Wade 48/365

I'm a long-time fan of late night shows. When I was a kid, I loved The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman. And, once I was in Jr. High, my mom and I began staying up together on Saturdays to watch Saturday Night Live.

When I was 11 years old, my bedtime was 9:30. But I had a TV in my room, and I used to patiently wait in the dark until 10:30, when I would quietly turn on Johnny Carson (muffling the loud click of the "on/off" knob by cupping my free hand over it). If I heard my parents coming, I'd turn the volume all the way down and spin the contrast knob until the screen went dark, and then jump into my bed with (I imagined) the stealthy silence of a ninja.

Even then, back when he was still just the guest host of The Tonight Show, I didn't care for Jay Leno. I don't really know why, but he didn't make me laugh, and I suspect part of it was that he wasn't enough of a wise ass. In a sense, I guess it's practical to sit there stone faced when you're up past your bedtime, trying to be quiet. But that also defeated my purpose for staying up late in the first place. I wanted to laugh, even though to do so risked blowing my whole operation. That was indeed part of the excitement. To my 11-year-old mind, there was danger in what I was doing. And the comedy I came to prefer (George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, etc.) was, in turn, considered dangerous and subversive.

But funny will always do in a pinch. In a world with genuine problems, the current late night squabbles may seem relatively unimportant. But I still want to laugh. And I still want to laugh late at night. I'll miss Conan.

At least Letterman's still around.