In my head I’m Tina Fey. Erudite, neurotic and wearer of chequered shirts. Any my best friend is Jimmy Fallon – we sing beautiful harmonies, read the news together and then go our separate ways to carve very successful individual careers. And the best thing about our friendship is that Jimmy is the perfect male specimen, charming, sharp dresser and continually laughing at his own jokes – he is amaze, and he’s my best friend. How friggin cool does that make me.
Of course I have no idea if this is how Tina Fey actually thinks, but having read Bossy Pants, I know think we are, like, total peas in the pod. And I secretly want to marry Jimmy – something that best friends should never do – so maybe Tina and I aren’t so alike. Every night I curse the comedy channel for moving the Jimmy Fallon show to 11pm from 10.30 – I know it’s only 30 mins, but the idea of me staying awake an extra half an hour is beyond me. Even for Fallon. His format of the late night show represents everything that is great about modern times – pop culture, hashtags and the coolest house band ever in the form of the Roots. As much as it keeps true to the formats forged by Carson, Letterman and Leno, it celebrates in self deprecation and reflects the audience, not just the host. Letterman will rattle off his top 10, which is built by his writers, while Fallon will go through Late Night Hashtags a segment where the writers supply the topics, and the viewers bring the funny via twitter.
And then there’s Fallon’s amazing musical performances. My love for him grew from Saturday Night Live of course, the first encounter being the infamous “More Cowbell” sketch with Christopher Walken. It’s hard to miss Will Ferrell, but standing right behind Ferrell is Jimmy Fallon, losing his shit over the enthusiastic cowbell playing. The next time I stumbled across him was as host of the VMAs where his medley of Enrique, Avril and Eminem saw him graduate from SNL alum to bona fide host.
His musical parodies have been integral to his comedic career, so it was great to see them transfer to his talk show format. One of the days I did manage to make it to 11.05pm, I caught Jimmy singing the Charles in Charge theme as Bob Dylan – baby boomers + gen xers = comedy gold. Fortunately for me someone has decided to collect all his great musical moments from the show together, which means I don’t have to stay up to 11.00pm anymore, I can revel in the joy of Charles being in charge of my days and my nights in my car. And I’m pretty sure this is exactly what Tina Fey would be doing as well, after checking the album liner notes for her name.*
*Er… actually that’s what I would do, Tina probably not so much.
-Mardi C
Hook yourself up with a copy of Jimmy’s Blow Your Pants Off on iTunes now!
