Just because someone is good at something, doesn't mean they are good at everything. You wouldn't ask David Letterman to play point guard. Yet someone at Fox decided Magic Johnson would be a good host for a talk show. The man played in nine NBA final series, but America never saw him visibly nervous until he was delivering a nightly monologue and interviewing stars of the era like Dan Cortese. "The Magic Hour" was a favorite target for Howard Stern and his still-over-the-airwaves talk show. Magic the basketball great would have blocked it out and stunned the crowd, but Magic the talk show host -- with desperately low ratings -- had no choice but to invite Stern on his show for a calamity of a publicity stunt.
For a brief period in the summer of 2002, comedian Zach Galifianakis's late-night program combined the traditional talk-show format with the absurdity of his stand-up to create a unique kind of variety program that at times managed to subvert the entire talk-show genre itself. Needless to say, it didn't last long on VH1, who would soon see the untapped potential in filming Hulk Hogan purchase tampons for his daughter. "Late World," which incorporated many of Galifianakis's performance trademarks (non-sequiturs, deadpan deliveries, piano playing, the elderly), predicted the comedian's more-recent work, including the warped Adult Swim program "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!," and a beloved Kanye West video set on a farm.
Between the two of us, we've seen Shaquille O'Neal's Kazaam a combined zero times.
