Arnold back on Leno

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to appear on "The Tonight Show" this Wednesday night. The guv's spokesman tells me there's no particular announcement planned - Jay Leno just asked him to appear and he said OK.

Here's an interesting tidbit: Schwarzenegger has appeared on Leno's show more often as governor (seven times) than he ever did as an actor (three times), according to a quick check of www.imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database.

His most famous appearance, of course, was on Aug. 6, 2003, when he launched his candidacy in the recall election -- stunning the state's political establishment after he had been dropping hints to everyone, including his own advisors, that he would not run.

(As a side note, I was backstage with other reporters from around the world in Leno's Burbank studio that day.

I recall the absolute shock we all felt, and the exhilaration of an already-wacky story -- i.e. the recall -- that suddenly just got even stranger and more exciting.

But it didn't really show in our faces at the time. Leno had a camera set up on us backstage. I think he was expecting some 1940s-era image of reporters in trenchcoats and fedoras running for payphones and shouting "Stop the presses!" or something. It was sort of anticlimatic as we were all just a bunch of nerds glued to our laptops, IM-ing our editors and rewriting our leads, barely looking up at the cameras.)

Schwarzenegger has returned to the show since then to tout his various initiatives as governor, to mark the anniversary of his election, and to stump for his re-election.

Oh, and it's worth also mentioning that Schwarzenegger, or at least his exaggerated alter ego, has also made a few appearances on Conan O'Brien's show, too, like this hilarious one where he talks about his motorcycle accident last year.