Everyone loves Jimmy

BUT NO ONE LOVES HIM MORE THAN SARAH SILVERMAlt. JOIN COMEDY'S FUNNIEST COUPLE AS THEY DATE, FLIRT AND PUSH HIS CAREER TO NEW HEIGHTS

James Christian Kimmel is a man you would do well to envy, and the sooner you accept that fact in your unfathomable heart, the better chance you will have of improving your own lacklus­ter life. For certain, my friend Kimmel (and also yours) once envied other people, but this only emboldened his dreams. And look at him now: He overtips servers like Sinatra. He gorges him­self as would Henry VIM (if the Tudors had been big on calzones, grinders and buffalo wings). His festive home contains no fewer than 17 deluxe television sets (bathroom consoles included), on which he can watch himself be mirthful and charming at his high-paying late-night TV job (though satellite football broadcasts are the preferred on-premises viewing; personal vain­glory, you see, means nothing to him). Also, his woman—quite the woman, this one!—is incal­culably hot and formidable and possessed of notorious wiles that terrify lesser men and most mammals. And that is but a fraction of his dizzyingly happy lot. Indeed, there is much worth emulating in the life of Kimmel, except for maybe—let's just get this out of the way now—the narcolepsy problem (without medication he can fall asleep while driving, eating, working) and the corrective surgeries to reopen the timid mouth of his penis (or, in clinical parlance, his urinary meatus; "I don't recommend the procedure to anyone," he will wincingly caution). Still, here is a man of considerable heart and generosity who loves much, loves enthusiastically and loves nothing more than the ever fertile prospect of Good Times—the two hopeful words

he reflexively employs most often in life, especially during awkward conversa­tions, in dashed e-mail sign-offs and when nothing else interesting comes to mind. "Good times!" he will declare at such moments, and in so doing I believe he aims to project unbridled optimism not just onto his own private world (even he needs reassurance!) but also onto yours, should you happen to enter his. He is just that caring of a guy.

And so. on your behalf, I entered the private world of James "Jimmy" Kim-mel one sparkling morning not long

ago and right away felt the dis­arming warmth of his metaphoric embrace (no actual caressing, thank you). It is a phenomenon, subtle yet intense, that engenders the fiercest loyalty in all who have known him (except maybe his ex-wife), each of whom would blindly follow him into the minefield of Kimmel's choosing. (Instead, of course, he chose a late-night network comedy talk show, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live, wherein his devout minions toil valiantly as ratings steadily surge inch by mile, but so far nobody's been killed, for which, hey—good times.O Anyway, upon entering his world (first stop: the rambling fun house with all the TVs and other arcane whimsies perched above Lake Hollywood in hilly Los Angeles) I was wel­comed at the kitchen door, which spoke volumes about his shimmer­ing lack of pretense and the fact that he was planning to play chef, as is his proud and elaborate cus­tom. "I'm going to make you some eggs, a nice big omelet—whatever

you want!" he quickly announced, ges­turing toward a vast counter neatly lined with many bowls of meticu­lously hand-prepped diced and sliced herbs, meats, cheeses, etc. (He had begun the culinary busywork in the wee hours of the previous night, long after his show had ended.) "What ingredients do you like? When I cook, I go crazy. I have bacon that I made. What kind of cheese do you like? I've got Parmesan, Asiago, Cheddar—nice, right? Tomatoes, basil, mushrooms? Everyone says they gain between 10 and 15 pounds after meeting me."

He is in this way a tsunami of indul­gence, and it did not stop there, because next he handed me an envelope and, with an adolescent shrug, said, "I made you a card." Indeed, from the American Greetings Ellen Collection, which fea­tures sentiments delivered by a cartoon Ellen DeGeneres—"She's got a whole series of cards," he informed me, mor-dantly gleeful. "Isn't that wonderful?"— the card served only to draw me deeper into his easy confidences. On the front, quoth DeGeneres. "You're such a good

friend, I feel like I can tell you anything." Inside: "But then the police would con­sider you an 'accessory.'" Below which, in antic capital letters, he had scrawled. "I think this says it all! Jimmy."

To that end, after riding across several rollicking days and nights in his always forthright midst, there is no question I could now be brought up on the afore­mentioned charge. But first the law would have to recognize some nefarious infraction regarding interpersonal collu­sion (I think that's my job description here) with this unstoppable 40-year-old

man-boy dervish (1) who eagerly hoards people and passions as though they were black-market plunder, (2) whose voracious life appetites empower both his work and his play, making either pursuit nearly indistinguishable from the other, and (3) whose heroic half-decade ascent in the late-night desk-jockey pantheon has been buoyed in no slight fashion by the unconditional support and steadfast love of a Good Woman named Sarah Kate Silverman, a.k.a. the comedic hell kitten nonpareil, memorably lauded this year in the exul­tant headline splashed above the Village Voice writer Michael Musto's affection­ate essay "Sarah Silverman Is My Kind of Cunt." (Silverman treasures a photo of a friend's baby daughter proudly holding the article aloft.) As with generations of model couples before them, she irrefut­ably represents that, uh, soft, bolstering force that propels her man toward great achievement, not to mention a more sensible diet. ("Jimmy," she once said, "would take a bite out of a cow." But she said it with a certain pride, I'm fairly sure, no matter that she is a vegetarian.)

So profound is her love for Kimmel, she has boasted she could easily iden­tify the scent of his testicles in a police lineup, blindfolded. Also, she has giddily confessed the details of their cherished postintercourse tradition wherein she trills into his ear the tender words "You're a fucking pig!" ("He laughs," she once coyly reported to Howard Stern. "But he really is like an animal.") In his presence, I will tell you, she becomes an altogether different woman—sweet, pliant, effusive, fawning— yet all the while retains her classic physi­cal attributes, including problem body hair.

(He once aptly summed up this spec­trum by introducing her on his program with, "Say hello to the affectionate and furry Sarah Silverman!" Then, minutes later, he helpfully pointed out for view­ers, "Your arms are like those of a chim­panzee.") Though they live separately (her apartment is 15 minutes from the Kimmel pleasure dome), they convene in his bed nightly, blissfully free of mat­rimonial licensing. "I just feel like we are married in our hearts." she says. "Why get the government involved? It would ruin it." Hovering beside him. she glows with awestruck adoration. Or. as she would privately share with me in one of many fine candid moments. "He makes me want to be a better man."

Date-night discourse (as recorded one recent Friday over dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Cut steak house in Beverly Hills).

ss: When my sisters and I would visit my nana back in New Hampshire, we'd surprise her. The second she'd see us coming in the door, these emo­tions stirred inside her, and she'd bite

her lower lip with happiness. I feel like I understand that kind of happiness now. jk: Like a grandchild you love me? ss: It's so gay! It's gay. right? jk: It's not gay. You think of me as a grandson.

ss: No, it's about being deeply moved by loving someone... jk: I heard a crazy thing. I read it in a newspaper, then tried finding more infor­mation about it online because it was haunting me. Chinese grandmothers will calm their grandsons down—supposedly this lasts well into their 20s—by giving them blow jobs. Haunting, right?

Theirs is a Love Story for the Ages (target demographic: upscale adults, 18 to 49). a sacrosanct mantle not lost on either of them. "Jobs come and go," Silver-man has told me, "but love you look for your whole life...." (Her ellipses, it should be noted, always flutter off dreamily toward a yearnful sigh and never the belch you may expect from watch­ing Comedy Central's joyously twisted gambol The Sarah Silverman Program.) Which brings (continued on page 192)

JIMMY

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to mind a Valentine"s Day broadcast of Jimmy Kimmel Live a couple of years ago on which Silverman leaned forward in the guest chair she has dimpled so fre­quently (could any last-minute booking be more readily available?) and blurted, "Jimmy Kimmel, I'm in love with you. You are the love of my life, and I don't care who knows it." To which he gal­lantly responded, "Let me say in all seri­ousness—ditto." As hearts melted across the land, she then patted his hand and, a tad overcome, said gently, "I know that's a lot for you." ("That's called torment­ing me," he clarified when I reminded him of the exchange.) As would be the wont of the co-creator and co-host of that late, lamented (and/or lamentable) cable juggernaut (and/or Juggy-naut?) The Man Show, our fellow Kimmel is not one to gush openly in front of others, which is understandable, unless the sub­ject is food, but still. That is just one of the countless reasons he clearly prizes this recalcitrant minx of a woman three years his junior who knows nothing of tentative expression or fear of public speaking. "I'll be honest with you," she will tell anyone. "The guy is fucking crazy about me."

In this way and so many others, she is his perfect complement, the female extension of his ego and id, unfiltered, with stage training. Like a gamine muse in tomboy's clothing (football jerseys and rugby shirts are her thrill), she validates his enthusiasms, delights in his delights. Indeed, there is little on the essential list of what most delights Kimmel—a key smattering of such being his show, his impeccable work ethic, his colorful fam­ily, his former TV partner Adam Carolla ("Adam and I are deeply in love," he stresses to this day), his epic flair for home entertaining, gift giving and Inter­net surfing, plus his abiding fealty to Huey Lewis, Howard Stern and David Letterman—that has escaped her zesty espousal. "Nobody is ever as excited as I am about things," he confides, "but Sarah comes closest, in the most amaz­ing ways." To that she expansively adds, "I like it best when he's tickled by some­thing or when he tickles himself. Like we have this thing where he teases me about going to the bathroom, specifically about my making doody. I say, horrified, 'I don't do that. Stop it! I didn't do any­thing!' I say that my bowels have never moved and that my asshole is for decora­tion—it's a bullet wound. You know, to give me street cred. Stuff like that—my being embarrassed about it—makes him so happy, it brings him so much pleasure

that I just keep it going: "That's disgust­ing! I don't do that, Jimmy!' He's like, 'Yes, you do!' and he's laughing so hard. I'm actually a little more comfortable with myself than that, but it tickles him so much. It's fun to see him tickled."

Right there, with that illuminating no-doody anecdote—her fervent belief, by the way, is that there are three foolproof rf's in comedy: "doody, diarrhea and, of course, don't forget doody"—she has neatly explained the secret to her man's burgeoning success. I submit there is no better Kimmel, on television or other­wise, than a tickled Kimmel. It is a self-assured Peck's Bad Boy manifestation, sent burbling upward by way of preter­natural on-camera ease (possibly nobody in his nocturnal trade approaches his near-Carsonian comfort level—an upside of narcolepsy, perhaps?) and dependably signaled by the release of an infectious mild falsetto cackle (not to be confused with, say, the unsettling pitch of a Leno whinny). It is his single greatest weapon as our youngest wry midnight sentinel of cultural erosion and celebrity despair—to be seen tickled, genuinely so, by stupidity. To wit: Not quite two years into the run of JKL (its auspicious network debut, on January 26, 200.'?, followed Super Bowl XXXVII) there aired in the show's time slot a pair of surprisingly earnest behind-the-scenes documentaries that featured, among other backstage revelations, this sublime insight from (who knew?) guest actress Jennifer Tilly: "There's a trend that infiltrates the talk-show arena where the talk-show hosts are so contemptuous of their shows," she, a veteran of many, states. "Jimmy just seems like he's hav­ing a good time." Good times, hello! (Or as his executive producer, Jill Leiderman, echoes in an e-mail, "So true. Jimmy loves every show. It is so pure to his heart and core. No room for negativity. And that will never go away. He's wanted it his whole life.") On the same program, the then sophomore host was captured saying, with drop-dead sincerity, "I don't know if there's anyone that appreciates this opportunity as much as I do."

His opening salvo on the very first broadcast bespoke that sentiment most succinctly: "Welcome to Enjoy It While It Lasts, my new talk show-," he said, as though pinching himself to confirm its veracity. "It's on. This is it. This is the real thing, right here." Early on, viewers hardly flocked—and mostly glimpsed with cau­tion for a good while thereafter—but it was a start, and the network stood by its man

throughout. ("Honestly," says Kimmel. gratitude abounding, "those guys could have canceled the show a bunch of times.") Almost five years hence, I ask him ii it feels almost five years hence. "It feels longer," he says not unhappily. "My memories of the beginning years of the show seem like my memories of junior high school. The characters were different, but it was crazy and terrifying. Everyone was scared except for me. When everyone is scared, I'm at my happiest. I really love when everyone is terrified." Which only points out another reason he was drawn to La Silverman, who (rather poetically, if you think about it) became his inamorata less than six months before the show's debut. (She: "I wanted to make sure the deal was sealed with ABC first." He: "She's actually tied to the con­tract.") From the get-go she has played the doting first lady around JKL's Hollywood Boulevard headquarters (a Masonic temple turned swank TV studio, custom-built for Kimmel and located directly across from the Kodak Theatre, home to the Oscars ceremony), wherein her Chihuahua-pug named Duck (seen on her program as her Chihuahua-pug named Doug) wanders the corridors even when she does not. "1 love it," she says moonily. "I would say I have a job there. I'm the support system."

It was she, in fact, who on day one originated the ongoing prebroadcast rit­ual that propels Kimmel from his fourth-floor office down to the stage each night: Any staffer present in the room must chant thrice over "Best show ever!" while the host bops fists all around. On those first jangled nights, she chanted solo, but over time legendary JKL head writer Steve O'Donnell (of lengthy Letterman camp pedigree) furthered the tradition by tailoring the chants to suit each new episode. Just for our own amusement and also to genuinely buck up Jimmy," he says. "But it all has Sarah's imprima­tur." (A sampling: "We don't have that much enthusiasm for this one. Just kid­ding! Best show ever! Best show ever! Best show ever!" Or: "Not only does show number 906 look the same upside down, it's also the best show ever'.")

And here, while in the vicinity of the sagacious Professor O'Donnell ("I've always felt kind of like I was the show faculty advi­sor or some kind of weird attorney assigned to safeguard a spendthrift nephew's inher­itance"), I let it fall to him to advance the following unassailable perspective regard­ing the love story at hand: "You could make a case that the first perceptions of their relationship followed that of the show's early, unfortunate critical path," he says as only he can. "Because when that romance blossomed, there came a fairly snotty haughtiness from some elite circles, as in 'Sarah with Jimmy?' There was this idea that Jimmy was somehow a Neander­thal, as The Man Show falsely suggested, and Sarah was some sort of cutting-edge beatnik chick. But of course lime has shown exactly how and why they are

harmonious and happy and mutually enter­taining to each other. Even though they're both bizarre hyped versions of what you think are gender roles, they complement each other without being identical."

Date-night discourse, continued. JK: You seemed way out of my league. 1 didn't know at the time that you had a fetish for overweight men. I just got lucky. ss: Stop it!

JK: That's true, by the way. ss: That's not true!

JK: You have to understand that I hon­estly—and this is not just humility—never, ever think any woman is interested in me. It has to be beaten over my head. ss: I think you totally appeal to women. I was definitely attracted to you. You always look cute.

JK: I'm always uncomfortable. But some girl outside the restaurant tonight just said 1 was cute.

ss: Yeah! When we walked in, 1 heard her say "He's cute!" JK: She did mean me, right?

His love credo has forever been that he could not imagine himself involved with any female who wouldn't have dated him in high school. As he had no particularly serious high school loves, he hazards only this regarding present company: "I think during high school Sarah would've thought I was funny." Her avowal: "I would definitely have

loved him in high school. I think we were both unpopular but accepted by all cliques because we were the funny peripheral types." High school for him transpired in Las Vegas (after his family migrated there from Brooklyn, where he had entered life). "I was named Most Likely to Play Poker With Cheerios With His Awkward Friends on a Fri­day Night," he jokes. Back then.yAZ. saxophonist-bandleader Cleto Escobedo III lived across the street, and together they'd "spend every moment torment­ing people with nonsense and crack­ing up, fucking with our neighbors," says Kimmel. "We were just addicted to laughing." Silverman. meanwhile, was a winsome if clinically depressed high school girl with a chronic bed-wetting problem in Bedford, New Hampshire; her upbringing was, in her words, "you know, liberal Northeastern Jew-y. My sister and I saw our first R-rated movie when I was eight years old." (Says Kim­mel, "When you meet her dad you kind of figure it out. He taught the girls to curse when they were little. She'd get a big laugh using dirty words.") Kimmel is a recovering altar boy of seven years' parochial servitude, his blood one-half Italian (mother's side) and one-half German-Irish (father's side). His parents met in a bowling alley and later volun­teered as weekend marriage counselors for the church.

At Arizona State University (the Kim­mel clan had by then uprooted to Tempe), he met one Gina Maddy, who within two

years became his bride, when he was 20. ("I was practically a fetus when 1 got mar­ried.") "He had no wild oats.' laments Silverman, who did; she began sowing them upon moving to New York and per­forming stand-up comedy around town (where, at the age of 22. she all but invis­ibly joined the cast of Saturday Xight Live for one unsatisfying season). Famously, she dated only fellow comics. "A come­dian not dating a comedian." she has said, "is like a gay guy not dating a gay guy." He, on the other hand, left college early to chase vagabond radio dreams ("I was very headstrong"), winning and losing morning on-air jobs in Phoenix. Seattle. Tampa, Palm Springs (where an adolescent Carson Daly was his intern). Tucson and finally (with some lasting success, as running character jimmy the Sports Guy) at Los Angeles ah-rock sta­tion KROQ-FM—with wife, daughter and son in tow throughout the sojourn. (Katie Kimmel, now 16, and Kevin Kimmel, 14, make him the only late-night host with teenage progeny.) Silverman points out. "He hadn't had any life experiences other than the big ones you're supposed to get to later in life. There were only respon­sibilities: a wife, kids, getting fired from jobs and having to make things work. He never dated, he never had a girlfriend, he had never lived alone. He's like a throw­back in all those classic and positive ways, but there were things he missed out on."

Alter a while in L.A. he started pad­ding his $50,000 radio salary with TV work—smartass prognosticating for Fox NFL Sunday, co-hosting Comedy Cen­tral's Win Ben Stein's Money and eventu­ally pairing with Adam Carolla to satirize the hapless plight of the modern male for four debauched seasons on The Man Show. (Some theme lyrics: "Quit your job and light a fart./Yank your favorite private part./It's The Man ShmrV) "The real rea­son I was drawn to doing The Man Show," he would say and pretty much believe, "is because women hate me." Worse, he had also come to realize that his wife, who had gamely made a lew Man Show cameos, was most prominently included in that sorry assessment. "I can be very impatient, and I'm a perfectionist, and maybe I am diffi­cult to live with," he says, searching back­ward even now. "There is truth to that."

Whereupon Hugh M. Hefner—we enjoy this part for obvious reasons— entered his life, and also the life of Sarah K. Silverman. and soon enough nothing would ever be the same for either of them. Less than three weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the New York Friars Club went forth (terrorists be damned) with a long-scheduled roast of Mr. Playboy himself, which Kimmel had agreed to host for its Comedy Cen­tral broadcast and for which Silverman had agreed to perform (and during which Gilbert Gottfried would unleash the consummate filthy joke known as "The Aristocrats," which inspired the

eponymous 2005 documentary film that included Silverman's unique on-camera telling of the joke, which brought a law­suit threat from elderly TV persona Joe Franklin, who she claimed had raped her—/icv, it was a joke!). It would be Kim-mel's debut as a roast master and as a solo host in any significant forum—"I didn't have a lot of hosting experience in general"—and possibly the first time he noticed Silverman in a different light. (Here, at the very least, was proxim­ity if not remotely presumed promise.) "Next," he said upon introducing her, "we have a woman about whom I have nothing unkind to say, in the hope that she'll add me to the very, very long list of comedians she's had sex with—the lovely and extremely slutty Sarah Sil­verman!" Approaching the podium, she shook his hand, planted a polite kiss on his left cheek, which he returned in kind, and then announced to all present, 'Jimmy Kimmel. everyone! He's fat and has no charisma. Watch your back. Danny Aiello!" (To his great glee, she recently bestowed on him the original note card containing those momentous words—it had turned up out of nowhere—which he proudly showed me at his home and said, ever (he sentimentalist, "I've got to get this thing framed.") The ardent Friar and fine comic Jeffrey Ross, who helped organize the roast and had pri­vately introduced them backstage, says

now, "What a story, these two—a match made on a dais? But really, I don't recall any romantic sparks. Comedy sparks, maybe. I could see in Jimmy's face how much he enjoyed the fact that she had bothered to make jokes about him. Believe me, he was just psyched that a hot chick knew who he was."

In truth, that evening held no tangible magic. "I'd met her before," says Kim-mel. "but she didn't remember, and it was just casual." Furthermore, his marriage, though wobbly, was well into its 13th year, except that his heartsick dissatisfaction with it—and his wife's cool indifference to his accomplishments—had incremen­tally taken its toll and was eating at him as never before. "After 9/11 I decided life was too short," he told me. Early the next year the Kimmels separated but not before he found a house "maybe a thou­sand feet away" so as to stay close to his children, whom he's permitted to have eight days a month. (Once the divorce was final, however, their mother moved them over the hill into the San Fernando Valley. "She didn't want to make it convenient for me in any way," he says grimly.) Not thai any part ol the dissolution was easy for him. "Oh my Clod!" attests Carolla, who lives around the block from Kimmel. "His people don't get divorced." Says Kimmel of his kids, of himself, of that shattered moment in time, "It was just a horrible thing to clioose your own happiness over

theirs. 1 feel very selfish to this day. I always will, but I still don't regret it."

But wait! How does that chirpy little tune of hers go, the one she sings in her fine perky performance film, Sarah Silvenimn: Jesus Js Magic} "I love you more than bears love honey./1 love you more than Jews love money./I love you more than Asians are good at math...." Also, what about his own favorite song of all time, the 1982 Huey Lewis & the News classic "Do You Believe in Love"? ("If there is a song that captures the feeling of a new, unspoiled relationship better," writes Kimmel in the liner notes for the band's most recent greatest-hits compilation. "I haven't heard it.") Do we smell requisite hope astir? For certain, this is the stuff from which we must now leap forward into late summer 2002, amid the multitasking swirl of conceptualizing this new late-night show ABC had decided to give him for the fbllowingjanuary. Already he knew that his best boyhood pal, Cleto III, would lead his band (i.e., Cleto and the Cletones, also featuring the gene-spawning aplomb of Cleto's ageless sax-virtuoso father, Cleto Sr.) and that his comic-savant Cousin Sal lacono would be a havoc-wreaking recurrent ensemble member ("If Buddha were an anarchist, he would be Sal." says O'Donnell. "this very serene guy who just took delight in the upset of others"), as would his effusively befuddled

Uncle Frank Potenza, the former New York City cop and retired Caesars Palace security guard who would stand faux sen­try onstage each night and occasionally be reunited for unscripted filmed pieces with his cantankerous ex-wife. Aunt Chippy (KimmtTs mother's sister, "a very enter­taining screaming loudmouth who loves to light," says her nephew), and their ever bubbly daughter Cousin Micki would come to work in talent relations, and even his own parents, Joan (natural comedic flair) and Jim (Wolf Blitzer look-alike ready for dispatch to confuse major news scenes), would get into the act, and so on. (As Jef­frey Ross now puts it, "Not since Saddam Hussein al-'I ikriti has there been this much nepotism in one place.") During this same

period the warped new Kimmel-Carolla brainchild lor Com­edy Central was well into production, a series titled Crank Ya tillers, on which puppets with vague­ly familiar voices re-enacted actual prank phone calls, provid­ing Kimmel with the perfect opportunity to reach out and en­list Silverman as a puppet voice. (Car­ol 1 a to Kimmel: "But doesn't she have an annoying voice?" Kimmel to Carolla: "Have you ever heard your own voice?") Thus, via the indomitable laptop that never leaves his side, his cautious cyberspace pursuit of Herself had begun. Hap­pily, results were immediate.

"I was surprised she even returned my e-mails." he says now. "Sometimes we'd exchange 20 e-mails in a night,

mostly kind of learning about each other. It was like, Why don't I just pick up a telephone? But I was determined to be very careful, thinking, If she isn't interested, I'm going to act like I'm not either. You dip one toe in and then a couple more. Maybe you get to the ankle." They soon started hanging at her place to watch movies. "1 didn't even know il this was going somewhere," she recalls. "We didn't do anything, but we had the same taste in movies." And this continued as such until the ankle and the rest of her could no longer be ignored: "September 8, 2002," she says, "is the date we made official for our first-----" Here she demonstrates the

repeated insertion of her index finger into an ok sign, if you catch her drift, which I think you do. As goes the now celebrated tale, they were on her couch, watching Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose (heretofore unheralded for its aph-rodisiacal powers), when their faces drew close and stayed close and nothing actually happened. At all. "We were like nose-to-nose for 40 minutes," says she. "It was so awkward. We finally started fooling around, and then I was like, 'Do you want to go into the bedroom?' I walked into my bedroom and over to the bed. I turned around, and he was in the doorway, naked. He was like a naked half-shaved bear with socks on. I was taken aback, like, 'Oh!' And he kind of

shrugged and said, 'It's definitely going to happen, right?' It was so cute."

Like so, the second major romantic relationship of his life was fully under way, although not without minor reserva­tions on her part. "Even after we started dating 1 told him, 'You should date other people. Honestly, for my benefit, just so you can see how awesome I am.' He said, 'I'm not that kind of person.' I still wish he'd had a couple of awful dates." On the other hand, it should be noted, she is possessive enough to also be wary of that wish. Several months ago the gay publication The Advocate asked her, hypo-thetically, what would happen if kimmel "came out of the closet." She replied, "I'd

be devastated. I'd probably have to get a sex change and try to woo him."

But who could not fall under the expan­sive Kimmel sway and ever again fathom life outside it? In his madcap office at the show's headquarters, among the count­less artifacts on display—an oil portrait of him done by Anna Nicole Smiih. a stolen ESPY Award, his MTV Celrbrity Deathmatch Claymation figure (which more resembles Conan O'Brien and which lost badly in the ring to the clay Carson Daly)—there hangs quite appro­priately a huge photograph of )ackie Gleason, comedy's original Bacchus, whose own laivesse knew no hound*. As

with the Great One ( G1 e a s o n' s I o n d sobriquet), Kim-mel's world over­spills plentifully. "Jimmy is one of the most generous guys you'll ever meet, with his money, with his time, with his opinions." says best friend Carolla (whom Silverman calls Kimmel's "soul mate—just think of me as the other woman"). "And in the end, he also has the most. So what does that tell you? The least generous people I know have the least. It's a nice lesson." Ross echoes as much: "He throws it around like Elvis buying pink Cadil­lacs. ' More than once even 1 with­stood Kimmel lec­turing almost sternly, "I'm very uncomfort­able with other peo­ple (laying for the meal. I'm delighted to pay for any meal." Silverman can onlv

roll her eyes at the unending extrava­gances. "It's ridiculous," she says. "He's Christmas shopping all year round for every person he's ever met. Last week, out of nowhere, he got me a gift that he ordered from Japan, an carscope. I love cleaning and looking into people's ears. This one has a camera on a long tube, so I can look into my own ear. It's awe­some." Another bestowal she cherishes: "Oh my God, a heated toilet seal that shoots water up your butt and vagina! Once you're used to that, you're not comfortable unless you're immaculate up to two inches deep." (All personal Kim-mel loileis are similarly outfitted, as (hat is where he luxuriates best. "I like to read

nine or 10 newspapers while I'm in there," he says proudly.)

To commemorate such impulses, a writer friend commissioned a large stained-glass rendering of a grinning Kimmel draped in papal robes, hoisting a chalice and looming over the etched legend Tin: patron saint ok good timks. (The piece handsomely adorns his Her-mosa Beach getaway, where he vainly tries to unplug on summer weekends.) Most famously, throughout the NFL sea­son he hosts Football Sunday gatherings at his hilltop home (with different games aglow on screens abounding), for which he cooks all day to indulge battalions of friends and family members—"I barely watch the games," he sighs—and serves up mountains ol grilled meats and hand­made pizzas baked in the enormous out­door oven he prizes. ("I love this thing," he has enthused. "I want to be buried underneath it when I die.") These week­ly fetes are his respite from the grind of making television shows, but he also points out, not at all discontentedly, "Cooking is all about effort for me." This confirms Carolla's essential theory of the inscrutable Kimmel metabolism: "You can take a picture of Jimmy at any given point on any clay of the week and not be sure whether he was at work or at play," he ventures. "To see him sitting around with a bunch of like-minded guys watch­ing a plasma screen with pizza in their hands, you couldn't tell if it was another Football Sunday or if they were coming up with comedy bits at his office. To say he never stops working—maybe the real truth is he never stops playing."

At bottom, what Kimmel knows for sure is that the man he has become is the

man his inner adolescent always wanted to be. As he will incredulously tell you, "All my high school dreams have been coming true." He has, tor instance, sung onstage and gone lly-fishing with Huey Lewis, whose pop catalog provided the idyllic soundtrack for the Kimmel won­der years. ("Everybody makes fun of me," he says, "but I love him.") Also, Howard Stern, whose brisk knack for insurrection mightily inspired Kimmel's early defiant stirrings, has welcomed Kimmel and Sil-verman on vacation retreats to Anguilla and to his own Hamptons summerhouse. ("I've never met anyone as famous as Howard who is also as polite," Kimmel says most approvingly.) But unques­tionably it was during high school that Kimmel's fattest dreams were formed when he discovered David Letterman patrolling the nightscape and reinvent­ing American humor. Letterman came to embody his personal oracle of hope. "I was obsessed,' says Kimmel. "The license plate on my first car was lknii>:. For my 18th birthday my mom decorated the cake with the old NBC Late Night With David Letlertnan logo, and I posed for the picture with a big Dave-like cigar in my mouth." Because he read in Letterman's first Playboy Interview that he had started out in radio, young Jimmy decided that too would be his path. And when, mirac­ulously enough, he found himself booked in 1999 to promote The Man Show on Letterman's CBS Late Shou', he was actu­ally thrilled to be bumped. "Roseanne went long," he says. "I was so relieved. I had stuff for him thai I'd prepared since I was 18 years old."

When he returned weeks later and landed in the chair beside the Big Man's

desk, he simply blurted, "1 idolize you. 1 really do. It's absolutely true. 1 love you. I would say...I really, really love you." Said Letterman. "I appreciate that." Then, after Kimmel unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a giant take tattoo of Letter-man's head on his chest and displayed the aforementioned 18th-birthdav-cake photo, Letterman patiently asked. "Was there ever a period in your life when you came by the house really late al night?" His second appearance occurred on the night when a Stupid Pel Trick went awry and a dog bit Letterman's face. Kimmel solicitously brought out tissues to wipe away the blood and said, "I will not rest until that animal is destroyed!" But on that occasion, as well as on his four sub­sequent visits prior to the birth of the competingyA'/,, his hero unfailingly con­cluded each introduction with the seis­mic benediction "The very funny Jimmy Kimmel!" Kimmel says, "If it had ever seemed thai he didn't like me, I would have been absolutely devastated. With­out knowing him at all. 1 feel as if I know him well and know what he likes."

And so it is that, always within reach in his Hollywood office, our eager aco­lyte keeps a framed letter Letterman sent him five years ago, declining the invitation to appear as the first guest on the inaugural Jimmy Kimmel Live broad­cast. It came in response to the cheer­fully brief note Kimmel had written to him on—don't ask—Lionel Richie's personal stationery: "Dear Dave: Please be my first guest. Thanks in advance, Jimmy. PS: Let's not be childish about this." Letterman's return volley: "Dear Jimmy: Thanks for asking me to be the first guest on your show. Unfortunately, 1*11 be out of the country on business. I'm sure the program will be a success regardless. Sincerely, Dave." Kimmel chuckled upon rereading it to me and said, "On business! It's so perfect. He didn't even have to take a big swing, his character is so well defined." The younger host's sense of fraternal obser­vance is that Finely tuned. As the former Letterman head writer who has served Kimmel in the same capacity from the outset, O'Donnell oilers this privileged take on the kinship at hand: "You can talk about Dave's gift for pessimism and Jimmy's gift for optimism, but there is a happy skepticism where they both meet in the middle. They both are sort of amused and outside ol most mores— showbiz, social, political or whatever. And they are both exceptionally brighter than people would ever guess from watching them." Then there comes this story from Kimmel's executive producer, |ill l.eiderman. a beloved l.ate Show employee of nine years who sought Let­terman's advice before seizing the boss-lady reins MjKL last year. Her ex-leader thoughtfully imparted the best wisdom he could muster: "Protect Jimmy at all costs and make sure he knows you have

his interests in mind with every decision you make." When I reminded Kimmel of that heartfelt directive, he shook his head with amazement, a starstruck teen all over again. "It's so crazy for me. His even saying my name is just so weird."

But in the end, and at long last, he has found the high school dream girl previ­ously beyond his comprehension, now all grown up and ready to play at his whim and also at her own. For instance, on his show she once presented him with a special Love Coupon promis­ing this fanciful favor: "Good for one romantic night where I dress up like Huey Lewis!" (You could almost see him conjuring the image, not without palpa­ble intrigue.) From her, he says, "I just learned to behave like a human being. People wrongly assume she's a bitch and sassy and impossible, and she's not any of those things. She's unbelievably nice to her friends, genuinely happy for people and extraordinarily supportive of me. And I promise you, that is totally alien to me. It's a first and so important, espe-

cially when your ego can be so fragile. You work on something for a long time, and then if your partner is not inter­ested, it is the worst. If she doesn't care, who does? No one must care."

And so each night in bed he will kiss her hand while she sleeps or tickle her back to help her drift off or inquire about her bowels, which she has never moved in her life. Except that he has come to know otherwise. "She swears to me on her mother's life that she's never taken a shit," he says merrily. "But then I happened to find a small half-empty container of Fleet supposi­tories in her bathroom drawer that seemed to contradict that claim. Rather than confront her with them. I wrote a little note and stuffed it in the jar. The note said only this: 'I know what you are doing!' Months went by before she saw it, but she absolutely saw it, and it was a thrilling moment, believe me. I've always liked jokes that take a long time to pay off. Mostly, though, I just wanted her to know that, like Santa Claus, I am always watching."

"There was this idea that Jimmy was a Neanderthal and that Sarah was some sort of cutting-edge chick."