Sunday Rerun: Dave's Not Here

I used to love recording David Letterman and watching him in the yawning while I made breakfast and put away the dishes, whether or not I had remembered to run the dishwasher.  His monologue was always hilarious, his Top Ten lists were so great that some of them were collected in two books, and his interviews with celebrities, people who did stupid human tricks, and people whose pets did funny things were always superb.  I guess his sense of humor meshed perfectly with me.  What he thought was funny was what I thought was funny.

So Dave retires and I tried the others.  Gave them all plenty of chances to amuse me.  And none did.

Stephen Colbert took over the late night slot on CBS.  He lost me years ago when he started calling himself ColeBEAR instead of COLEburt on the grounds that he was playing a character. Uh huh. I watched and watched, and nothing he did struck me funny...even when he raised one eyebrow like that The Rock guy.

Jimmy Fallon, over on NBC, wound up with the job when they booted Jay Leno off the latenight bus.  Fallon is a tremendous talent.  He can play guitar and sing, and he can do impersonations and take part in skits very effectively.  He can't seem to tell a joke without giggling about it, and overall he gives me the feeling that he's like a kid in 8th grade who got to host the school talent show and is being a little show-offy.

I revered ABC's Jimmy Kimmel when he was cohost, along with the lots-less-funny Adam Corolla, of The Man Show, which gave the world the exposure it needed to William Wallace Foster - the beloved "Fox," as well as hundreds of other amusing bits, most of them off-color, but some of them on. Doggone if Jimmy didn't go over to the other side - the "It was so cold out there today I saw an ear of corn wearing an alpaca sweater, I wanna tell ya..." school of humor.  And instead of sending The Man Show Boy out on stories, Jimmy now gives us his cousin Sal. 

I know there are other shows - Conan O'Brien, Trevor Noah, James Corden, Seth Meyers, Carson Daly, Tavis Smiley, Larry Wilmore.  Any day now, the GEICO Gecko will have his own couch and desk and start interviewing Colin Farrell and Demi Lovato, "with musical guests Macklemore and Ryan Lewis."