The night kicked off with a head-scratching performance from Minnesota’s The Blenders. Besides, he doesn’t write most of those jokes anyway.

Maybe his nightly monologue wasn’t entirely representative of his comedic chops, I thought. It’s something that’s riddled me since my days of Pokemon and long division: How could a man so alarmingly dim-witted be the reigning king of late night comedy?Ī more optimistic part of me really did hope Leno would dispel my doubts. After two decades, Leno’s become one of the industry’s most derided, albeit popular, enigma. And like so many of my fellow echo boomers, last year’s Tonight Show fracas only deepened my disdain for NBC’s double-chinned crowd pleaser (I will always love you, Coco).īut in spite of all my contempt, there was a morbid curiosity nestling inside me I felt the need to satisfy. As a child I was always favored Letterman. I’ll admit I had the bar set pretty low as we took our seats that night. And what better place for it to happen than Minnesota’s epicenter of greed and gluttony? The cavernous den of sin we call Mystic Lake Casino. It was an endurance test for my personal sanity a 90-minute marathon of earth-shatteringly stupid monologue from America’s most reviled (and most watched) late night personality. Jay Leno’s performance on Saturday night wasn’t a comedy show. I don’t normally chain-smoke but 20 minutes into that miserable affair, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t have done to keep my mind off of the humorless tragedy that was unfolding before me. If it weren’t for the showroom’s no-smoking policy I probably would’ve been suffering from respiratory failure by the end of the night. I wasn’t entirely sure what I just witnessed. I walked out of Mystic Lake Casino Saturday night gnawing on new feelings of confused rage.

Mystic lake casino theater