To comedy writers, Leno’s massive success represents the triumph of mediocrity. It’s the tragedy of a prodigiously talented stand-up making a conscious decision to dumb down his material to reach the widest possible audience. He won over the masses while alienating comedy geeks. He came to symbolize everything crass and mercenary about comedy. As the years went on, Leno became synonymous with Monica Lewinsky and O.J. jokes. His name became shorthand for lazy, dumb and obvious comedy. To comedy snobs, “The Tonight Show” under his nightmare realm was one long Dancing Itos sketch.

I had no idea what the “Dancing Itos” sketch was so I looked for it on YouTube. It begins in this video at about 2:10 and it is as unimaginative and devoid of humor as you might have imagined. It is like a Carnival cruise variety show. And if you’re feeling particularly masochistic, you can watch an honest-to-god Gilligan’s Island spoof a little earlier in the same clip.

Al Gore discusses geothermal technology on “The Tonight Show” with Conan O’Brien:

People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …

Turns out that the he’s off by a factor of around 1,000. As John Derbyshire points out,

If the temperature anywhere inside the earth was ‘several million degrees,’ we’d be a star.

But can you really blame the Goreacle for thinking “millions” every time he begins to talk about new technology upon which he stands to make mountainous lucre?

Via John Derbyshire and Hot Air.