Scott van Pelt recalls the Tonight Show fiasco.

SportsCenter does these dj mixes of the month that play around with a lot of soundbites. They also did a recent "things they should trademark" segment. I was thinking about the NBC craziness with Leno and Conan and thought I would write a little remembrance up using quotes. Then I realized this was the perfect time to have an extended use of hyperlinks--it's a new type of reading really. So I hope this isn't too unbearable to get through. It's not very good, but it's the thought that counts, right? (Wrong.)

You play to win the game, playoffs? You play to win the game. Don't talk about playoffs. Don't talk about five years down the line! The sideline, where coaches are taught to stand at the ready to trip you into jokes on you and the egg on your face. Standing up, wiping away the phrases and zingers, you realize why they call this the punchline. Do you think Leno was saying "Can't wait!" when he was thinking about the end? The poem is always a gimmick, striving, playing the game, in order to get its inscrutable point across. Across the pages of the many months of YouTube tabloids, we find Conan taking his talents to twitter, then eventually not Fox, but TNT; Leno, however, would become LeBron, nearly an anagram. The poem is always pleading its own existence. I speak now, as the voice of a television reporter using amateur uploaded information as the basis of my argument. Letterman says "he is who we thought he was." I am like a writer who can only work with the letters of the alphabet, I must remember my history within the context of my existence. The macrocosm of the microcosm, the situations turned, the sides switched, I try to recreate the world in a way I understand, for I am known for one purpose. Or I am unknown. Sigh. The problem is that these things go on for far too long. And they repeat themselves, leaving you halfway on your way to conflating characters and scenes, cliques and teams. As I have done. As I am. A hippogriff of sports, comedy, and politics.




I might try to rework this. I would love to be able to pick up a voice reminiscent of John Yau, although I have much less talent. Anyways, you might eventually see an "EDIT" under this, or a new post. Um...yeah. I guess the URL does say it all, but I'm perhaps most pushing it in this post. I wasn't trying to waste your time, it just ended up that way.