Best of Tonight

Miley Cyrus, born Destiny Hope Cyrus on 23 November 1992, became an overnight sensation after she was cast in Hannah Montana. As of December 2007, she is working on a movie spin-off from Hannah Montana, titled The Hannah Montana Movie which is due to be released late 2008 or early 2009. Her concert is now a “must-see” movie event of the year, produced by Disney.

In this clip, Cyrus demonstrates her strange penchant for drinking ketchup from a bottle. Jay tries a taste himself, which he declares, “exotic.” Right. Cyrus declares that drinking ketchup is healthy, as it’s a fruit. According to AskOxford, a tomato is definitely a fruit - scientifically speaking. True fruits are developed from the ovary in the base of the flower, and contain the seeds of the plant (though cultivated forms may be seedless). With that said, “The tomato, though technically a fruit, is often used as a vegetable, and a bean pod is also technically a fruit. The term ‘vegetable’ is more generally used of other edible parts of plants, such as cabbage leaves, celery stalks, and potato tubers, which are not strictly the fruit of the plant from which they come. Occasionally the term ‘fruit’ may be used to refer to a part of a plant which is not a fruit, but which is used in sweet cooking: rhubarb, for example. So a tomato is the fruit of the tomato plant, but can be used as a vegetable in cooking.”

But, this goes against an 1887 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, where the tomato was deemed a vegetable.

Cyrus never mentions the amazing amount of sugar found in ketchup, which isn’t all that healthy. According to Yahoo! Health, two tablespoons of ketchup are equal to two teaspoons of sugar. Considering that one tablespoon equals three teaspoons, then ketchup is 1/3 sugar!

(See part one) Johnny Carson took a job as an announcer at KFAB in Omaha, Nebraska while still in college. Two years later, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he took another announcing job at KNXT-TV. Within the year, this young budding comedian had his own show, “Carson’s Cellar,” which mainly consisted of fifteen minutes of poking fun at the news media. During the show’s run, Carson persuaded stars from the 1940s and 1950s to appear for free.

In the midst of the show’s run, famed clown Red Skelton hired Carson as a writer. In 1954, Skelton knocked himself unconscious just one hour before his live show went on the air; Carson filled in for him.

Johnny looks good in a dress, no? And, turkey-stuffing jokes are always the best. They must have been around since the cave-dwellers.

Scalpers were selling football tickets for up to $50 per ticket, according to Carson in this sketch on his comedy show, Carson’s Cellar, in the early 1950s. Can you imagine that? This is another oldie and a great sample of early, early Carson provided by jodyvalyou through YouTube.

According to jodyvalyou, Carson hosted several TV shows before his run on The Tonight Show, including the game show Earn Your Vacation (1954), the variety show The Johnny Carson Show (1955 - 1956), a regular panelist gig on the first version of To Tell The Truth until 1962 and a five-year stint on the game show Who Do You Trust? (1957–1962), during which Carson met long-time sidekick Ed McMahon.

Kyu Sakamoto traveled to the USA on August 13, 1963 after his growing popularity he gained by his hit song “Ue wo muite arukou” (I Look Up When I Walk). Allen asked Sakamoto to tell a joke, which he did in Japanese and which was greeted with much laughter by the audience. This, despite the fact that he told the joke to an English speaking American audience.

Sakamoto (November 10, 1941 - August 12, 1985) was so appealing that his song upset Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party” to become the number one popular song in the U.S. on 15 June 1963, shortly before this appearance on the Tonight Show. Sakanoto was killed on board JAL Flight 123, a 747 bound from Haneda Airport in Tokyo to Osaka. That plane lost pieces of its tail sections and spiraled downward nightmarishly for 30 minutes, long enough for some passengers to scribble shaky farewells to their families. The plane crashed and burned on a thickly wooded mountain about 60 miles northwest of Tokyo, killing 520 and injuring four, in the worst single airplane disaster in aviation history to that date.

Did Carol Wayne and Carson have a thing? Carol (September 6, 1942 – January 13, 1985), an actress, appeared many times on the Tonight Show as the Matinée Lady. But, then again, she also was a regular panelist on the game show Celebrity Sweepstakes. Wayne was married three times. Her second husband was rock and roll photographer Barry Feinstein (the father of her only son, Alex), and her third husband was television/film producer Burt Sugarman, who served as producer on Celebrity Sweepstakes.

The sad part is that Carol’s body was found three days after she went missing in Mexico while on vacation with a male friend. Was there foul play? No one knows…it’s one of those true-life mysteries that may never be solved. Read more about Carol Wayne at Wikipedia.