The end is in sight

It has taken 17 years and it's going to take 5 more, but, finally, the end of the Jay Leno suckathon is on the horizon.

Will he be forced to retire? Shot in the back? Keelhauled?

No, it looks like he's going to go out just when he wants to, while his neck can still support his chin without a system of levers and pulleys.

Leno had high praise for Conan O'Brien, the man selected to--eventually--replace him, "there is no one more qualified than Conan." Indeed, especially not you Jay.

Fans don't seem so sure though, with only 53 percent of voters on CNN.com saying that Conan is the right choice for the job. This is disheartening and reaffirms my belief in the general stupidity of humankind. There was no place to vote on an alternative to Conan, I'd liked to have seen the responses, or perhaps a Dennis Miller vs Arsenio Hall vs Sinbad cage match for the legacy of Johnny Carson.

Honestly, who else is there? John Stewart maybe, but NBC has proven it doesn't want edgy in its early late night spot, otherwise it would have went with Letterman over Leno to begin with. The 2009 date is probably less for Leno than to allow Conan to get all those masturbation jokes out of his system before taking the reigns.

"Alright O'Brien, you've got four years to make fun of trekkies, terrorists and obese people, make the most of it. Oh, and stop calling Max Weinberg a pedophile." -- some top NBC brass.

So with the future secure and both men locked into their contracts for a really long time, only one question remains: on that last show, in 2009, just how many jokes in the monologue will have "Monica Lewinsky" in the punchline?