... is so not Jay Leno.

Yet NBC is advertising him as such.

Now, as Burbank's Real Leading Bad Boy, I take great offense that someone in NBC publicity would lump me with that tool.

I've never been a Jay Leno fan. He does this one that that always annoyed the heck out of me. Sure, it's a stupid detail, but it gets me. He might not even do it anymore, I just know that the few times I ever caught his show, he had a tendency to repeat his punchline. You know, while the audience was laughing at it, he says the joke again. Then he'd do one of his high pitched little giggles. Laughing at his own joke. And you just know that either A) he didn't write the joke, and was hearing it for the first time right then, or B) he did write the joke and is so enamoured with his comedy stylings that he has to laugh at himself. Honestly, I don't know which is worse. Both are pretty pathetic.

But this is totally cool, since I watch Letterman anyway. He always seemed like more of a real person, aloof at one minute, but then totally engrossed in some odd detail a minute later. And of course his monologue is funny, but I laugh the hardest when he makes a joke off the cuff. Calling his assistant Stephanie. Talking to people in the audience. Or Rupert at the deli next door. It just seems so much more organic.

Luckily Letterman gets the Emmy. Letterman gets the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Letterman has New York.

All Leno has is Burbank.

Heck, I guess I'll loan him the bad boy title every weeknight from 11:35 to 12:35. He needs the help.

- Josh Edwards