Best of Tonight

Jay Leno loves this charity, where hundreds of dogs in bunny ears and bonnets entertain thousands of spectators at Justin Rudd’s annual Haute Dog Easter Parade on 2nd St. in Long Beach, California. This parade is part of the festivities within a Vendor & Pet Adoption Fair at Livingston Park in Belmont Shore that’s held on Easter Sunday. This year, the parade is help at 2:30 p.m., sidewalks of 2nd St., Belmont Shore, Long Beach. Approximately 300-400 dressed-up dogs are expected to walk the 8-block sidewalk parade route on Second St. between Roycroft and Argonne avenues. The parade is expected to last one hour. Visit the Haute Dog site to learn more.

Steve Allen loved to read lyrics as poetry. In a previous video, Allen read the lyrics to Gene Vincent’s “be bop a lula.” In this sketch, Allen reads Donna Summers’ hit song, “Hot Stuff.” That song, delivered by the hottest disco queen ever, was released in 1979 as the first single release from her Bad Girls album through Casablanca Records. From Wikipedia:

It [Hot Stuff] was certified double-platinum by the RIAA (for sales of over two million copies in the United States) and remained at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three non-consecutive weeks. “Hot Stuff” would also win Summer the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, making her the first African-American artist to achieve that feat. It is ranked #103 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” The song also topped the U.S. Hot Dance Club Play chart, with Summer’s follow-up “Bad Girls” as a double A-side.

Steve Allen makes the song sound fairly stupid. But, it was all about the dance back then. Lyrics did not matter.

As a side note, it appears that Jay Leno is sitting behind the desk? You can catch a quick glimpse of Leno at the very end of the tape. Since this video wasn’t dated, that would mean that the sketch either was performed after 1992 when Leno took over the host position, or during Carson’s stint (1962 to 1992) when Leno was a guest host. I would guess that Allen’s appearance was during one of the latter time frames, as Leno looks quite young here. Plus, it would need to be performed sometime near 1979 when Hot Stuff came out, otherwise the sketch would make little sense.

Jay Leno is featured in a sketch from Michael Nesmith’s “Television Parts” show. Leno begins his sketch reminiscing about manly men, and rues the day that they went from steel working hardcore brutes to ice cream dipping wimps.

To underscore his own “manly manliness,” Leno states that he drives a 1955 Buick Roadmaster. “This is when they built cars out of steel…when you hit your head on the dash they hose off the dash and sell it to someone else.” Leno proceeds to make more “big car” jokes and then pays $1,942 for gas. Then he drives off to “scare Japanese cars to death.” Note the “Pearl Harbor” reference on the front plate of the Buick. At the end, the “biggest Buick I’ve ever seen” sucks Jay up into its underbelly.

I can see a take off on Stephen King’s novel, Christine, where a huge car takes on a life of its own. Then again, this could be “Close Encounters of the Buick Kind.” At any rate, what’s truly divine about this video is that it appears Jay is driving his own Buick. According to Serious Wheels, “Leno purchased the Roadmaster in 1972 for $350 and had it restored in 1973. Jay drove it everywhere in the ’70s. In fact, it was the car that he used on his first date with his wife. It also provided him a lift to his first Tonight Show appearance in 1977.” The car was restored again in 2002, providing this antique collector’s automobile with “better performance, better mileage and better emissions.”

If you don’t know Mike Nesmith, he gained his fame as a member of the pop group, The Monkees back in the 1960s.

Robin Williams was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson, as Williams was the type of guest that any television talk show loves. He, like any child, can entertain himself and others for hours. But, Williams didn’t appear on The Tonight Show as often as comedian David Steinberg.

In this clip, Williams is his usual manic self, focusing on Kuwait and the first President Bush (Daddy Bush). Joke about Dan Quayle (the forty-fourth Vice President of the United States under George H. W. Bush from 1989–1993), “He’s been on more cruises than a Jewish grandmother.” Carson tried to ask Williams a serious question, and it took almost half the clip to ask that question. He wanted to know, “You’re a good actor…you’re a serious actor…you’re in a serious scene…when you’re in those scenes, do you ever get to the point where all of the sudden…you say, wait a second…there’s no laughs here…do you want to veer off and go into the comedy thing?”

Williams responds (eventually), he said, “There’s times where you want to break up, and there’s time where you can’t.” But that bit of wisdom is almost lost amidst Robin’s running commentary.

The jokes about Quayle and Bush place this clip probably in the early 1990s. That’s a bizarre jacket that Robin is wearing. Looks like a sideways seatbelt imprinted on him. Or, perhaps, an attempt at a restraint?

This clip can go without words.