Late Night Musings

Admittedly I am not a huge "late night tv" person. When I was in high school/college I would occasionally watch Letterman. Definitely more of a Letterman fan than Leno. People sweat Conan's nuts but it was always just on too late and I didn't really care to watch.

But with the recent changes in the late night lineup, I figured it was a good opportunity to give it a clean slate. I've been watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for a few months, and while his very first show was a little...sweaty...he's become more comfortable. Not to mention, The ROOTS are his house band. Some of the sketches I've come to love are "Slow Jamming the News," "Freestylin' with The Roots" and of course the MTV reality show parody, "7th Floor West."

Jimmy is also leading the charge for a Saved by the Bell 20th Reunion. Now, with all the absolute horseshit that NBC has on TV, you'd think this would be a no-brainer, but it is entirely possible that this is all a ploy anyway. So far Jimmy has had Mr. B, Slater and Lisa on, and last night he had Zack Morris on to endorse the 20th reunion. I'm going to attempt to embed the video:



I couldn't believe MPG did the whole interview "as" Zack Morris, and that he still had the outfit. Classic. I had texted my little sister to remind her he was on last night and she goes "oh man mom will definitely not tape it for me." I ask why, and she said cause mom apparently hates Jimmy Fallon, again, why? "I don't know I think she thinks he's too nervous to be a talk show host." Ha. I actually think that's why I like watching him, cause he's just a regular-ish guy with a talk show.

Enough about that...

Part of what my life has turned into is receiving random emails. Lots of them. From friends, from randoms, whatever. People move to Baltimore, want to get into the running scene, I help facilitate that.

So here's a little background regarding the email I received today. My friend is/was a good runner. She placed 6th at NJ XC Meet of Champs her senior year, and placed 9th at Foot Locker Cross Country Championships (at the time only top 8 went, so she missed by 1 place). She went on to Boston College, where she ran all 4 years. Then she didn't really run much anymore. It's not like she got fat or really out of shape, she just didn't run. She was going to run the NYC Marathon but had to defer a few times for various reasons, but finally did it and ran a 4:20. I felt like she had every capability to run 3:10 or better.

The same time I moved to Baltimore, her boyfriend moved here too. He lived a few blocks away. Eventually she moved down here, kind of got back into running a little and turned him into a somewhat recreational runner. They got married and returned to NJ. She emailed me the other day and said that she and her husband were planning on doing NYC this year, but she got in through the lottery and he did not. Are there any ways, she asked, of getting in after the fact? The only way to get in at this point is charities, I said. He apparently didn't want to do that, and I don't blame him.

Here is the email I get from him:

Subject: Yo

Hey Ryan, what's up? _______ told me you might be able to pull some strings and get me a number for the marathon.

Ha! First, I said nothing of the sort. Second, what would make anyone think that I have any sort of "pull" with the organizers of the biggest marathon in the world? Maybe if he wanted to do Baltimore, Marine Corps, National - something around here. But New York? You've got to be kidding.

Ahh some people just don't get it I suppose.

In other news, I've been thinking a lot lately about if I could have done things differently what would I have done, and one thing I definitely wish I had done was to have become an NBC Page. I remember taking a trip to 30 Rock once and seriously - that was the only thing I wanted to become. I met Soledad, Ann Curry, yada yada. I figured I would become a page, then get hired for some sweet gig at NBC and who knows, maybe I could have been the host of a late night talk show. Probably not, because I'm not that sweet, but whatever.