Bill Hicks speaking truth from beyond the grave ...

Bill Hicks kicked off some 16 years ago, but not before being way out in front on having Jay Leno pegged.



Here's the full bit. The comedian Payton Oswalt probably had the killer sum-it-up for Leno: "It doesn't even feel like a bad guy winning, it feels like a guy winning who doesn't even know why he wants to win the thing." You would expect no less from someone who shilled for Doritos back when he was only making $3 million per year at a time when that was still a lot of money.

Meantime, 19 years later, wherever Johnny Carson is, he finally has an answer to, "Just how pissed off are you?"

Mornings with Mr. Canoehead

... Not sports, but when high school students from your hometown beat Ducati and Kawasaki to building a biodiesel chopper that gets 150 miles to the gallon, attention should be paid. Anyway, stuff which will not affect your day ...

Johnny Damon already having 13 homers (nine have been at the joke of a new stadium in the Bronx).

Mark Crawford being hired as coach of the Dallas Stars. It's good to see they recycle in Texas, so what if he's been living off his reputation since coaching a Stanley Cup winner in 1996?

Getting geared up to go Fire Joe Morgan on a column entitled "Real Sportswriters Don't Cheer", only to find out the great thundering nit in question, Lowell Cohn, was FJM'd twice. For what it is worth (not much), anyone who writes, "My moral court is in session and he receives no mercy," has it coming on general principle. Knowing the infield-fly rule does not give you the right to be a one-man ethics commission or whinge, "I am not a fan. I can't afford to be. I root for no team. I have forgotten what it feels like to root or care which team wins or loses. I admit this with sadness. I also admit it with pride."

Whatever amount of money Pierre Karl Péladeau plans to put up to buy the Montréal Canadiens. Like Mitch Melnyk (Montréal's answer to Bob McCown) said, the anyone-but-him forces are lining up. It's hard to understand why people would not want a 100-year hockey tradition in the hands of someone who actually said of his employees at one of his newspapers, "Je prend des photos de mes enfants. Ça ne prend pas une expertise" -- "I take photos of my children. That does not take any expertise."

Not understanding what the hell Lisa Raitt did that was so newsworthy to begin with. There's a lot to be said for having given up on Canadian federal politics five years or six elections ago, whichever is shorter. Take it away, Fagstein:

"What gets me about this isn’t that the tears seem so scripted, as if a political analyst backstage told her to go out and cry. It’s that the people who are so naive about politicians to think that they don’t all put their political ambitions ahead of basic human decency, the ones who were so outraged about Raitt's candid comments as if they told us something we didn’t already know, those are the same people who are going to fall for this display, who think she will have learned her lesson and that either she didn't mean it or she's changed."

The USC football team likely avoiding any punishment from the NCAA while the school's basketball team gets sent up the river. Someone's skin is going on that wall and it won't be Pete Carroll's. C'est la vie.

Mark-Paul Gosselar's bit as Zack Morris being on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon instead of Conan O'Brien. Look at it this way: Not only was it meta, since it was on Fallon's show it was also esoteric since hardly anyone saw it.

(Late) morning with Mr. Canoehead...

Stuff that should bounce off you like raisins off an Oldsmobile ...

Wondering how new Montreal Canadiens coach Jacques Martin will handle the insatiable Quebec media after being in a southern U.S. city and big-small-town Ottawa for so many years. Roy Mlakar won't be there to ride herd.

Hockey fans who complain "superstars get all the calls" in the NBA when the NHL did not suspend Penguins star Evgeni Malkin for starting a fight in the last five minutes of the game. Jeff Blair's suggested title for Colin Campbell: "NHL Vice-President and Director Of Figuring Out What’s A Cheap Shot." The greasiness was compounded by the fact the NHL announced Malkin was off the hook via a press release at 11:48 p.m. (literally, the 11th hour.)

Michael Vick being a contentious issue, while there is a barely a peep about current Atlanta Falcons player Quinn Ojinnaka being allowed to play in the NFL after he allegedly "spat at his bride, tossed her down some stairs and then threw her out of their Georgia home in the wee hours."

What Vick did was carried out over a number of years, but it's not as if striking a woman is completely random. Take it away, Bud Poliquin:

"What Vick, Ojinnaka's former Atlanta teammate, did to become a pariah will forever and properly be considered heinous. Training dogs to fight, and then executing those who don't win, is certainly reprehensible . . . and Vick has the shattered life, career and finances to prove it.

"But at the end of the day, shouldn't battering people be more prominently placed in the great photo of disgraces than any act of abusing (and, yes, killing) dogs? And isn't battering people made even more abominable when the alleged batterer is a 6-foot-5, 305-pound man, and the identified batteree is a woman of significantly less height and ballast?

The knowledge that HBO, which passed on Mad Men and Breaking Bad, has given Joe Buck his own show.



Conan O'Brien debuting tonight as host of The Tonight Show. The commitment NBC has made to Conan is truly amazing. They've given him the best lead-in that petty jealousies can buy.

(Lord, please forgive anyone whose reaction to seeing Jay Leno sign off last Friday night was to scream at the TV, "The show should have gone to Letterman in the first place!" The line of succession should have gone Carson-Letterman-Conan. It's a pain that never ends.

It's a sin to say that about Leno. Like Stewie Griffin once said, the fact is the man is out there every night with fresh material and he's charming.

Last but not least, having to be the guy who makes this joke: "Kingston Frontenacs defenceman Erik Gudbranson was taken in the Continental Hockey League draft today. Playing in Russia would be an easy switch since he's already in junior hockey's Siberia." So much for trying to quit making Frontenacs jokes.

(Kingston's own Taylor Hall was taken too. Three OHLers were taken and two had Kingston ties. Crazy.)

Jon Stewart's Jim Cramer takedown

Not sports, but worth a toss. "Isn't there a problem selling snake oil as vitamin tonic?"

The art of the takedown

If you do one thing today, try to work "he's like a dartboard that talks," into conversation at some point.

Two more years; enough time for Riggins to finally graduate

The word is Friday Night Lights could get two more seasons:

"The one possible complication? The show's behind-the-scenes quarterback, Jason Katims, is attached to NBC's buzzy Parenthood pilot. If it's picked up, he would either do double duty or be forced to make a choice. Similarly, the show's go-to director, Jeffrey Reiner, is helming NBC's Trauma pilot. FNL might be able to carry on without one of its MVPs, but both? Hmm..." — Entertainment Weekly

The show has survived on the ability to make trade-offs ... everyone who's more technically adroit got to watch the new ones four months before I did, it's still good, it's still good ... the Landry-Tyra murder plot in Season 2 was just a little heavy-handed, it's still good, it's still good ... how are Riggins and Lyla still seniors in Season 3, it's still good, it's still good.

Two more seasons? That is beyond good news. It's enough time for Eric Taylor to build the team at East Dillon into a contender for State.

(Don't try to be smart and point out Tim Riggins/Taylor Kitsch's storyline involves him going to college next season. It's just that how was he best friends forever with Jason Street (Scott Porter), who was a senior in the first season? It was bad enough we're supposed to believe that Lyla Garrity, the siren played by the Jeter-tainted Minka Kelly, could have been head cheerleader as a sophomore.

Related:

'Friday Night Lights' close to scoring a renewal? (Michael Ausiello, Entertainment Weekly)

Snark break ...

First things first, SB Nation has merged with Yahoo! Sports, which is presumably huge for people such as that James Mirtle guy ...

The Yankees organization really is a bunch of jerky-jerk-jerks. Eighty-five dollars to sit behind the foul pole? To quote their former assistant to the travelling secretary, "Am I seeing Sinatra in there?"

At least the Bronx Bombers are going to have to fight with the condo builders in Toronto for elbow room in the 10th circle. There's no other way to feel about learning that the Leafs plan to raise ticket prices. Seriously, why can't there be a second NHL team in Toronto?

The Ottawa Senators having "good seats still available" 48 hours before a game against the NHL-leading San Jose Sharks is mainly a reflection of:

(a) the economy
(b) being 13 points out of a playoff spot with 23 games left
(c) Not having everyone follow the example set by Mike Fisher
(d) Figuring Joe Thornton will just choke in the playoffs again
(e) All of the above

It's a little rich that, "most of Ottawa has missed the quality that Fisher believes is at his core: his Christian faith," when there's a story about it in the paper or on the TV news at least once a year.

No one should doubt that Fisher is completely sincere in his convictions about how, "Day to day, I try to have my time with God." However, when asked to confirm that, apparently Jason Spezza said, "Actually, Fish and I don't hang out that much," then laughed to himself for 25 minutes.

A private member's bill that would establish a National Hockey Day in Canada. That's as gratuitous as, well, potshots at Jason Spezza.

Last but not least, Conan O'Brien's Vintage Baseball bit. Did you hear Andy Richter is joining him on the new Tonight Show?

Conan O'Brien 1864 Baseball
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Top 5: Conan clips

By no means should anyone claim to have the definitive post on Conan O'Brien's run as host of Late night on NBC.

David Letterman has always fulfilled my hero worship. Outside of Dave, Craig Kilborn, for about a two-year stretch in the early 2000s, made for very consistent viewing. It might look bad now, but nothing, but nothing, explains the turn of the century like Dave Grohl answering the question, "What's the best Beatles song to play when you're lit?", except for a game of Yambo between Mini-Me and the mom on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Regardless, nocturnal types who have had a roughly 3 p.m. to midnight shift since 2002 owe Conan a debt, so here's five faves from through the years.

Triumph takes on Star Wars fans ... "You don't deal with lesser life forms? You must be a lonely guy."



The more you know ...



Andy on The Today Show



"NBC has merged with Universal. Universal owns the USA Network. USA Network owns the rights to Walker, Texas Ranger which means I can play a Walker, Texas Ranger clip any time I want to, simply by pulling this convenient Walker, Texas Ranger lever."



The brawl to settle it all...



Have a nice today.