BARBARIAN AT THE GATE

Your guests. Everyone's talking about talk-show wars, but what about talk-show whores? For too long late-night TV has been the domain of has-beens and 14- minutes-and-counting oddities. Let's wipe the booking slate clean; avoid such ubiquitous time-fillers as Dr. Ruth, Teri Garr, anyone from Knots Landing, Siskel and Ebert, Orville Redenbacher, the star of any Fox sitcom, news anchors, Marv Albert (unless he has footage of bloody outfield collisions), Richard Simmons, Ed Bradley (unless he starts sporting a nose ring), and 12-year-old med students. Try to book personalities who matter to fickle X'ers, or icons they wish they had been old enough to experience the first time around. Guests like William S. Burroughs (better hurry), Pee-wee Herman, Lydia Lunch, Charles Bukowski, Anita Hill, John Waters, Amy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Henry Rollins, and any star of a '70s TV series (especially one recently convicted of a felony). And since many of today's stand-up comics are so lame, how about tapping into the country's vast resource of underused classic talent (now relegated to telethons), like Jerry Lewis, Norm Crosby, and Frank Gorshin-pros you can count on for honest (albeit usually cheap) laughs.

Your guest bands. Do not, under any circumstances, book Kenny Loggins, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Bolton, Sting, Liza, any Neville brother, Phil Collins, Harry Connick Jr., anyone with the last name Bono or Allman, or any new British band with a one-syllable name. Do book Tom Jones, Dinosaur Jr, Smashing Pumpkins, Kiss, Moby, Tony Bennett, Cheap Trick, the Lemonheads, Alice Cooper, Leonard Cohen, Liz Phair, L7, any '80s band you can convince to reunite for TV (Missing Persons, A Flock of Seagulls, Dead Kennedys), certain classic bands you can convince to reunite for TV (Velvet Underground, Big Star, the Clash), and any British band with a nine-syllable name.

Your delivery. Not to put too fine a point on it, but learn how to tell a joke; you take a painfully long time to arrive at a (usually disappointing) punch line. Again, your audience doesn't have much patience, and you can be sure they're sarcastically dissecting every third word you say. Also, although you are no doubt pressed for prep time, don't rely on your writers to supply research on a guest. Asking Drew Barrymore if she "had a good time" playing Amy Fisher is a hard-up question that guarantees a less-than-insightful response. And most important, don't bristle every time a guest calls you "CO- naan," or "CO-naan the Barbarian." If it bothered you so much, you could have taken a more common stage name like Dennis, Rick, Pat, or Chevy. Later, Doug and Nisid