Book Review: The War for Late Night

I've recently read "The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy" by Bill Carter and I can genuinely say it's a must read.

Carter, the New York Times TV critic, paints a truly fair and unbiased picture of the setting up of Conan O'Brien as NBC's "Tonight Show" host and Jay Leno's start-up 10 o'clock (Eastern/9 pm Central) prime time talk show in 2008-09. Of course we know that Conan was thrown out after a short time and it coincided with Leno's prime time show flopping and the tsunami sized backlash it created.

Carter made a name for himself with his 1994 best seller "The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night" chronicling Leno and David Letterman's chase to replace the iconic Johnny Carson as host of the "Tonight Show" franchise. Shift also describes the process of how O'Brien became the host of Letterman's old "Late Night" program ironically getting the nod over a young Jon Stewart.

One of the best parts of War is all the other moving pieces in late night television and you learn a ton about people like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, all whom come out of the book looking much better than whatever your opinion is of them. That's to say if you don't like those three guys, you will now. If you love those three, you'll love them even more.

Without giving away details go ahead and bundle Shift and War it's a lot of reading but it will teach you plenty about Hollywood, business and psychology. There's so many cool tidbits you'll learn about some of your favorite television personalities and the final handful of pages of War make the previous 800 pages you've read so much more than worth it.

The Worst Plane Ride Of My Life

Flying home from vacation yesterday the second I walked on my plane I had that feeling.

Maybe it was the noticeably drunk couple in front of me, maybe it was the fact that the plane was so old it didn't have overhead air and maybe it was the dark complexioned man with black hair and brown eyes wearing a kilt. In any case this flight had all the makings of a classic.

A young 20-something sat down next to me and then a middle-aged man. As soon as they opened up their mouth's I knew I was in for a long one. They strike up this conversation, the young man from Birmingham, England goes to the University of Leeds, which is basically the Yale of England. He let it be known quickly what a baller he was on this trip and the older man referred to himself as a "scholar" for his occupation. He said he had been to Birmingham many times (this I actually believe, except I think he really means Alabama.) My suspicions of him not being a scholar were further imprinted when he didn't know how the game Cricket was played. The young man is supposedly an all-world cricket player and I get the impression that being a cricket player in England is kind of like being a lacrosse player in Massachusetts. You're an a**hole. Things got turned up a notch when the middle-aged man claimed to had invented the first package for the McDonald's Happy Meal in 1974 at the age of 14. It should be noted this kid next to me was buying every second of this.

My attention on them wavered for most of the rest of the flight as the drunk couple in front of me started making out pretty hard core and really, it got pretty hot I couldn't wait for this flight to end.

Finally we landed for my layover in Phoenix and turned my phone on to check out my Twitter account. One of the first things to pop up was news breaking of Eddie Murphy agreeing to host the Oscars. I was perplexed because Eddie's career is in the toilet and I wasn't aware he needed the money that bad.

I turned to the older guy and said "Eddie Murphy is going to host the Oscar's can you believe that?!" and he replies, "I'm very friendly with Eddie."

I mean C'MON!

Luckily the young fella broke the tension by saying "Whose Eddie Murphy?" and us other two not being able to name a movie after 1995 that we'd think he'd have a remote chance of knowing. We said he was a huge star on SNL, the Beverly Hills Cop and 48 hrs. franchises. Our scholar then tells the story of how the first time he met Eddie was around 1993. He was dating a model who worked with Eddie's girlfriend (now-Ex-Wife.) Young man asks "You dated a model?!" in a really jealous/excited tone, and middle-aged man replies "Milla Jovovich."

At this point I gave out an audible chuckle, it wouldn't be so far fetched, but this guy looks like professional poker player Freddie Deeb.

So the story goes our middle-aged friend was introduced to Eddie at none else but PRINCE'S birthday party. So if you're scoring at home, this guy invented the original packaging for the Happy Meal, dated a Super Model and met Eddie Murphy at Prince's birthday party. This is why he's riding coach on a US Airways flight to Phoenix.

I just packed up my things and walked off, shaking my head the entire layover.

To put how redic this flight was, my three hour flight home was 1000 times better and I was basically forced to have a conversation with the woman next to me named Precious.


*McGivey's note: This article was written the same day as the tragic plane crash in Russia. It isn't meant to be a "White Whine." My sincere condolences to the familes/friends of the people who lost  there lives that day. RIP.