I’ve recently started watching his late night show. It’s not bad. Some pretty funny stuff sometimes. He does seem to shout everything…
But what is it with him and that damn pencil? Constantly moving it around the desk, switching between hands, aiming it seemingly randomly now and then. But it’s every night. You can almost detect a pattern. Once you see it, you can’t not see it happening and its a pretty big distraction now.
Is he signaling the stage crew somehow? Is he just neurotic and pencil-happy? Anybody else notice this and have an idea? Feel free to comment on the show any way you want to, as far I as care.
Don’t know about the pencil. Maybe a nervous tic because he knows he isn’t funny. The audience barely laughs at most of his stuff. He’s hands down the worst of late night, IMO.
I think it was Johnny Carson who’s staff provided him with pencils with erasers at each end. Possibly to make tapping (he was a drummer) and tossing it safer.
Sometimes when they took a camera up to Letterman’s office they’d pan up to the ceiling above his desk to show a bunch of pencils tossed up and stuck into the ceiling.
Jon Stewart is in the habit of randomly scrawling on his notes.
Counterpoint: I think he’s hands down the best. For A Closer Look alone. And also Corrections. And Surprise Inspection is far funnier than it has any right to be.
I don’t generally watch the celebrity interviews, on any of the late night people, so I don’t really know how good he is at interviewing compared to the others.
I haven’t seen that one yet. I think the only ones I’ve seen are Rhianna and Ina and maybe one other. I was more surprised by the fact that they, or at least Seth, aren’t screwing around. I figured it was just going to be Seth and a guest having a beer or two, not getting shitfaced on camera.
That’s usually all I see (on YouTube). He tends to beat a dead horse with his jokes, and then when it’s not going well, starts shouting. Reeks of desperation. Humor is subjective, of course, so as always YMMV.
Agreed. Kimmel’s trump jokes are both brutally sarcastic and do a good service of shining a hard light on the terrible and dangerous things trump says and does. And it’s very clear he’s getting under trump’s skin, since trump has name-checked Kimmel in several truth social screeds. Kimmel even got mentioned in the Stormy Daniels trial.
Fallon’s trump humor, by comparison, is cringily toothless and non-specific. “trump has silly hair, harhar!”.
If you have Hulu, it carries new Kimmel, Meyers and Fallon shows the day after they air (well, it still does even if you don’t have Hulu). My wife and I will watch their monologues as filler between other shows, not often watching the interviews unless we really like the guest.
I would rate Kimmel highest for his combo of political commentary / actual humor; Meyers is good with political commentary, but not so much humor; and Fallon, as mentioned, is just embarrassing.
Why do you think this? Just genuinely curious. He did co-host “The Man Show” with Adam Corolla way back in the day, which may as well have been called “The Misogynist Show”. But since then I think Kimmel and Corolla have moved more toward opposite ends of the scumbag scale.
It’s been a while, and my recollections might be off, but it seems to me I recall hearing about how once he got famous, he dumped his wife and kids (after using them for cheap gags on The Man Show), had a questionable relationship with Sarah Silverman… just kind of being a general Creep. And I’m really surprised he has the fame he enjoys now, looking back at some of the shit he did on that show.
I’m not an expert on him, but he pings the Skeezy Radar.
Hmm. He does play himself off as a dedicated family man today, often incorporating his family into sketches, and I didn’t even know he was on his second family. But, people get divorced for all sorts of reasons. And RE: Sarah Silverman, she did guest-host his show for a week when he took a hiatus last Summer (2 Summers ago?) so however questionable their relationship may have been, there doesn’t seem to be many hard feelings there.
But who knows-- not saying you’re wrong. In any case, if you can get past his perceived skeeziness, he does deliver a killer monologue.
