Sue Simmons is a bona fide institution in New York City local news media, second only to her co-anchor Chuck Scarborough. Personally, I can’t remember when they weren’t occupying Channel 4; they were a firm part of my childhood channel-surfing.

Which is what makes her live-TV “What the fuck are you doing??” flub today all the more shocking (in a fun way!):

The shit hit the fan, of course, prompting an obligatory apology from Sue. Order is restored at the local NBC flagship affiliate.

Consider these assessments by playwright Yasmina Reza of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, gleaned from her yearlong stint as insider on his 2007 campaign trail:

“One of the things that I liked about him — there are many things, but this really seduced me — was his insolence,” she recalled. “But he has not understood that power is itself insolent and that he could not continue with his habitual insolences. During the campaign his insolence seemed like an expression of freedom, frankness. But in office he has not curbed it, he has misjudged its effect.”…

Ms. Reza was not surprised when Mr. Sarkozy was next seen dating the former model Carla Bruni, whom he married in February. “He’s the kind of man who is incapable of being alone,” she said. “I don’t think he can spend a night alone, an evening alone. There may be passing affairs, but he needs someone real. So quickly someone serious entered his life.”…

“I think he is a tragic personality, a man bent on self-destruction,” she said. “It wasn’t clear during the campaign, but I am convinced that he has a powerful faculty for self-destruction.”

With all that in mind, let me throw this out there:

Is Sarkozy just France’s version of Bill Clinton, appropriately amped up for a Gallic political culture? Both men came into office as establishment-challenging reformers, after all. And as far as spotlight moments: Imagine the Monica Lewinsky scandal culminating not in impeachment, but rather in a divorce and remarriage… And you’ve got the Carla Bruni episode.

If all this holds, I guess we’ll be seeing a meltdown from the Presidential Palace in Paris before all’s done.

This should be interesting: I just got a guaranteed ticket to see today’s taping of “Late Show with David Letterman”, airing tonight!

How? The weirdest sequence of events: I was walking up Broadway, killing time while getting within the vicinity of a couple of afternoon appointments. At around 50th Street, it occurred to me that I was getting close to the Ed Sullivan Theater, which reminded me of my seldom-invoked intentions of attending a Letterman taping. I dismissed today’s possibility right away, simply because I didn’t think there’d be any tickets available as late as this afternoon.

Then, I walk by a girl who’s hawking “Late Show” tickets. She’s pissed because the two guys she was already talking to were “assholes”, in her words; so she turns to me. She confirms she’s with Worldwide Pants, the show’s production arm. After some preliminaries, she hands me a confirmation form letter with my name on it. According to that slip of paper (photo of which I’ll add later, after I get home — having some issues trying to email it to myself right now), I’m guaranteed a seat in chilly Ed Sullivan! (No joke, they really do tell you ahead of time to bring a sweater; I happen to be wearing a light jacket, so I’m set.)

I have to trek back down there in about half an hour to confirm, then head back there again for the 4:30-5:30 taping. They’re not kidding about this thing eating up your whole day. Fortunately, I was able to move around my meetings for this afternoon, or else I’d have to chuck this adventure. As it is, I’m currently cooling my heels in a damned *$ on 60th.

So, hopefully, I’ll finally get to see Dave live and in person, doing his thing. According to the TV schedule, guests tonight will be Ashton Kutcher, magician Mac King (because this is, after all, Magician Week on the “Late Show”), and musical legend Steve Winwood. Not the lineup I would have picked, but it’ll do.

UPDATE: Here’s the photo proof — first the confirmation letter:

And the resultant ticket:
Well worth the sacrifice of an afternoon. I won’t bother with a show recap; you can find that here. But here’s some general impressions:

- I actually didn’t find the famously deep-frozen theater to be all that cold. I wouldn’t want to sit there in just shorts and tshirt, but in a shirt and dress pants, I was fine.

- The theater stage is surprisingly compact — looks a lot bigger on TV.

- Even though everything was live and only a few yards away, I couldn’t shake how it still looked like a televised presentation — even though I was watching with my unaided eye. I guess it was the lighting doing its job, because somehow, I didn’t get the feeling that I was really there in the same room with Dave, Paul et al.

- “Johnny Twain” may be a lame filler segment. But he can belt out “Hooked On A Feeling” with muy, muy gusto! (I’m guessing that performance won’t be making the telecast.)

- Steve Winwood rocks.

Take Conan O’Brien’s recurring “If They Mated” skit and make it frighteningly real, and you’ve got The Human Hybrid.

“Human” is a bit of stretch, only in that it suggests an egalitarian photographic genepool. In reality, this is all about interpreting reg’lar folks’ images as a melding of two well-known celebrities. Nothing wrong with that — it works for late-night television! — but it’s something of an old-hat trick.

I assume most of the photo submissions, like the one pictured here for “Clay Cruise/Tom Aiken”, are authentic. (I love that hybridization-slash-slashing of the names, by the way.) Some of them, though, I’m just not buying.

Madonna’s got a new album out, so that means there’s an expectation of a new “reinvention” look/style for the Material Girl. Past iterations of this impulse brought us lingerie-as-outerwear and vogueing in the 80s, and dominatrix-couture in the 90s — so I guess we’re due for an infusion of Madonna-guided fashion sense.

If her promotional history is any guide, her recent mini-concert at midtown Manhattan’s Roseland Ballroom was the tip-off for her latest direction: She’s anointing the sweatsuit as the uniform of lifestyle hipness.

Why? Because it’s what you wear for where the new musical ground zero resides:

While hardly a groundbreaking aesthetic choice, it makes sense. As New York nightlife, once synonymous with transcendental exuberance, becomes a thing of the past, the most popular place to pump a dance floor anthem is no longer on the dance floor. One of the few destinations where a wide cross-section of the city goes to hear a mix of hip hop, techno, and house music 24/7 is the gym. Equinox is the new Paradise Garage, and Madonna — her finger firmly on the pulse monitor — knows it better than anyone.

Interesting theory. I’d be more convinced if the nouveau health clubs featured in-house mixologists, spinning the latest phat beats for the gym rats. That wouldn’t make much sense, since most people keep workout time to their own personal earbuds-delivered rhythms; but I guess someone’s listening to the piped-in house music.

Another reason why I have trouble accepting the nylon-tracksuit ensemble as dominant clubwear: It reminds me of nothing so much as something The Fat Boys used to cruise around in. And they didn’t do it because they were body-conscious.

Another example of the incestuous ideamill that makes up Hollywood:

- “The Return of Jezebel James” was a recent sitcom on FOX about a straitlaced professional woman (Parker Posey) who wants a baby, but can’t conceive on her own. So she enlists a surrogate mother (Lauren Ambrose), who happens to be a scatter-shot, roughneck polar opposite. Odd-couple wackiness ensues!

- Baby Mama is a current major motion picture release about a straitlaced professional woman (Tina Fey) who wants a baby, but can’t conceive on her own. So she enlists a surrogate mother (Amy Poehler), who happens to be a scatter-shot, roughneck polar opposite. Odd-couple wackiness ensues!

Yep, same difference. The only serious divergence I can see is that the sitcom’s characters were sisters, while the movie’s characters were brought-together strangers. Otherwise, this was cross-pollination.

The end results: “Jezebel James” was a flop, lasting only three episodes on TV, while Baby Mama debuted at No. 1 at last week’s box office (although a relatively weak one, banking only $17.4 million).

There may be something behind the principal actors’ displacement into different media: Posey and Ambrose are accomplished indie-movie stars, while Fey and Poehler are best known from “Saturday Night Live”. The SNL connection likely had a lot to do with the movie’s success, as the duo there was basically carrying over their “Weekend Update” chemistry to a big-screen milieu.

Like everyone else, I had always thought that Jack Handey — of “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey” fame — was nothing more than another “Saturday Night Live” character. Moreover, I’m not sure I ever distinguished between Phil Hartman’s opening intro and the following voiceover, so I guess I assumed that the whole skit was a Hartman comedy piece.

Turns out that he’s all too real, despite himself:

Handey, 59, lives in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife, Marta, who is also his editor. But that is a much too specific existence for many to accept. For years, some fans assumed he was only a character, a disembodied voice that soothingly read “Deep Thoughts” in the guise of the implausibly named “Jack Handey.”

Handey, though, hasn’t exactly discouraged this perception. In one of his “Martians” pieces — “How I Want to Be Remembered” — he eulogizes himself: “Jack was an expert in so many fields, it’s hard to say what he was best at: the arts, the sciences, or the businesses.”

“SNL” is generally reluctant to use a writer’s name, preferring to keep the focus on the performers. Handey, though, eventually won the honor, thanks to the strength of his work on penning such sketches as “Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer.”

“The irony is that people think Jack Handey is a made-up name,” says Handey. “You can’t win is the lesson.”

I think all of comedy teaches you that lesson, actually.

The above picture is of former Spice Girl and current soccer-wife Victoria Beckham, taken by Juergen Teller as an advertisement for fashion house Marc Jacobs. This shot is fairly typical of Teller’s avant-garde approach to photography.

Two things: One, I never would have believed that Stick Spice had enough meat on her bones to represent with a pair of legs like that. And two, this disembodied-limb look is the closest thing to an appearance that she’ll ever make on this blog.

Looks like Dick Vitale is branching out beyond his college hoops expertise, with a weekly quick-hit roundup on ESPN.com of his take on current sports stories.

I guess it’s something to keep Dickie V occupied during the roundball offseason. But I find it strange to see him quip on the NHL playoffs, even briefly — very out of context.

Now, if he starts dropping in copious amounts of V-Speak in future editions, I’ll get more into it. Can’t wait for Dick to anoint Alex Ovechkin as a PTPer!

When Michael Eisner touted synergy across all Disney-owned media properties, I doubt he ever had anything like this in mind: The one and only Snoop Dogg will be guest-starring on “One Life to Live”, and will be remixing the soap opera’s theme song to boot.

Can’t wait to snap that track up off iTunes…

It’s a pretty blatant marriage of commercial convenience, so I don’t know why Disney’s PR wonks felt the need to manufacture some deeper connection:

“I’ve been a fan of ‘One Life to Live’ since I was a baby,” said Snoop, who’s set to perform “Sensual Seduction” and “Life of Da Party.”

“My momma always had it on the tube in tha crib growing up. The opportunity to change up the theme song and give it some of my flavor will make the show the Life of The Party.”

Tha Doggfather, a soap devotee? Riiiiiight. Not even when high.

Recently, the two children most closely associated with early-90s grunge pioneer Nirvana have inexplicably emerged onto the pop cultural landscape:

- Spencer Elden, the swimming baby model on the iconic “Nevermind” album cover, is now a senior in a Los Angeles high school and was tracked down by photographer Jason Lazarus.

- Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, is now 15 years old and had a coming-out party in the form of a Harper’s Bazaar movie-costume photo spread.

It’s been a decade and a half since Nirvana came and went. Kurt and the band might not have survived, but I guess someone had to.

Pictured above is a flyer from the Mariella Pizza on 8th Avenue and 57th. As you can see, they’re pretty proud of the blessing bestowed upon them by Oprah as having the “best pizza in America”.

As well they should be. I’m sure thousands of Oprah acolytes have descended upon the shop in the year since Oprah’s pal Gayle picked the winner. And personally, I stop by this joint at least a couple of times a month, because I like the thick crispy crust.

Here’s what I find curious about this honor. Notice the parenthetical note:

(just a few steps away from her office)

That office would be the Hearst Tower, which I’d admired before. It so happens that O, the Oprah Magazine is published by Hearst Corp., and indeed, the mag’s offices are directly across the street on 8th Avenue.

So you know what I think? I think Gayle was running close to her deadline for this little pizza contest, and looked out the window, saw Mariella’s, and figured, “good enough”. Presto, a winner is located, thanks to location!

I would say I’m disappointed in Oprah’s less-than-exacting competitive qualifications. But what the hell, like I said, it’s still good pizza.

I’m not sure what to make of the resurfacing of Raymond Allen, former 1970s sitcom actor best known for his semi-regular role as boozy Uncle Woody on “Sanford and Son”, via a MySpace page.

Maybe there’s nothing to make of it at all. He fell ill for an extended period in the ’80s and simply dropped out of sight within the entertainment industry, and now he’s just putting himself out there again in a low-key way. With a commendably non-garish page layout, I must point out.

Besides, if Fred G. Sanford and Aunt Esther can have MySpace profiles, there’s no reason why the rest of the cast can’t! (No sign of Grady and Bubba among the friends lists, but there is some a disturbing revelation of a male-stripping stint in Fred’s past.)

We all know it’s only a matter of time before Oprah takes over the whole world. And here’s the next step on her road to global domination: She’s swapping her eponymous website for what is now Discover Health Channel — soon to be rebranded as Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

Talk about underlining intentions.

There are limits to her power, for the time being:

The new channel will not initially carry “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” the top-rated syndicated daytime talk show featuring Ms. Winfrey as host. But Ms. Winfrey said that she had the option to end that show in 2010 or 2011 and could move the talk show to the new channel then.

“Eventually that will happen, we hope,” Ms. Winfrey said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

The venture will be half owned by Discovery, of Silver Spring, Md., and half by Harpo Inc., Ms. Winfrey’s production company, which is based in Chicago. Ms. Winfrey will serve as chairwoman of the network, will have full editorial control over the joint venture and will be responsible for its “programming, branding and creative vision,” the companies said.

Oh, tell me this means Oprah’s going to buy the broadcasting rights to the National Hockey League! If so, I’ll be powerless to resist.

Funny. When I went to see Waitress, Knocked Up, and Juno — all in theaters — a common thought entered my head with each viewing: Given the awkward circumstances the pregnancies of each film’s main characters, why didn’t they get abortions?

And I wasn’t the only one, either.

Maybe billionaire Philip Anschutz’s aspirations for conservative-Christian moviegoing fare had taken root with implicitly pro-life messaging in feature films? Alas, it doesn’t appear that Anschutz had a hand in producing any of the above flicks.

Regardless, I realized my pondering didn’t make much sense, because none of the movies would have had much of a plot had the pregnancies been terminated. Indeed, Hollywood’s dive into babymaking follows a tradition of pushing a storytelling device, rather than a political agenda:

In fact, film and TV feature a lot more unlikely pregnancies — would a typical mainstream single Manhattan career gal like Friends’ Rachel Green really have carried that baby to term? — than terminated ones. There’s a reason that the abortions in Maude or Fast Times at Ridgemont High stand out: They were so unusual…

Just as we suspend disbelief about an action hero’s physical abilities in order to script an awesome chase sequence, so too do we suspend disbelief about the likely family-planning decisions of Katherine Heigl’s twentysomething E! reporter (or Meredith Baxter Birney as a fortysomething ex-hippie attorney) in the name of on-screen excitement.

Against this full-terming backdrop, we have to consider its real-life manifestation, in the form of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy. Based on the Spears family track record in child-rearing, I’d say Hollywood’s more pertinent duty would be to ease off on providing inspiration for ill-equipped mothers-to-be.

He’ll either fall in line or else be expelled into official scab-dom, but either way, Jay Leno will have to answer to the Writers Guild of America over his writing of a monologue for himself to open his “Tonight Show” broadcasts.

My question: Why is what he’s doing even debatable as a violation of WGA rules, when he’s the only union-member talkshow host doing it? His NBC colleague Conan O’Brien isn’t writing his own material for his show; you’d presume that he would, if Leno’s interpretation held any water. The fact that Leno’s the only one trying to pull this should invalidate the whole argument.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Leno get expelled from the WGA. I doubt he cares at this point; he’s looking at retirement in a couple of years, and a likely stint in producing to follow. He doesn’t value his union credentials even now, and will have no use for them in his post-“Late Show” career.

A wider impact could be felt by Stephen Colbert. Of all the talkshow hosts affected by the writers’ strike, Colbert is in the shakiest position, because it’s pretty clear that he’s playing a character on “The Colbert Report”. That means he’s delivering scripted lines, versus ad-hoc patter. I’m looking forward to a skirmish similar to Leno’s to come from that quarter.

So the late-night network talkshows have geared back up in the midst of the writers’ strike, and the ratings tussle between union-approved Letterman and picketline-crosser Leno is top-of-mind. (No comment on that from me until a more solid, multi-day picture emerges, although the early returns bear out my assumption that viewer habits still give Leno his usual advantage, scripted material notwithstanding.)

But the real story: Those strike-solidarity beards from Dave Letterman and Conan O’Brien. Since they evoke the playoff beards found in hockey and other sports, I give them both a thumbs-up. Even if both hosts probably grew them more from laziness/boredom than anything else, and both are setting up eventual on-air segments where their whiskers will be elaborately shaved off.

I’ve been watching “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” the last two nights, and have been trying to put Conan’s beard into context. I think I’ve finally got it:

He looks like a guest-starring warlock character from the old 1960s sitcom “Bewitched”.

Seriously, he should get ahold of the show’s old theme music, wave his arms around at the audience “casting spells”, ham it up with a mock Edwardian English accent, the whole thing. I don’t know if he can actually use these suggestions under WGA rules, but here’s hoping.

He’s already got a blog, but MC Hammer is thinking bigger when it comes to making a comeback, Web 2.0-style. He’s lending his cred to DanceJam.com, an Internet startup that seeks to challenge YouTube with a formula that combines HOT or NOT with “Pants-Off Dance-Off”.

But that’s not the real story. The real story is Hammer’s curiously influential role as a sort of consultative guru to the Silicon Valley business community:

His success in grass roots marketing prompted Salesforce.com Inc. to call on Hammer for advice in its early days. The company wanted to raise awareness about its online software service without paying a lot for traditional advertising, said Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com’s chief executive officer.

“We really learned a lot from Hammer. He is the most entrepreneurial individual I have ever met,” said Benioff, whose San Francisco-based company is now worth $7 billion.

Some entrepreneurial advisement — which, presumably, went deeper than “turning this mutha out” — and the next thing you know, Salesforce.com has a multi-billion dollar valuation. Gold!

As if that’s not enough, Hammer even had the early drop on the website he’s now challenging:

Hammer recognized YouTube’s potential before most people he did. Besides putting some of his own clips on the site, Hammer visited YouTube’s offices in February 2006 when there were still just a handful of people running the site above a pizza parlor.

Until he saw what YouTube was doing, Hammer had doubts about the Web’s entertainment value. “When everybody started raving about the Internet, I always wondered, ‘If it’s so great, why can’t you see my videos on the Internet?”‘ Hammer said. “It looks like technology has finally caught up with my vision.”

Don’t be surprised if the next wave of Web startups roll out with parachute-pants wearing management teams.

The other day, I got an email from Michael Duggan, co-founder of Oosah. On the strength of this quizzical post I wrote about the undercover media storage/access site in August, he wanted to give me an early peek at the public beta.

My first reaction? I actually thought this was about similarly-named Ooma, the Web telephony startup involving actor Ashton Kutcher — which combination warranted a bloggy reaction from me back in September.

So when I realized that Duggan’s offer probably wouldn’t result in my getting introduced to a bunch of Hollywood types, I was predictably bummed out.

But I’ll recover. I’ll be taking a look at Oosah’s suite of digital media manipulation capabilities, including what they can and can’t do, and giving my impressions sometime over the weekend.

And in the meantime, I’ll contemplate this seeming trend in Web-based business ventures adopting a double-o moniker.

For those early-risers who wake up to the audio blare of National Public Radio, I was emailed this tip-off on a special guest dropping in on tomorrow’s Bryant Park Project show:

Washington, D.C.; December 18, 2007 – Recording artist Moby will Guest DJ, offering his “BPP Playlist” and preview tracks from his as-yet-unreleased new album on NPR’s The Bryant Park Project tomorrow, Wednesday, December 19. Following an interview with The Bryant Park Project host Alison Stewart , an exclusive web-only audio feature with Moby discussing his “BPP Playlist” and a sneak preview of a song from his new album, not airing in the interview, will be made available at www.npr.org/bryantpark.

Local station’s air time of the program is available at www.npr.org/stations. Audio of the interview will be available at www.npr.org.

And I’m sure a wrapup post of Moby’s stylings will appear tomorrow afternoon on Bryant Park Project’s blog.

I doubt I’ll have time to drop by the park tomorrow morn to check this out firsthand. Besides, it’ll be too damned cold to poke around, on the lookout for MC Baldy. Although if I did, I’d have to ask him how he feels about being immortalized as Sell-Out Supreme via the Moby Quotient.

And oh, I was tipped off on this celebrity appearance on the strength of this little post I wrote, back when BPP was ramping up. Despite the best of intentions, I have yet to actually listen to the show. One of these days…

All congratulations due (I guess) to the newly-crowned Miss World 2007, Zhang Zilin of the People’s Republic of China.

Zhang’s victory was doubly impressive because a) She’s the first Chinese winner in the history of the pageant, and b) The show was held in China this year, amounting to a home-team triumph.

All that said…

Anyone else think her hands and fingers are unnaturally long/large? Maybe they’re accentuated that way by the extreme skinniness of her near-nonexistent wrists and forearms. She’s still a beauty, but when I saw that video of her blowing kisses and waving to the crowd, those flapping hands looked really weird.