Jimmy Fallon

There’s been an unfortunate little rumor floating around the web these last few days. It stars The Roots—the beloved Philly hip-hop band led by Black Thought and Questlove, he of the inimitable ‘fro. According to MTV.com, a low-quality video appeared over the weekend featuring Questlove announcing that the band members would retire from touring next year in order to fully devote themselves to a new creative endeavor—performing as the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night show! (The SNL alum takes over for Conan O’Brien, who is heading over to the Tonight Show, in March 2009.) Though the video has predictably been taken down from, well, pretty much everywhere, the Philadelphia Daily News reported yesterday that a rep from Island/Def Jam, the Roots’ label, confirmed the group’s new gig as Mr. Fallon’s house band. The spokeswoman, however, remained silent about the band’s tour plans.  read more »

When Jimmy Fallon takes over Conan O'Brien's seat in 2009, he'll have a familiar face behind the cameras to help him. His Saturday Night Live buddy Michael Shoemaker will be Late Night's showrunner next year.

Mr. Shoemaker ran Weekend Update on SNL when Mr. Fallon giggled his way through the segments as co-anchor. He also consults with Mr. Fallon on other appearances, like his 2002 MTV Video Music Awards performance (which included possibly the funniest opening ever).

"Jimmy and I work together all the time, and we've always had fun in the process," Mr. Shoemaker told Variety. "I have a nice job here at 'Saturday Night Live' but I couldn't turn down the chance to work on something like this."  read more »

Lorne Michaels told reporters Sunday that he plans to premiere Jimmy Fallon as the new host of Late Night on the internet. He plans five or six months of webcasts prior to the 2009 debut of Mr. Fallon's version of the show, according to TV Week.

The Observer interviewed Mr. Michaels about preparing Mr. Fallon for the dubious taks of replacing Conan O'Brien last May:  read more »

Last week, at a press conference at NBC headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center announcing that he would take over for Conan O’Brien on NBC’s Late Night next year, when Mr. O’Brien moves into Jay Leno’s big chair, Jimmy Fallon looked just a little sheepish.

“I’m very excited about this,” he told the crowd of reporters. “It’s just unbelievable to be in the building I used to work at! It’s gonna be a grind, is the advice I heard from everybody, and it’s gonna be really hard, and I’m ready to work really hard. I’m just excited about this. I hope to make this the best show, and the show to make everyone choose me to fall asleep during.” The crowd laughed politely. On the podium with him was his mentor, NBC comedy guru Lorne Michaels, who produces Late Night, which airs nightly at 12:30 a.m., and who had selected Mr. Fallon as its new host, just as he had anointed an unknown 30-year-old Conan O’Brien 15 years earlier.  read more »

There were no surprises at 30 Rock today as NBC announced the new host of Late Night when current host Conan O'Brien decamps to 11:30 PM sometime in 2009. As far back as February 2007, Bill Carter, The New York Times' veteran TV reporter and de facto historian of late night, had been reporting that Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon would be tapped to host the show. As reporters and film crews assembled on the 67th floor to take their lucite seats in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows dramatically framing a rainy, overcast day, Fallon's name was openly bandied about.  read more »

It's official! On May 12, NBC will finally officially announce that Saturday Night Live's Jimmy Fallon will take over next year for Conan O'Brien, who will dethrone Jay Leno on the Tonight Show gig. "Jimmy's a smart pick," one network executive told Entertainment Weekly. ''He's a young, cute guy that will draw women in.'' Um, we don't think women are all that into a giggly dude who lives in a kind of perpetual post-college adolescence, but maybe that's just us. And what about Jay?  read more »

Rumor has it that fashion label, Heatherette, is no more as Richie Rich may start his own line or move out to Los Angeles (gasp!) to pursue music and television projects. [N.Y. Daily News]

For John Varvatos, the real challenge of opening a store in the CBGB space was not crossing picket lines but getting the stench of punk out of the space.  read more »

It seems that most urban sophisticates these days, from politicians and celebrities to coworkers, have a profile on Facebook, the social networking Web site. The C.I.A., I.R.S., Time Inc., even MySpace, Facebook’s ostensible competition, have job networks there. To the site’s enthusiasts—and there are many; the site has 60 million users so far, with 200 million projected by the end of the year—there is no reason not to partake.  read more »

In Sunday's New York Times, Willie Neumann is reporting that Saturday Night Live comic Jimmy Fallon is marketing two apartments at 34 Gramercy Park. (Personal information alert: It caught my eye especially because one of us lived briefly in the building in the 1990's and because it's my favorite building on the park.) Here's the listing.

He bought the first of the two apartments in the terra-cotta-brick building--it's the one on the southeast corner facing the park--in 2002 for $850,000. When his neighbor died, he bought the next-door apartment,a three-bedroom, for $1.5 million. But he never carried out plans to combine the two and now the two are selling together for $3.75 million, Neumann reports in Sunday's Big Deal column.

That latter one, the three-bedroom, is well known to us, and stretches across the back of the building, facing Third Avenue. It's enormous.

The smaller one is in the front but doesn't have much space.

Also: Margaret ("I'm melting!") Hamilton once lived in the building.

Also in Big Deal:  read more »

THE actress Angela Lansbury has signed a contract to buy a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony at the Windsor Park, a former hotel being converted into condos with interiors designed by the architect Charles Gwathmey. Ms. Lansbury agreed to pay close to $2 million for the apartment, which is at 58th Street and Avenue of the Americas.

- Tom McGeveran

Dear Hilly,    read more »

With Les Misérables scheduled to close on May 18 after 16 years on Broadway, some eagle-eyed observ  read more »

The Last Two HoursPeople in New York are thinking a lot about their own deaths. It  read more »

Toward the end of her big night as both the host and musical guest of the Feb.  read more »