Q 6

PLAYBOY: Defend The Three Stooges.

Jay Leno: I like The Three Stooges. But this is preordained. The fact is, all men laugh at the Stooges and all women think they're shitheads. That's the basic difference between the sexes, if you ask me. Take any guy from MIT with a doctorate in astrophysics, put him in front of a TV set. When Moe hits Larry in the face with a shovel, the guy will crack up. If you ever turn the Stooges on with a group of women in the room, they get hostile and say, "Turn those asses off!" Have you ever seen that list in The People's Almanac of the ten men most admired by men? There's Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Moe. Women tend to be a little bit more cerebral in their humor. A guy getting hit in the face with a pipe isn't funny to them--I don't know why.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: Why don't class clowns ever get the girl?

Jay Leno: Comics tend to get the slightly damaged girls--the ones with some emotional problems, fatherless childhoods, perhaps some open wounds somewhere that aren't necessarily visible. But that comes later. In school, you're just lookin' for attention. I was a class clown, but I never thought of becoming a comedian when I was flushing tennis balls down the toilet and locking dogs in lockers. These weren't career moves. Teachers don't say, "When you hit me with that wad of paper, I knew you should be in show business!" The same goes for girls. They appreciate a more sophisticated sense of humor, which I just didn't have in junior high school. I was the kid who would sneak into the girls' bathroom and pour water through the Kotex dispenser. I liked watching that metal machine expand and tear apart from the napkins' absorbing the water. It was very funny. It would be a good ad for Kotex.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: How come women stand-ups don't get more respect?

Jay Leno: Women stand-ups have suffered from the same thing women anchor persons have: They have no real predecessors, so people assume they have no right to try. Comediennes like Elayne Boosler and Carol Leifer do material with a feminine point of view; but if, say, Elayne told me she was leaving the business tomorrow and gave me her act, I could do 90 percent of it. It's not all bras and tampons. You know, it takes five to seven years to become a good performer. So there's a whole crop of female stand-ups who started seven or eight years ago who are suddenly coming to the forefront. They're all very good and they're all making it on their own. The stereotypes are dropping real fast, if they're not gone already.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: What's the most fun you can have in a Holiday Inn?

Jay Leno: See, I'm not a hang-from-the-chandelier, naked-women-runnin'-around kind of guy. I mean, I used to have an engine that I would take apart and put back together in hotel rooms on the road. The maid would come in, and there I'd be with a crankshaft in my hand and stuff all over the place. Very embarrassing. But it is strange living in hotels: the tiny soap, the tiny towels, waking up and never knowing where you are. There's an occasional tractor parked outside your window that needs a jump start at six in the morning--while you're sleeping.

I used to stay in the sleaziest, most terrible places. I remember this old, old men's hotel in Cincinnati--three dollars a night--where I stayed that had a toilet in the middle of the room. One night, I was in bed and I saw water coming in under the door. So I opened it and there was an old guy, urinating. I said, "What are you doin'?" He said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I always urinate on this door." I looked at the door and saw it's all rotten in the lower corner. It was his door, all right. An awful hotel.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: How do you know when to trust a restaurant on the road?

Jay Leno: If it doesn't come in waxed paper, I usually don't eat it. I'm not a big restaurant eater. Somebody took me to one of those Japanese steakhouses--you know, where they feed you like a dog. They cut up the meat and fling it at you. The master chef came out and bounced it off two air conditioner units. You want to cut his heart out and put his head on that grill. Just gimme my steak, you son of a bitch.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: How did a well-mannered Bostonian like yourself become a West Coast motorcycle zealot?

Jay Leno: Well, the people I ride with are not stereotypical bikers. I mean, we don't go downtown and beat up homos. I was a Rolls-Royce/Mercedes-Benz mechanic in college, but you can't do anything with cars anymore. You open the hood and it's all computers. Motorcycles, on the other hand, are like watches. Every part is there for you to see. It's fun being able to take something apart, put it back together and make it work. I've got ten or 12 bikes, mostly Harleys and English antiques. What I would really like to be--but never will--is a good machinist. I like to work with my hands better than anything.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: Wouldn't you really rather have a Buick?

Jay Leno: I have one of those, too. A '55 Buick Roadmaster. When I first came to California, I used to sleep on the stairs behind The Comedy Store. Eventually, I saved $300 and had to decide if I should get an apartment. I bought the Buick instead and slept there for a while. I still have it. It's a big car. It seats seven--for dinner. It doesn't have a radio; I bring in live acts. In fact, I've got Woody Herman coming through in about two weeks. It should be pretty good.