Leno extends monologue

Monday, Jan. 19, 2004 | 8:17 a.m.

If you like his kind of humor, which is largely geared toward middle America and void of anything truly salacious or edgy, then you would enjoy over dosing on his rapid-fire 90-minute act that leapfrogs from topic to topic with hardly a transition.

By the end of the evening, I felt that either his tome of jokes had lost their punch or I was so drained from laughing the previous hour that my funny bone had gone numb.

Leno, a frequent performer in Las Vegas, entertained capacity crowds at the Danny Gans Theatre on Friday and Saturday nights.

Leno burst onto the scene with his rapid-fire, nonstop delivery that came so fast he sometimes tripped over words and left sentences dangling.

"I've ben been doing some Indian casinos around the country," he says for his opening joke. "I've been to three so far, and I have yet to meet a single Indian."

He claimed he met the head of tribal affairs for the Indian casino at Foxwood, Conn., Johnny Russo -- a member of the Gambino tribe.

Transitions aren't important in Leno's act.

"I have a plan to capture Osama bin Laden," he said as laughter from the Gambino joke was dying down. "Here's what we do we -- send over Ann Nicole Smith. She'll get his money, and he'll be dead in a week."

As in his television monologues, he frequently focused on current topics, such as airport security.

"Hey, I'm not for racial profiling," he said, "that's not what America's all about. But you know what ... if your first name is Muhammad, unless your last name is Ali you're going to be there an extra 20 minutes."

He poked fun at an airline pilot who told the press that in the future passengers are going to be the first line of defense in a hijacking.

"Hey, hey, when did I get this job?" Leno cracked. "It's bad enough I have to go to the market and pack my own groceries, pump my own gas -- now it's, 'Well, here's your ticket, and by the way you may be called upon to kill a terrorist.' "

On several occasions he noted we live in a different world these days.

"White-collar crime is up," he said. "And that's just in the church.

"You go to confession now and the priest says, 'Hey, that's nothing. Let me tell you what I did."

Leno brought up a hoax that made headlines -- the alleged discovery of a burial box that had contained the remains of Jesus' younger brother, James.

"I got to thinking about that," he said. "How much pressure is that, being Jesus' younger brother? Especially last month, at holiday time. You know, when that family news letter goes out: 'Dear friends, as you know, our oldest boy, Jesus is our Lord and Savior, and our youngest son, James, is still living at home and attending Bethlehem Communty College."

An avid car collector, one of Leno's favorite topics was automobiles.

"All the cars today are the same," he said. "The same aerodynamics, no chrome, the same kind of weenie V-6 engines. All of them have these marketing research names.

"When I was growing up cars had visceral sounding names -- Buick Wildcat, Ford Mustang, Cougar, Cobra, Stingray, Firebird. Now, we've got Ford Probe. How do you get women to sit in this car?"

He's proud of his 1955 Buick Roadmaster.

"This is when they built cars out of steel," he said. "No padded dashboard on this car. You hit your head on the dash, they hose it off and sell it to someone else. 'Yeah, you can turn off the siren, Bobby. He was driving a Buick.' "

Leno was amused by the Japanese selling small plastic portable toilets people can use in their car.

"I thought it was disgusting to be driving and seeing a guy pick his nose," he said.

Leno joked about the Menedez brothers, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering their parents. Both were married while behind bars.

"I've got friends of mine, guys I've known for years who have good jobs, go to the gym five days a week, and they can't meet a woman," Leno said. "How do you even meet women on death row? Isn't that a turnoff for a woman for a guy to be on death row?"

Actor Robert Blake, charged with murdering his wife, also took some heat.

"His defense? He went back into the restaurant to get his gun," Leno said. "I'm not an attorney, but the first rule of a criminal defense is, do not have the word gun in your alibi."

Leno had a funny spin on cloning.

"A woman in L.A. had her eggs frozen seven and a half years ago," he said. "What's that? It's bad enough growing up and finding out you were adopted. Imagine finding out you were defrosted.

" 'Mom, can I have a Popsicle?' 'Son, you are a Popsicle.' "