Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy

A fellow resident of Blogolopolis, whom I respect immensely, avers that she will start a non-profit to free The Roots from their current status as the house band on the Jimmy Fallon late-night show on NBC. She has a great idea. There's also the notion to let The Roots play for a solid hour every night and allow Fallon to sit at home and think of something else to do.

I have to say that I expected much better from him. On Saturday Night Live, he was adroit with impersonations, had good comic timing with his lines, seemed affable enough, and played guitar to some of his own songs. But this show he is doing now! Train wreck!

Much has been made of the prediction of Jimmy's eighth-grade classmates that he was the one person in the class Most Likely to Take Over from David Letterman. Well, that was a heavy load to carry around for all these years, and now it looks like they should have voted him Most In Need Of Watching Letterman to See a Pro in Action.

Do you know a guy - and it's always a guy - who wants so desperately to be funny and just isn't? The kind of guy who tells jokes that have the form and function, the rhythm, pacing and syntax of a joke, and then when he's done you realize there was no joke? I worked with a guy once who told the following "humorous" anecdote:

Guy walks into a sub shop and says "Gimme a whole cold cut sub with lettuce, tomato and mayo" and the guy behind the counter says, "You want everything on that, buddy?" and the first guy goes,"If lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise aren't everything, then I don't know what is!"

See? Form was right: set up, poser, punch line. But, like a weekend there in Pittsburgh, there's no there there!

Same way with Fallon. He prances out, all impish, still looking like the suit his mom bought him for college graduation is just a little tight, and he makes with the gags and the punch lines and it just is not funny.

Shame, too. He seemed to have it all going on. Next stop will be playing the wacky neighbor on a sitcom.

And I'm not saying I could do a better job. But I am saying that Gilbert Gottfried could.