One morning several months ago I woke up from a heavy sleep and trudged slowly into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. I turned kitchen light on and there in front of me was former Tonight Show host Jay Leno, sitting at his Tonight Show desk. He was leafing through some index cards, apparently preparing for a show.
I don’t know how he got into my kitchen, or how he moved his mahogany desk in there. I don’t know where he got all the set decorations or the cue cards. All I knew was that this was going to be one long summer.
Jay sat there at his desk shuffling through his stack of index cards saying, “No… no… not funny… oh! Here’s one!” and then he looked up at me and said, “Have you heard about this? A man in Florida had his penis bitten off by an alligator. Yeah…”
I cut him off before he could deliver his punch line. “Jay Leno,” I asked, “why are you in my home?”
Jay just pointed a stiff finger back at me and said coldly, “I’m here to stay, pal. Better get used to it.” Then, he went back to going over potential jokes for his monologue, as if this was all a normal thing. Jay Leno has been living in my house ever since. I still don’t know how Jay snuck his way into my house, or why he’s here in the first place.
These past months with Jay as my roommate have been absolute hell. His car collection takes up most of my driveway, he keeps stealing my newspapers to do his classic “Headlines” desk bit, and he won’t stop asking me easy questions in an attempt to make me look like an idiot. Yeah, I know how many planets there are, Jay. Just put the microphone down and let me go to the bathroom in peace.
Every time Jay delivers one of his ten-minute monologues, he always uses me as the punch line for all of the day’s top stories. He’ll stand in front of my living room curtains and say things like, “You hear about this? A woman in Arkansas got trapped under a bus and had to chew her own legs off to get out. Yep, this is one hundred percent real. She got the idea from watching Bo eat spare ribs.” I told him he could only watch me eat my spare ribs if he swore not to do a monologue joke about it. Another broken promise from Jay Leno.
Every night, Jay insists on sleeping in my twin bed with me. I always push him out and he just sneaks his way back in. Then he goes, “It really would be more comfortable if it was just me in the bed, you know.” And so he coerces me into sleeping on the couch! Every night this happens to me.
Every afternoon, he reads passages from his autobiography, Leading With My Chin, out loud to me. He follows me from room to room, reading selections from the book. I keep telling him I’ve read it before, but that doesn’t stop him.
Lately, I’ve been trying to find ways to get Jay out of my house for good. I tried to lure him outside with food, but then I remembered he doesn’t need any food from me because he keeps slim jims in his pockets. I tried to start a fire to smoke him out, but that didn’t work, either. He just sniffed the black smoke into his lungs like it was no problem. I even tried to hire some movers to come and take him away, but he charmed them so much that they gave him money. Then, he convinced the movers to kick my ass.
My plans to remove him got more intricate from there. I tried driving Jay to a secluded spot so I could ditch him there. I got him to get out of the car and then I sped off and went home. Jay ran the entire 37 miles back and made it in time to do that day’s monologue. He delivered jokes for twelve minutes, all sweaty and covered in dirt.
After that, I had an even better idea. I’d pay some troubled teens to rough up Jay and teach him a lesson. I found some youths loitering in a Target parking lot, and they seemed interested in beating up a stranger until they found out that I wanted them to manhandle the Jay Leno. They were huge fans of his tenure as the Tonight Show host and since I hated Leno, they decided to beat me up instead.
There has to be a way to get rid of Jay. Sadly, I haven’t discovered it yet. I’ve turned to social workers, priests, even NBC executives, and no one has been able to get rid of Jay for me. That’s why I’m turning to you, the reader, for help. Please get Jay Leno out of my house.