I am – Hercules!!

James Douglas Muir Leno is fat and white-haired. He is richer than Jesus Christ and 59½ years old (which means he can start drawing from his IRA without a 10% IRS penalty). He’s been kissing the celebrity hinders of Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie on the same snoozefest of a talk show for the last 17 years.

Can Leno possibly have enough fire in his belly to compete with “The Mentalist,” “CSI Miami,” “CSI New York,” “Numb3rs,” “Private Practice,” “Castle,” “The Good Wife,” “The Forgotten,” and “Eastwick,” let alone “South Park,” “Sons of Anarchy” and “The Real World/Road Rules Challenge”?

A pair of comedy.com correspondents attended a rehearsal run of “The Jay Leno Show” last week. Their report makes it sound like a top-tier bore. What was learned:

* It kicks off, like “The Tonight Show,” with a “lengthy” monologue.

* Kevin Eubanks is still Leno’s bandleader and foil, so we can look forward to more of their sizzling dialogues.

* Pretty-boy guitarist-comedian Nick Thune contributed a “hilarious” segment about preparing for high school.

* A desk is no longer involved in Jay’s celebrity interviews. Because the desk was what was making those “Tonight Show” interviews improbably lame.

* Guests will be ambush-interviewed by “JMZ,” Leno’s parody of “TMZ.”

* A celebrity (in the case of the rehearsal show Selma Blair, girlfriend of pretty-boy “Jay Leno Show” employee and “Kath & Kim” actor Mikey Day) is indeed conscripted to race a product-placement electric Ford Focus around a racetrack. “Jay didn’t seem into it at all!” reports comedy.com. “Selma had two minutes to go around the track twice. She made it in 58 seconds … that felt like an hour.”

* Comedian Tom Papa performed a “very funny” four-minute stand-up routine.

* Leno ended with a segment about “back-to-school products.” According to comedy.com:

The gag products included a laptop that makes paninis, a juice box full of steroids (it was of course called, “Juiced”), a Guitar Hero Sandwich (which was just a hero sandwich strapped onto a Guitar Hero controller), and our favorite – a teacher’s chalkboard that folded out to a sexy bed for seducing students. […] Somewhere, Carrot Top must be pissed at Leno for stealing his act.

Besides Thune, those now in the employ of “The Jay Leno Show” as on-air personalities include:

Owen Benjamin:

Mikey Day:

Liz Feldman:

Dan Finnerty:

Marina Franklin:

Rachael Harris:

D.L. Hughley:

Sebastian Maniscalco:

Ross “The Intern” Matthews:

Jim “The Observer” Norton:

Brian Unger:

The funniest promo created for “The Jay Leno Show” to date:

The first show's guests are Jerry Seinfeld, Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West.

10 p.m. Monday-Friday. NBC.

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