Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Jay-walking

As far as late-night TV goes, I'm a Letterman guy through and through, with one notable exception: I am hopelessly addicted to Jey Leno's "Headlines", which takes place during each Monday's show. For those who haven't seen this feature, it's when Leno displays a series of goof-ups that appear in print publications throughout the country that either represent Freudian slips upon reading, or just plain stupidity in action. I always find this feature hilarious.

However, last night Leno had a first: a "Headline" that wasn't really a "Headline". It was a program for a Christmas hymn sing or something like that, with the first hymn up was "The First Nowell". Leno parodied this obvious misspelling of "Noel", pronouncing it in exaggerated fashion "No weellllll." However, the word is not misspelled; "Nowell" is merely the old English way of spelling the word, before "Noel" became standard. Many older hymnals, psalters, and other songbooks list the carol as "The First Nowell".

So Jay Leno really dropped the ball on that one. Good thing that was the very first Headline, and the rest of the bit worked fine.

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