TiVo Alert: The Late Show with Adam Sandler

David Letterman, the least-healthy of the late night talk show hosts, has gone home sick today. So his scheduled guest is filling in as host of The Late Show tonight. Adam Sandler has been rehearsing with the show’s writers and producers all this afternoon. He’s called in Don Cheadle to take his place as lead guest– very convenient, since their maudlin 9/11 movie, Reign Over Me (isn’t it Love Reign O’er Me?) opens Friday.

And you can bet, if he’s in town, Rob Schneider will show.

In the past, Dave’s missed shows because of heart surgery (five weeks) and shingles (a month). What is it this time?Leno’s unofficial biographer, The New York Times’ Bill Carter, says it’s a stomach virus.

The prospect of dumbed-down Sandler hosting the most sophisticated of late shows is deinitely promising– more promising than the occasional high-brow adult movies he’s somehow allowed to appear in, despite all the damage he’s done to cinema. But it’ll never top The Jerry Lewis Show.

–Tabloid Baby