Goodbye Conan

The removal of Conan O' Brien from the Tonight Show is probably not news to anyone that owns a TV and so this post is not about that. I don't care anymore about whether or not he was slighted or prematurely removed from the airwaves. He is gone, and instead of ranting about how much I hate NBC or Jeff Zucker, I want to write about my memories of his original show, "Late Night with Conan O' Brien".

My earliest memories of Conan, were in 1993. I was 10 years old and although I was never awake late enough to watch Late Night with David Letterman, I do remember watching his lead in, "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson". I remember when Carson retired and passed the show down to Leno, and I remember hearing the controversy when Letterman left to CBS. His leaving left an opening for a new host to take the helm. The show was passed on to a writer for Saturday Night Live, a relatively unknown man who had only been in front of the camera as an extra on SNL. I never saw Conan's first shows, but remember only hearing his name from the news.

I began watching his shows more regularly in 1996, when my bed time became more relaxed. To me this was some of the best of Conan's career. I remember vividly, seeing Amy Poehler appear in braces as Andy's little Sister, confessing her undying love for Conan. It was around this time that Carl "Oldie" Olsen started making appearances on the show and I remember watching the show in 1998 when he died.

Andy's Sister (1998)


Oldie Olsen tribute (1998)


But my love for Late Night became obvious to me on New Years Eve 1999. My family had rented a time share in Park City to celebrate the new year (and possibly to get out of the town in case Y2K really triggered the end of the world. That Friday night there were parties in the streets of downtown Park City. My family and I were joining the crowds in celebration and all I could think of was being home for Conan's opening monologue.

This is not from that night, but close.


For a very long time I had wanted to go to New York and be in his audience. I was always so jealous of the audience members. I wanted to be them, I wanted to scream Conan's name in the middle of his monologue or catch a tube of Preparation H from Preparation H Raymond. I told myself that if I could attend one of his tapings I could die happy. In 2006 I spent a few days in New York with my sister Shannon and good friend Sarah. We were unable to get tickets before hand so we had to try and get standby tickets. On our first attempt we waited at the very end of a huge line for over an hour before we were told that all of the stand by tickets had been given out. So for our second attempt we got there much earlier and waited much longer. we were right in the middle of the line and I had a reoccurring thought that they would run out of tickets right as we were approaching the front of the line. So I made a pact with Shannon and Sarah, "If all of us don't get tickets, then none of us get tickets". I didn't one of us to get a ticket and then the other two half to sit it out. We all wanted to go and it wouldn't have been fair. They agreed and as the line began to move closer and closer to the interns handing out tickets I realized that their stack was getting smaller and smaller. Finally, it was our turn for the tickets, I was first and I received a little blue piece of paper with instructions on where and when to meet for the stand by line. For a brief moment I could see it actually happening, I could picture myself in the seats, my stomach tight with anticipation. I was holding a ticket that would get me into the audience of Late Night with Conan O'Brien! But I heard a voice behind me saying something to Shannon, Sarah and everyone else behind me in the line "Sorry, that's all of the stand by tickets. Better luck tomorrow". My stomach sank and I remembered my pact, I had to give the ticket away. I looked at Shannon and Sarah, hoping that they had forgotten about our deal. They hadn't and I was faced with a moral dilemma, keep the ticket and lose the friends or keep the friends and lose the ticket. Friends come and go, but memories last forever, right? No. I couldn't do it, so I passed the moral dilemma on to the group standing behind me in the line and put the thoughts out of my head. We watched that night from our hotel room and tried not to let envy curdle our blood. At that time I made a promise to myself, that one day I would travel back to New York and finish what I started.

I never had a chance to go back after that week. I got married a few months later and moved to southern California. Now it seemed less likely than ever that I would make it back. But still the thought was always in the back of my mind. And it was the first thing I thought about when it was announced that Conan would be moving to LA to take over the tonight show. You'd think that I would jump for joy at the thought of Conan being brought to my doorstep, but I didn't. The promise that I made to myself was that I would go to New York City and see a taping of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" not the Tonight Show. I didn't want that. But I did get over it eventually and it wasn't long before I started planning my trip to Universal Studios. It wasn't Late Night but it was better than nothing. To me it was like seeing Elvis, not young heart throb Elvis, but fat Vegas Elvis. I knew that he would have to dumb down his humor and lose his offensive sketches in order to appeal to a broader audience. He was still the king of late night, but he wasn't at his potential.

On August 31st of 2009 I visited Conan's web site and entered my name into a lottery that would either add to an already long list of Conan related disappointments or give me tickets to see a taping of "The Tonight Show". Fortunately for me it was the latter. I received the following email from tickets@nbc.com on September 16th:



On October 8th, 2009, we went to Universal Studios and attended a taping of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien". It wasn't what I had originally been hoping for, but it was just as magical. We were sat about four rows back, but directly in above the cameras filming Conan during the monologue. This gave us an elevated an completely unobstructed view of Coco himself.



He was funny, courteous to the audience and to his staff members and performing at 100%. That day I was able to remove one item from the proverbial bucket list.

Watching Conan O'Brien has been one of my favorite and longest traditions and although I always knew he would leave someday in the future, I never anticipated that it would be so soon and under such unfortunate circumstances. I am hoping that he will be picked up by another network quickly and without any more trauma to him or his staff. He may have 30 more years left in him, but for me his best work was at Late Night. I decided to wrap up this posting with a list of some of my favorite sketches he featured during his stint at Late Night.

-In the Year 2000
-Actual Items
-Celebrity Secrets
-Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland
-Desk Driving
-www.HornyManatee.com
-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
-If They Mated
-The Walker, Texas Ranger Lever
-Preparation H Raymond
-Andy's Sister
-Old Timey Baseball
-Conan Sings a Lullaby
-Crooner Ghost
-The MB
-Dudez-A-Plenti (Conan's By Band)
-Conan's trip to Finland
-Pimpbot 5000
-Unknown Colleges' Team Mascots
-The More You Know with Max and Joel Godard
-Andy and Conan's Staring Contests
-The String Dance
-Vomiting Kermit
-"Keep cool, my babies!
-His Nerd Impression
-Awkward moments with Max Weinberg
-Ginger, NO!
-Conan saying, "This Show Will Not Air"
-The drop down screen with Arnold Schwarzenegger and George W. Bush

And my all time favorite:
-The "I'm-a Gonna Go to Hell When I Die" song!



"Cause it's so Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday..."