Local El Pasoan Appears On The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon

Lately El Paso has been featured on the news, but this week, we had one of our very own appear on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon! His name... is Julio Ortega.

Julio Ortega has his very own local late night show called "The Night Shift" for the internet news channel All In El Paso. I myself have worked with Julio, both performing music & being the announcer FOR The Night Shift. I'm also a very close personal friend of Julio's & he's always wanted to meet Jimmy Fallon...and he did.

He appeared this past Monday (October 26th) & as a friend, I HAD to ask him..."How did you get on the show??". Julio explained: "I saw they were looking for applicants through their social media (Facebook & Instagram). I also watch the show daily so...I found out pretty quickly. The sketch was about me being as real as I could be. The people at The Tonight Show told me to 'be me' & 'not limit myself with my answers'. The Roots, the incredibly talented band on the show, would then jam along to the answers provided by me. I got super pumped up, trying to come up with things to say to Jimmy but it didn't work because I didn't know what the questions were going to be. So I just focused on having a great time! I spoke with the producers, managers, the IT department & they were all super nice. I was excited to meet one of my heroes & the great team he's got. (I was also super nervous as you can tell in the video)."

So without ado, here is Julio Ortega with Jimmy Fallon...

Julio's appearance on The Tonight Show was met with an overwhelmingly positive reception & speaking as a friend, I am VERY proud of him! His appearance on the show not only shows the amount of amazing talent we have in El Paso, but as Julio would go on to say: "I think it's super important that we all strive to make cool things for the cities we all live in. It was great portraying a random, basic dude with a  sombrero showing that El Paso really is a mixture of cultures & we all need to be proud of that."

Speaking from personal experience, he is a very hard worker, he's an amazing friend & I wish nothing but success for him. When I asked Julio "If Jimmy Fallon stumbles upon this story, what would you tell him?", his response was "I would like to go back to his very first show at The Tonight Show. He said (and don't quote me) 'As long as I can make one person smile, at the end of the day, I would feel it was all worth it' Well, you make me smile every time Jimmy & it was the utmost pleasure being a guest on your show for a brief moment."