TVSquad

This is starting to become a trend at NBC. First Conan whacked his head after slipping on the stage during a sketch, and now Jay Leno hit his head during rehearsal for a stunt. Luckily Leno's injury wasn't bad enough to send him to the hospital like Conan's was.

Of course, this injury gave Leno an opening for a Letterman joke.

You knew this was going to happen eventually; one of the rejected contestants from The Apprentice is now running for Congress. Raj Peter Bhakta, a "fired" season two participant, is the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania's 13th district, and he's using some grandiose methods to discuss his platform. For instance, this article mentions that earlier this week he marched an elephant and a six-piece mariachi band across the Rio Grande in Texas to demonstrate how easy it is for illegal immigrants to come into the country (suffice to say, Bhakta wants a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border).

Those of you who remember the bow-tie-clad Bhakta from the Tump-fest already know he had a bit of the showman in him; he wore colorful suits and walked around with a cane on the show, and in one episode tried to get a date from tennis babe Anna Kournikova (he lost the challenge she proposed, and he had to run around Arthur Ashe Stadium in his underwear with his team firing tennis balls at him).

Oh, and because I'm nothing but fair, here's the website for Raj's opponent, incumbent Democrat Allyson Schwartz.

For reasons I have yet to figure out, USA recently gave the go ahead to a new reality show starring Steve-O from Jackass. The series, called Camp Steve-O, will focus on the self-made attention whore as he tries to "de-wussify" a bunch of men using his own personal style. These men do not volunteer themselves, but are instead volunteered by friends and family who feel the only way to turn them into real men is by putting them on a TV show with a man who occasionally staples his scrotum to his leg. I'm predicting an early death for this show, as I think people are starting to tire of shows centering on intense, gross and embarrassing situations, but who knows, it may catch on with the younger crowd of which I am not a part. If it fails, I guess he'll always have his shoe endorsement deal to fall back on.

I've been listening to magician Penn Jillete's radio show for awhile now, and it's become perfectly clear that no matter how much he likes you, he'll still insult you. During yesterday's program, which you can listen to here, he and guest Criss Angel spent the hour slamming David Blaine and his stunt in front of Lincoln Center. This isn't the first time Penn has lobbed insults at Blaine, although he always prefaces those insults by saying he does admire Blaine as a performer. Penn's assertion is that most of the card tricks Blaine does could easily be learned by anyone in under six minutes. Of course, one should take Penn's penchant for exaggeration into consideration, as well. Angel, also a fan of Blaine's, claimed he has already done Blaine's underwater stunt, having been submerged in a tank for twenty-four hours. Since math wasn't my best subject I haven't been able to figure out how twenty-four hours is the same as seven days, but there you go. Penn also reiterated something he's been saying all week, which is that his partner Teller has been underwater for more than eleven minutes on more than one occasion as part of their stage show, considerably more than the current record of eight minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Of course, Penn then adds this caveat: "Of course, he was cheating."

So yeah, it's a bit after the fact, but if you want to hear magicians talking smack, it's worth a listen.