymen here in the States, even though most say they do not regularly watch the show. For that matter, we wonder how often Quinn does. "Standing by the Mississippi last week," he writes, "the pair triggered the brittle Letterman chuckle by staring blankly at a reference to the Stanley Cup and discovering new consonants in words like Illinois." Hm? Doesn't *everybody* on the show find themselves at one point in time or another staring blankly at a reference Dave has made? Isn't that called a joke -- you remember jokes, don't you, Mike? Replay those tapes of Dave's Mom in Norway and count the number of non sequiturs her son bounces off the satellite dish for laughs. As for those new consonants, M & S are simply rediscovering all the ones lost by natives of Dave's home state of Indiana who, as he jokes over and over again, say "Pars'dent Clinton" and "suhtistics" (and, for that matter, "Illinoiz"). To be sure, there is a socio-cultural subtext to this tale, but it has less to do with Letterman than the broadcast industry as a whole. There is an assimilationist presumption that American broadcasters should all sound more or less the same -- essentially like Middle Westerners. In Walker Percy's last novel, a young African-American woman, raised in the deepest South by an illiterate house servant whose accent is as thick as her gravy, goes to college and majors in radio-TV, where she adopts a flawless, utterly foreign "Indiana news anchor" voice. That is not to say Dave is completely blameless, as evidenced by the reporter who spotted "VERY NICE!" written on one of the boys' cue cards from their tour-ending appearance in San Francisco. So it's hard not to be ambivalent about this Bangledeshi circus. Sure, it's nice that M & S got their free lunch, but then, so did select black aldermen and congressmen in Chicago back when the late Mayor Daley was running things. On the other hand, it's clear that many well-educated and -informed Americans in Dave's audience do not share the views of enlightened, beyond-the-melting-pot journalists like Michael Quinn who have been on the scene for more than a generation. Still, there is the larger issue of America's relation to the world, played out most dramatically in the reception of its newly landed. Judging by the opinion polls, many Americans oppose increases in immigrants because they feel more inhabitants will undermine the stability of this ever more fragile land. We feel otherwise, but for heavens' sake, is the Letterman show the kind of forum to discuss this? Granted, Dave's wacky antics probably did not advance the cause of the immigrant, no matter how many "God bless America"s are spoken. But neither is it helped by preachy journalists who exploit the tension between cultures while suggesting simplistic ways to avoid it. Such behavior, after all, did get Slobodan Milosevic elected. And anyway, _Late Show_ is an entertainment vehicle. The M & S tour merely took it out for a joyride. And no one would have been the more joyous had it never happened. F.Y. EYES Once again, more viewers tuned in for reruns of _Late Show_ than for new _Tonight_ episodes July 11-15 ... If yours is one of the 7 million households that gets The Food Network on cable, check out "Getting Healthy," co-hosted by ex-jockcaster Gayle Gardner and Dr. Louis Aronne, who is Dave's internist and appeared most recently on _Late Show_ to remove stitches from the host's temple ... Jay's goin' to Vegas. He'll do five _Tonight_ shows Sept. 19-23 from the MGM Grand. Dave did shows from Las Vegas seven years ago ... A joke from Jay's monologue ripping on Denny's restaurants is sampled on the new Branford Marsalis funky-D ... And have you been watching Tom Snyder on CNBC since CBS Chairman Larry Tisch leaked word to t.v. critics last week that T.S. has almost been inked for the 12:35 show? Every night, at the top of his program, Snyder looks off-camera to his stage manager, Mark Kennedy, and asks, "Did we get any calls today?" ("No, sir.") "Did we *make* any calls today?" ("I didn't.") "Where do we stand?" ("I don't know.") Then he laughs and looks in the camera to share the joke with us. It appears Tom will believe he has a contract only when he sees it -- maybe that's why he's lasted 41 years. THE LINEUPS LATE SHOW, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 7/26 Gin Blossoms and Kiss, Anthony LaPaglia We 7/27 Jeff Altman, Huey Lewis and the News Th 7/28 Rosie Perez, Bob Newhart, the Mavericks Fr 7/29 Conan O'Briiiiiien, Dave Edmunds Mo 8/1 Damon Wayans, Jon Secada, Cameron Diaz Tu 8/2 Stevie Nicks It's even money Dave will either not mention the 1986 memo from Stevie's management company that was read on the air, or if it's mentioned he'll apologize. (Kiss-ass.) THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 7/26 Shelley Winters, 4-year-old crappie fishing champion Justin Elliott, Billy West We 7/27 William Shatner Th 7/28 Basia Fr 7/29 Kenny Loggins, Richard Simmons, Rolonda Watts Mo 8/1 Merrill Markoe Tu 8/2 Roger Daltrey LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 7/26 Abe Vigoda, John Hiatt, Leeza Gibbons We 7/27 Louie Bellson, Michael Moore, Isaac Hayes Th 7/28 Director Whit Stillman, US3 Fr 7/29 Playmate of the Year Jenny McCarthy Mo 8/1 Boy Genius Masoud Karkehabadi Tu 8/2 Bret Easton Ellis, Bruce Cockburn LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 7/26 Penny Marshall, rerun We 7/27 Tom Arnold, rerun Th 7/28 Tom Snyder, rerun Mo 8/1 TBA Tu 8/2 TBA -- Thanks to S Trowbridge Also, don't miss TOM SNYDER on CNBC, airing live Monday-Thursday at 10 p.m. Eastern with a rerun of that evening's show at 1 a.m. Reruns also air at those times Friday through Sunday. See if they don't replay Monday's (7/25) show with guest Michael Moore this weekend. It's a pick to click. The E! entertainment television cable network broadcasts reruns of _Late Night with David Letterman_ "seven Daves a week" at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Monday through Friday, reruns can also be viewed at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern. The following schedule was taken from the E! update line. Mo 7/25 Carly Simon, Hunter S. Thompson (10-19-87) Tu 7/26 The reverse-image show with Carol Alt (2-22-84) We 7/27 The 360-degree show w/ Peter Ustinov, George Miller (12-9-86) Th 7/28 The U.S. Virgin Islands with Robert Klein (2-7-84) Fr 7/29 Kenny Rogers, Randy Bass (11-26-85) Sa 7/30 Barry White, Jacqueline Bissett, Bobcat Goldthwait (5-24-83) Su 7/31 Dave's first show with Bill Murray, Mr. Wizard (2-1-82) --------------------------- Entire contents Copyright (C) 1994 by Aaron Barnhart. All rights reserved. Redistribution prohibited without written permission of the author, with the exceptions that a single user (a) may retrieve LATE SHOW NEWS from the archive listed below by anonymous FTP, and (b) may send to another single user by electronic mail where an electronic mailing list such as Majordomo is not employed. 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