Headlines (Jay Leno)

"Headlines" is a segment on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno airing weekly. The segment usually airs on Monday, though at times it airs on Tuesday. It was first seen in 1987, when Jay Leno was still a guest host. Viewers submit funny newspaper headlines from all over the world, of all different types.

The last Headlines segment during Jay's tenure of hosting the show, on May 25, 2009, was composed of favorite Headlines from the seventeen years of Jay's official hosting period. The segment is scheduled to continue on his upcoming The Jay Leno Show, as Jay delivering Headlines has become an icon.

Categories

 * Odd names: Weird names for restaurants or other businesses (e.g. Hu Dat ) or people (Phat Ho), or names that sound like, or are, obscenities in English, such as the "New Big Wang" restaurant or "Miso Harney Sushi" ).


 * Does this make any sense?: Things that make little or no sense, although they might make sense in context, such as "Drop in shark attacks blamed on recession" (Jay: Yeah, I'd like to bite that guy, but look at the Dow...), which, if the reader looks further, actually means that the recession is causing fewer people to visit the beach, thus leading to fewer shark attacks. Other Headlines in this category include "Supreme Court ponders whether innocent person can be executed" and "In Mount Hood rescue a warm dog, hot frequency mean a happy".


 * Contradictions: Obviously contradictory or illogical headlines: "Homeless man under house arrest", "Come to the Hanukkah party and get your picture taken with Santa".


 * The Obvious: Headlines such as "Kayaking is hard when the water is frozen", "Bridges help people cross rivers", "World Bank says poor need more money" , or "Warmer weather may make snow disappear" . Jay usually introduces these with "Here's something I didn't know...", and after showing them, sarcastically comments, "Oh, really?" as if he had just learned that.


 * Poorly worded: A word choice which may mean something entirely different than intended. Examples include "East Tennessee aglow over nuclear jobs", "Dry cleaner working on the same spot for 15 years" , or "Republicans turned off by size of Obama's package".


 * Weddings: Wedding announcements in the papers with bizarre, humorous, or suggestive name combinations, i.e. "Small-Husband", "Gorey-Butcher", or "Lusty-Johnson" . These are set aside for the last few Headlines in a separate stack, when they are included in the broadcast. Leno's final Monday included weddings at the end, and his very last Headline on this version was the "Butts-Fudger" wedding.


 * Names with double meanings: A person's name that, when read as a word, yields a humorous, illogical, or self-fulfilling phrase, such as "Moron drives truck into house" . Also under this category are normal people, with the same name as a celebrity or famous person, real or fictional, involved in something completely unrelated to their "doppelganger's" fame, such as "Harry Potter faces old sex crime" and "Pope arrested on meth counts".
 * Typos: Words that are misspelled and thus have a new meaning, i.e. Fried Rick, "Bill cracks down on worthless Czechs" (instead of checks; Jay quipped that it "looked like" a racial slur ), "Pee-baked pumpkin pie" (Rather than pre-baked; ) and "Staten Island ferry hits pie; 18 injured" (Instead of pier; ) Others are phonetic spellings of words the drafters of classified ads or newspaper editors appear to have had trouble spelling, such as a "bad mitten" game , "Jerry Atrick" chair , or a "Palm Iranian" , and Jay usually says "I'm a little dyslexic, but if I was putting an ad in the newspaper...".


 * Poor photography: Pictures, taken by professional photographers, with bizarre positioning. Examples include someone holding a paper with his thumb, positioned in a way as to appear as if his nose is elongated, and a Senator whose picture in the paper lacks his head . Unintentionally suggestive photos, such as this illustration of ivory frogs, completely unrelated photos (a picture of public toilets above the headline "New fountains coming this summer" ), and maps that have wrong places named, such as a talking globe which claims that Boston, Massachusetts is located in India are included.


 * Mispositioning: A combination of two advertisements, pictures, or headlines that unintentionally suggest something when placed next to each other. Examples of this includes a Headline stating "Female trap shooters aim to end homelessness" under a picture of aimed guns:, implying that the trapshooters are ending homelessness by shooting the homeless, a "Passover Special" in an advertisement under a special on pork ribs , and a Headline stating "Whining at work", with the dummy directing the reader as to "How to stop it", and with a photo of a man with a rifle to the left of the text, implying that the solution is to shoot your boss!


 * Incongruous ads: These consist of mistakes in advertisements resulting in them not making sense: "1/2 Sandwich (Choice of turkey, ham, tuna, BLT, or Bat)", completely illogical statements about the product: a "Back To School Special" sale on breast enhancement surgery, or illogical classifieds: "WANTED: Someone who can speak Australian." Real estate ads for luxury houses that picture shacks or buildings succumbing to landslides, or poorly worded or misspelled car ads, such as this Chevy Trailbalzer, are often shown. The latter category is often introduced with "I'm a car guy and I thought I knew all the cars on the market. I guess I don't know this model...")


 * Photos with inappropriate objects: Items sometimes appear in photos which are unintentionally suggestive. Examples include a picture of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck with a black hand on Ben's shoulder and a picture of Jennifer Connelly wearing a shirt with two buttons positioned in a way that, in black-and-white, look like nipples.


 * Before and after: Advertisements with "before and after" pictures, where the pictures are obviously of different persons or breeds of animal ( and, showing people of different sex in the two illustrations), of the same person but not showing any improvement, or of completely unrelated items (Before and after liposuction: a fat belly and a house ).


 * In The Same Paper: Apparently inconsistent or surprising coincidental headlines, such as on the front page that "School taxes going up", but on the next page, "School taxes going down" ; "Age no reason to stop driving, experts say" on the same page as "Senior collides with train" ; or a picture of an Arkansas judge kissing a pig, with a headline under the picture detailing Arkansas' efforts to address the swine flu outbreak ( and ). Another example included an ad for this doctor shown in the same paper to have been charged with inhaling laughing gas for non-medical reasons.


 * People used in multiple ads: A photo of a model, a criminal, or other featured person in an ad or news story is shown to have been reused in the same publication.


 * Diversity: Articles about an event by a multicultural group, or about a specific race of people, where the pictures of attendees are all of Caucasians.


 * Unappetizing events: Two different parts of an event which suggest something, or produce humorous results, when part of the same event, or poorly worded event titles. Examples are an "Ice Cream & Janitorial Trade Show", and the "10th Annual Southeastern Guide Dog BBQ".


 * Your government at work: Humorous stereotypes of the American government, portraying it as stupid, lazy, or nonsensical, in a Headline. Examples include "Health officials say flammable water is OK to drink", "Fish need water, Feds say" and "County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds".


 * Strange products: Either obvious rip-offs, such as a "Body Blade" exerciser for $99.99, which is technically just a stick (Jay: I'm sorry, that's called a stick!), strange and useless innovations (a "Knork" that combines a knife and a fork ), or normal products with odd or illogical descriptions (kosher Easter candy or suggesting wearing a blindfold while driving a car).


 * Lazy reporting: Space-filling gibberish that was never replaced with the correct information. Examples of this are a caption which states that two graduates "blah blah blah something about Faith Christian Academy", and a crime report which detailed the area's misdemeanors as "blahblahblhablahb".


 * Menu items: Sometimes, restaurants have items on their menu with strange, sometimes unwittingly obscene names. Examples include "Monkey Balls", "4 pieces of Man Doo" (although this is actually the name for a Korean dumpling, simply with poor spacing: ) and "Fuk Kin Fried Rice" . Often the menus will be completely mistranslated from a foreign language, making the results either nonsensical or horrendously misspelled: "Consumny gaw or undercookel meats may increase your risk of foodbone illness, especially if you have cestain medical conditions."


 * Clothing for Animals: Leno has repeatedly stated that this is a personal pet peeve of his, and shows items, usually from a catalog, meant to be worn by a pet, usually a cat or a dog, such as this "Catbib" to stop a cat from catching birds. Jay repeatedly states that the animal "is not going to wear that", and the owner would likely be attacked if he or she attempted to dress the pet.


 * Stupid criminals: Often described by Jay as something he "loves," they tell stories of criminals who make "dumb" mistakes: gas station robbers who proceeded to run out of gas two blocks away, and were arrested when they came back for a fill-up, a man arrested on two warrants who used his monitored phone call, despite the warnings printed on the phone, to inform his friend where a hidden heroin stash was located , and a famous example of a person released on bail, who when asked by police for identification, used his picture in America's Most Wanted ( and ). On several occasions, there have been stupid victims: Police arrived in response to a report of a stolen bicycle, and found what appeared to be a bicycle chain combination near the bicycle rack. When asked, the victim claimed he left the combination there in case he forgot it.


 * Police blotter: Police radio transcripts and local police logs with strange items ("A caller reported his wife had been seen in the trunk of his car, in violation of a court order" and reports of a "suspicious peanut" and a "chicken at large"), possible typos (a report of donuts found loitering in a field), or misunderstanding the problem (a man reports what he took to be a handgun, which was actually a birthday cake ), or a boy calling Help, which was actually the name for his cat ). Jay usually reads this in a stern tone of voice, like that of a police officer.


 * Criminal sketches: Articles about criminals that contain a sketch of the criminal that is either poorly drawn or lacks sufficient detail (often a sketch of someone with a stocking cap over his face). Jay reacts to the sketches by sarcastically saying "If you've seen this criminal, call the police!" This is one example.


 * Hand-drawn ads: Similar in concept to criminal sketches, but used to identify non-criminal things, such as this example of how to draw an entry to a "Draw Your Dad" contest for children.


 * Dual meanings: Headlines with phrasing that gives a different meaning than what the author intended, i.e. "Principal wants cheerleaders' skirts left home", "Children Cook & Serve Grandparents" or "Condom found in bag of nuts".


 * Irony!: Headlines that indulge in irony, either due to errors or by their wording: "People think aliens must be more smarter than us", or "Idea For Anti-Theft Device May Have Been Stolen" . Other clippings are shown featuring other ironic situations, such as the Internal Revenue Service apparently cited for tax evasion , and "WeCare" disconnecting its information line.


 * What Do You Think?: Non-sequitur, unusual, or contradictory responses to newspaper inquiries about the opinions of various people: a college student asked about the gay marriage debate replies that he hasn't thought about it because he just woke up, a man with a cigarette hanging from his mouth says he is most thankful for "my health" this Thanksgiving , and a woman, when asked what she was doing to protect the environment, replied "Someone stole my car, so now I don't drive" . Often, poorly worded responses which suggest something else are shown: in a column asking readers what they would do about feral cats, one response was "I think they should be trapped, neutered and fed just like the homeless" , prompting Jay to ponder if the homeless are neutered.


 * Nonsensical advertisements: Items in classified ads which make absolutely no sense, or would obviously never be answered. Examples are an ad for a found goldfish, with the description: Found: Large, Obese Goldfish, 11 years old, blind as a bat, an ad for a lost "Orange, missing since 21st in Lakewood, $25 reward" , and a want ad which asked for "the person who got hit in the head with a tomato in the 1950s" to call them.


 * Jay Leno: On occasion, a news article or an ad making a mention of looking like Jay Leno, or of using Jay's chin in a comparative sense or in a derogatory manner, will be shown in an obviously standoffish manner by Leno. One particular example, with the headline "Troopers Seek Holdup Suspect," showed a picture of a lookalike of Jay Leno, who promptly hid his face as if he were avoiding identification.

Influence
Since the early 1980s, David Letterman has been doing a similar segment called Small Town News (albeit on and off) on Late Night with David Letterman and Late Show with David Letterman. Conan O'Brien parodies Headlines on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in a segment called Actual Items, which uses advertisements purposefully doctored by the show's prop and writing staffs.

On December 18, 2006, both Letterman and Leno included in their segments an item in The Dallas Morning News about Letterman, which included a photograph of Leno.

Publications
Leno released several compilations of Headlines during the late 1980s and early 1990s:
 * Headlines: Real but Ridiculous Headlines from America's Newspapers
 * More Headlines
 * Headlines III: Not The Movie, Still The Book
 * Headlines IV: The Next Generation
 * Jay Leno's Police Blotter: Real-Life Crime Headlines

Wil B. Strange includes "personal ads from the book 'Jay Leno's Headlines'" in an issue of Campus Life.