[Michaels] told television reporters here Sunday that he wants Mr. Fallon to work out as many of the rough spots in his presentation as possible in performances on a website.

The web performances will likely begin in the fall, long before the transition from Mr. Leno for Mr. O'Brien is set to take place. The entries will not constitute anything like an entire hour-long show. "I expect that we'll do something like five or 10 minutes," Mr. Michaels said.

But he said they most likely will be on every night, to try to establish the rhythm of a nightly show. And he said, "I'm going to post them at 12:30 every night, so people will begin to look for Jimmy at that time."

The unprecedented step doesn't exactly smell like a vote of confidence. This was, after all, a talent who appeared on live, late night network TV from 1998 to 2004; how much more YouTube-honing does he need? Having come of age in the internet era, however, we really see no reason that Fallon shouldn't benefit from all the smaller-stakes advantages that medium implies. The deceptively difficult art of the interview, for example, is something that takes much practice. If he can sharpen his conversational skills first on the likes of Fat Tron Guy and Cindy Margolis, perhaps he'll be that much better equipped to later shoot the breeze with their A-list counterparts, Jack Black and Sandra Bullock.

• Fallon Will Start 'Late Night' on the Web [NY Times]

1) Justin Reportedly 'Had His Idols Rolling In The Aisles': Not only do we doubt this, but the idea of Michael Jackson, currently being wheeled around Vegas for his ailment du jour, and Prince, hardly a "sports junkie" like Justin, falling off their auditorium seats in some sort of laugh attack just isn't an idea we can properly picture.

2) Using Truly Pathetic Lines: While in faux-drag, Us reports that Justin had the crowd in hysterics due to NippleGate-referencing jokes like "I wanted to be the only guy at a football game to get to second base!" And, while in Simpson mode, (s)he pondered possible Bennifer-esque nicknames such as the but-gusting "RoJo" or "Tessica." Howl!

3) Drag Does Not Become Him: The sight of Timberlake in a wig accompanied by a five-o-clock shadow and ungroomed mangy brows, not to mention double Ds and Jessica's thick Daisy Duke legs, is no picnic.

But! To give Timberlake mildly well-deserved credit in the jokester department, we fondly remember his "I'm Awesome!" Punk'ing Punk'd skit from his 2003 hosting gig at SNL, plus a classic bit from the same evening in which a Simpson-imitating Justin played dumb blonde to the Nick Lachey-imitating Jimmy Fallon. Even a simple throwaway joke like "Nick" telling the audience "She can't even cure a ham." Justica's response? "Aww, is the ham sick?" was made funny due to Justin's steady confidence post-solo breakout:

[Photo credits: Just Jared]

In the name of science, we've hooked ourselves up to a series of vital-sign monitors, and, as a team of white coats monitors our progress through this Fallon anecdote about proposing to his wife, we'll update you on our progress:

14 seconds: Slight increase in heart rate, pupil dilation. Shortness of breath. Why can't this guy sit still?
27 seconds: Dry mouth. Palpitations. Pulse up to 112 bpms. Carotid artery bulging. Put your goddamn hands down and just finish the story.
1 minute 15 seconds: Profuse sweating. Head the color of a purple cabbage. Face spread back as if subjected to a NASA 20-G Centrifuge Machine.
2 minutes 8 seconds : Loses consciousness at first mention of "Barry Gibb."

• Late Night with Conan O'Brien [NBC]

The crowd had just sat through a three-minute highlight reel of Mr. Fallon's SNL career, featuring "some of the most memorable characters in the history of Saturday Night Live," according to Ben Silverman, Co-Chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios. (NBC's President and CEO, Jeff Zucker, was present, but did not speak.) [...]

The clip reel was heavy in impersonations of people like Pat O'Brien, Howard Stern, Larry King, and Jerry Seinfeld. The journalists sat mostly stone-faced (a bad sign), except when Fallon appeared as himself (a good sign), interviewing Paris Hilton and offering one-liners as part of 'Weekend Update' alongside Tina Fey. [...]

Mr. Fallon claimed his kindergarten yearbook featured his photo above the caption "Most Likely to Take Over David Letterman." (Someone in the crowd, possibly auditioning to be Mr. Fallon's sidekick, let out an audible "Wow" at this point.) When asked what kindergarten had yearbooks, much less ones with references to David Letterman, Mr. Fallon joked, "It's a magical kindergarten. It's taught by a unicorn, a talking unicorn." Getting serious, he said, it was St. Mary of the Snow School in Saugerties, NY. A quick call to the school and a chat with Principal Christine Molinelli (who was not principal when Mr. Fallon was a student) didn't turn up the Letterman line from his kindergarten year (at that age, students appear in class photos only, according to Principal Molinelli), but his eighth grade yearbook photo from 1988 featured the line "Future Goal: To be an Entertainer."

Whether Fallon's prophetic kindergarten yearbook caption was perhaps embellished over the years seems utterly beside the fact, for who can bother getting bogged down in pre-elementary Most Likely To minutia when, as soon as next year, we'll have two late-late-night Jimmy talk show options. If ABC's Ben Affleck-fucker isn't to your liking, you'll have NBC's far-more-eager-to-please, delightfully brogue-free Jimmy offering.

[Photo Credit: WireImage]

• NBC Officially Crowns Fallon Prince of Late-Late Night [origin.observer.com]

While Fox's Roger Friedman is wildly optimistic about Falllon's upcoming arrival behind Conan's desk, his enthusiasm strikes us as a bit too gushy. As he puts it, "He's the perfect successor to Conan and should have just as big an audience when he takes the reins. Fallon is one of those great underrated performers." True, Fallon was at one time a favorite of ours, partly because he was the cutest cast member at the time, and partly because of his dead-on Barry Gibb impression. But as Tracey Morgan and other cast members infamously said, most of Jimmy's laughs were the result of messing up his lines almost every Saturday night. Understandably, Fox notes that Fallon is "said to be thrilled and ready, if not a little scared." In any case, an official announcement from NBC is reportedly scheduled for May 11th or 12th, when NBC unveils its 2008 schedule to advertisers in New York.

[Photo credit: Wireimage]

• JIMMY FALLON CINCHES CONAN'S JOB [Fox News]

Executives aware of the negotiations said NBC had been in talks with Mr. Fallon and his representatives for a deal that would make his television services exclusive to the network. One of those executives, who did not want to be identified because the deal has not yet been signed, said the deal could include a crack at the "Late Night" host role, though it was by no means guaranteed.

We'd caution the comedian to think carefully before signing over his soul's exclusivity to NBC's rainbow-plummaged Beelzebub; he could end up disappointed to learn there will be no show with the words "With Jimmy Fallon" in the title, and instead his option will be exercised by a lesser NBC Universal property, such as delivering live red carpet coverage via satellite to resident Access Hollywood jackass Billy Bush.

• Jimmy Fallon Said to Be in NBC's Late-Night Plans [NY Times]