When Jay Leno wakes up every morning in his personal hangar o' cars, climbs out of the spacious trunk of one of his 5 vintage Rolls Royce Phantoms, and rubs the sleep from his eyes, what is the first thought that enters his mind? How does he see the world? Well, judging by his comments in this New York Times article about Conan's transition to The Tonight Show, Leno tends to put everything in terms of nonsensical relationship metaphors. Pay attention: this is how you get a daily primetime show:
“We’re still on top,” Leno told me when I visited him at “The Tonight Show” in early May. Leno was dressed in a blue work shirt tucked into worn jeans, and we spoke in a small, anonymous backstage dressing room. His dark green, sharklike car (he drives a different one every day), a rare model called a Tatra, was parked right outside the studio; its exoticism provided a vivid contrast with Leno’s regular-guy-ness.
“Five years ago,” Leno continued, “I think [NBC] thought we wouldn’t still be on top. Back then, I said, ‘Whatever you want.’ I don’t have an agent. I don’t have a manager. If the girl doesn’t want to sleep with you, that’s O.K. I’m not one of those guys who says, ‘Why don’t you want to sleep with me?’ I say, ‘O.K., great — let’s be friends.’ You want to make a change? That’s great — we’ll make a change.”
"See, then, I start going around to all the girl's enemies, and try to sleep with them. And they all want me, right, because I'm Jay fucking Leno, and they want me. And this just drives my "friend" crazy. She's insane with jealousy, cause she sees me with all these other girls draped all over me, and she's kicking herself. She starts thinking, 'I gotta have Jay. Now. Here. In this vintage 1928 Citroen Cabriolet.' Which is something that happens all the time, making this metaphor very relatable to people who are going to read it in the New York Times. I'm just a regular guy. Look at my shirt. So anyway, she starts begging me to sleep with her. She's throwing herself at me, basically. This goes on for a number of months, just to build the spite to intoxicating (for me, regular guy Jay Leno) levels, until one day, I just drive her in my rare Studebaker Avanti coupe out to some woods somewhere, and have angry, angry sex right there on the ground next to the car. And, boom: I have a daily 10pm show. You wanna go get some onion rings? I love onion rings, just like average people."
Thankfully, NBC was at least able to talk Leno out of calling his daily 10pm takeover, Hatesex With Jay Leno.