He-e-e-e-re's Johnny!

By Jeffrey Kluger

The crew of the shuttle Discovery was apparently smart enough to come in out of a storm, returning safely to Earth last Saturday before the Leonid meteor shower could begin. The mission's glamour boy, however--veteran astronaut John Glenn--was a bit unsteady, both in orbit and on his return to terra firma.

Once described by Jimmy Carter as the most boring man he ever met, Glenn was game enough to risk trading one-liners with Jay Leno Wednesday night, along with shuttle commander Curt Brown and crewman Steve Lindsey. Leno, essentially pitching comedic batting practice to Glenn, tossed a few slow, fat lobs directly over the plate, but Glenn whiffed, responding with a series of jokes--including a crack about whether his Senate colleagues would provide enough funding to bring him home--that fell more or less flat. It was left to Brown, 42 (young enough to have spent his late nights watching Carson and Leno, not Allen and Paar), to keep things moving. "Does Senator Glenn keep telling you how tough it was in the old days?" Leno asked.

"He doesn't always do that," deadpanned Brown. "Only when he's awake." Brown went on to enumerate the major landmarks that can be spotted from orbit: "You can see the pyramids from space and sometimes rivers and big airports, and actually, Jay, every time we fly by California, we see your chin."

Leno was not the only one who got orbital schmooze time with the shuttle crew last week. Glenn also took a call from NASA administrator Daniel Goldin, who relayed a blunt message from Glenn's wife Annie: "You ain't going up again."

Glenn, never one to sit long on his laurels, seems to have found a way to fill his postorbital time. Once he gets his land legs, he'll be reporting to literary agent Mort Janklow, who is said to be marketing the astronaut's memoirs. Wanna bet it won't be a joke book?

--By Jeffrey Kluger