Conan's back! A review of the first two months

Conan O'Brien is back on the air tonight after a two-week holiday. Hooray! Two weeks seemed like a long time, and of course that goddamned workaholic Leno was back at work on January 3rd, which means Conan's 18-49 number will be even lower than the 0.4 he got the week after Christmas. They need to keep "Team Coco" interested and watching every night at 11, and not just checking out the clips on the website, so hopefully Conan and his peeps used the break partly to review the first two months, tweak some stuff, and figure out how they're going to stay afloat on TBS.

Still emotionally scarred by his swift dethroning at the Tonight Show, I DVR'ed all of the first 28 episodes of Conan and have burned them on DVDs. Why? Because I'm paranoid that tragedy will strike again, and I deeply regret not at least having his first few weeks of Tonight Shows on DVD, knowing full well that NBC will spend the next millenium pretending they never happened. But now Conan is coming back for his second batch of new shows, and I wonder, "Am I really going to keep archiving this show?" I don't think so, but I still have them set to stay on my DVR "until I erase."

Anyhoo, with Coco already nearly halfway into his first show of 2011 (it's 11:20 pm as I write this), I wanted to briefly look back and think about what's working, what isn't, and what the future holds for my favorite deposed Tonight Show host. Way back on November 8th, 2010, Conan returned from the wilderness, and this is what I wrote the next day:

Back in January [2010], my "advice" to Conan was to take any offer from NBC that would allow him to go back on the air IMMEDIATELY, and then start the show in an empty warehouse, with a single camera, a desk from Staples, and two folding chairs -- the idea being that the show would be built around him and people would tune in to see how it grew from night to night. Despite opting for a completed set and professional crew, I think last night's debut had that kind of vibe: We're doing something like the old Late Night show, but in a new place with new people. There's no pressure on us, so we're going to have fun and see where this goes.


As for Conan himself, he was buzzing with nervous energy -- even more than usual. I'm sure with 10 months of pent-up hosting in him, he was eager to just get the first show over with so he can settle down and do what he does best. He was definitely jittery, lurching into the audience one too many times, searching for the right quips at the desk, but I thought he was fine. He's Conan -- if you like the guy you know what he's going to be. The cold opening was brilliant -- hilarious but also veering close to pathos, lest we forget that Conan is a real person who was deeply wounded by what happened earlier this year. It's interesting that both his Late Night debut and this one opened with taped segments that had Conan contemplating suicide -- I never realized Conan had such a "dark" side until I started reading the new Bill Carter book. We all know what he did on Late Night; now, back in a similar setting on TBS, with a similar budget and low expectations, I'm sure he'll grow this into a solid, fun, surprising show.

By his third show of the first week, I was already feeling much better, writing on 11/11:

The guests were perfect, and should be the "template" for his new show: a pretty big star who gets Conan's sense of humor and plays off him well; a quirkier, more oddball guest who Conan can just sit back and let roam wild; and a current, borderline-fringe musical guest who bring their fans to the party. Conan seems more comfortable, and with Andy back on the couch where he belongs it's almost like he's the "first guest" every night, which is fine by me. Actually, now that I think about it, and as I'm reading the Carter book, bringing Andy back to the "Ed" spot may be Conan's most lasting homage to Johnny; he always resisted making Andy into his "McMahon" because at the time it seemed corny and cliche, but now he's the only host left with a sidekick and it's retro-cool.

By November 11th, I had seen enough to have a grasp on how his show was doing:

Also, Conan's now-nightly hug with an audience member is a sign of him doing something else he resisted doing on Tonight (much to NBC's annoyance) -- interacting with the audience more. Bill Carter's War For Late Night book has been a real eye-opener about how early the seeds of discontent with Conan were planted in some corners of the Peacock network. Ironically, now that he's lost the only job he ever really wanted, Conan seems more willing to do some of the things that might have helped him KEEP that job [I was referring to the Chevy Cruze giveaway and on-air hawking]. We'll see HOW willing he is the next time some celebrity scandal erupts. (He refused to book Sarah Palin in the wake of her dust-up with Letterman over his monologue jokes. It was probably the moment when Jeff Zucker started thinking of him as a problem and not the solution.)


All in all, Conan is settling into his new show nicely, if slowly. He's clearly not looking to re-revolutionize the format -- if anything, he seems determined to be the last traditional late night talk show standing. He's been funny, the guests have been good, and nothing has flopped (IMO). But I'm waiting for some truly inspired bit of zaniness to become the Next Great Conan Bit -- and he needs more than one. He gets points for not trying to rehash the past, but he doesn't have anything yet to replace his SAT metaphors, state quarters, "If They Mated", Twitter Tracker or the good old desk drives in the country. The "Local News Wrap Up" was funny, but it's no "In The Year 2000."


Most importantly, perhaps, Conan seems to have moved beyond the NBC fiasco, as I was sure he would. People were already moaning after the FIRST EPISODE -- including, amazingly, some professional TV critics -- that the NBC jokes were "tired" and "over-done"; how this could be true after one episode is beyond me. He scarcely mentions it anymore, although his core audience probably wouldn't mind if he hammered away at it every day. (A passing reference to "my sojourn in the wilderness" drew a sympathetic "Awww" from the crowd last night.) He needs to find a way to make this new show his own, and not just The Tonight Show In Exile. I'm just glad to have the guy back on TV every night, so I'm willing to watch the evolution one show at a time.

So here we are, two months later. Late night is a marathon, not a sprint, so of course it's silly to judge a talk show on an obsessive night-by-night basis. Twenty-eight shows is just a drop in the bucket, hopefully a tiny fraction of the sheer tonnage of comedy Conan will deliver on TBS. When you consider that his Late Night stint got off to an incredibly rocky start in 1993 -- he was working on 13-week renewals for awhile -- he has stabilized his TBS show very quickly. He's become a better, more attentive, less jittery interviewer, and his monologue segment has become an early highlight. The warmth of his connection with the crowds, who show up in costume with props and signs to show their love, is genuinely moving in the insincere world of late night chat -- it would be almost a satire of Jay Leno's phony glad-handing at the opening of his show if it weren't so real and heart-felt.

Indeed, Conan has wisely held onto probably his greatest asset -- his fans, and their mutual affection for each other. He regularly shows off stuff his fans have sent him, and fan art has been turned into merchandise and his between-commercial title cards. I hope he continues to interact with the in-studio audience; it gives every show a slight devil-may-care, anything-could-happen vibe right off the top -- something only Craig Ferguson is pulling off in his monologue these days. And I hope Conan continues to pantomime the punchlines of his jokes -- I know he's always done this to some extent, but he seems to be doing it ALL THE TIME now, but it just keeps getting funnier. His Justin Bieber impression is as hilarious as it is simple.

The comedy bits are getting there. It's rough having to toss aside classic routines like the desk drive, "In The Year 2000/3000" and his stable of zany characters (Pimpbot 5000 being the most sorely missed, personally) and start completely fresh. It's not unlike Paul McCartney refusing to write a "Beatle-sounding" song for the first several years after the breakup -- Conan is re-creating a schtick that took 17 years to hone to silly perfection. I love his "video blog" segments -- he's only done two, but they are awesome and should be recurring. Andy's fake-newsman bit is as funny as it is low-rent, and that should also be a weekly event. The taped bits outside the studio have been very good, but I'd like to see Conan interacting more with "reg'ler folk" and not just TBS employees and people on the Warner lot. Just the other day I caught the bit from Tonight where he went yard-sale hopping with Slash, and it was classic.

He's getting there, but as with any start-up talk show, the key word is "patience." I love the opening theme and the graphics over the credits, which you have to watch every night for slight gags (a la The Simpsons), I love the set, I love the interaction with Andy, and they've had some great musical guests and funny comedians. It's a loose vibe, exemplified by the truly bizzare acid-trip Christmas decorations he sported for the final two weeks of 2010. And just as the year was winding down, we got a glimpse of possibly the first CLASSIC bit from the Conan show: Minty, the Candy Cane Who Fell On The Ground. With his old-timey theme song (which Conan was obsessed with), and the gross-but-somehow-adorable costume, Minty was the first breakout star of Conan's new show. As they get their legs underneath themselves, I'm sure there will be more where Minty came from.

And now it is 11:58 pm, and I need to go get me some Conan! Welcome back, Coco!

January 7th ... A day that will live in infamy...

Today is the one-year anniversary of the shit hitting the fan in the great NBC Late Night Fiasco of 2010. After weeks of behind-the-scenes fretting and panic, TMZ leaked the news that the "Teflon Don" of Late Night, Jay Friggin' Leno, would fail his way out of prime time and right back to his precious Tonight Show desk, in an article alarmingly titled "NBC Shakeup -- Jay Leno Comes Out On Top."

As a Conan O'Brien fan, and a long-time Leno-hater (thanks to his 1992 shenanigans), this caught me by surprise. I was anticipating the cancellation of the putrid Jay Leno Show with unashamed glee, but I never thought his utter failure would end up getting Conan shoved aside. I should have known better -- but that's a subject I can (and will) go on about at length another time. For now, I thought it would be a nice way to commemorate this dark day by listing my favorite life-long grudges. I'm a pretty easy-going guy, but when something (or someone) gets in my craw, it often stays there forever -- and not only because I have no idea where my "craw" is. Here are just a few of the topics I will probably spout off about at some point:

The New York Yankees:
I was a loyal fan to this team throughout my entire childhood, starting in about 1976 and continuing through the dark years of the 1980s and into the pitch-black years of the early 1990s. In 1995, after several years of hard work and new attitudes from the top down (requiring one George Steinbrenner to be banned from baseball for two of them), they finally clawed their way back to respectability ... only to have a major cause of that renaissance, manager Buck Showalter, fired for losing in the playoffs. Something snapped in my brain that day, and it never unsnapped, making me the only Yankee fan not to enjoy the Joe Torre Dynasty that reigned over the next decade.

Owen Gleiberman:
Inexplicably employed by Entertainment Weekly, an otherwise stellar publication, Mr. Gleiberman gave an "F" to the excellent Coen Brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? Now, I'm not saying that O Brother is one of the greatest movies ever, but if nothing else it had outstanding cinematography and Oscar- and Grammy-winning music -- these things alone should have overridden Gleiberman's general disdain for the Coen Brothers and earned the movie a passing grade. Since then (going on a decade now), I've found it impossible to trust his judgement as a film critic, and I will never forgive him unless he makes a full confession. Among the hundreds of movies he has deemed better than O Brother are the cinematic classics Tomcats (earning a B-) and the Paris Hilton showcase, The Hottie And The Nottie (eking out a D+). Basically, Gleiberman put O Brother -- a highly literate slapstick irono-com with an outstanding cast -- on the same level as Freddy Got Fingered. It was a review so hateful, it was my duty to hate its author back.

George Lucas:
Do I really need to explain this one? Let's leave it for another day.

Jay Leno:
I'll probably be preoccupied with this one for the rest of the month, as we count off the "anniversaries" in January leading up to the 22nd, when Conan classily hosted his last Tonight Show. Hell, I've been obsessed with this whole topic for a solid year now, and my anger hasn't really dissipated any, so you can be sure I will be mentioning this again soon.

There are others, I'm sure, but these are the ones that spring to mind -- my "Thousand Year Wars." I'm playing it for laughs, but they've affected my life, and not necessarily in good ways. Since I can't afford a therapist, I will share my sickness with you. Enjoy!

RISK: A playlist for world domination

Note: One of the things I will subject you to from time to time is the tracklisting and/or cover art of a favorite compilation CD I've made. I was an incurable mixtaper in the 1980s, and that obsession only swelled with the introduction of recordable CDs. Nowadays, my utter lack of free time limits my hobby, which makes the ones I do finish that much more special to me. You've been warned!

Cover art and iTunes icon for my latest masterpiece.

Every New Year's weekend for the past several years -- the actual number is in dispute, but it's been more than five -- my sister hosts a "New Year's RISK" game day. We'd played RISK many times for many years before that, but as we got older and had kids, it became slightly harder to start a game on a Friday or Saturday night and not finish until three in the morning. So we chose New Year's because (a) it's the slowest holiday, with no required traveling and visiting; (b) there were no school or sports activities during the holiday break, and (c) we could start early and end before 8:00 pm -- because, as every RISK fan knows, you can't play a proper game in less than 5 hours.

So anyway, music nut that I am, I tend to plan ahead for any gathering's soundtrack, usually opting to play more obscure selections in my collection, avoiding the kind of day-in, day-out stuff I always listen to. Ever since the appearance of Eric Clapton's Unplugged CD in the early 1990s, however, I've never been able to tromp across Canada on the RISK board without humming "Alberta" to myself. I've wanted for years to assemble a "RISK soundtrack," and this year I finally did it. It started as a single-CD plan and quickly became a double, and it made its debut on 1/1/11. It was a little hard to appreciate all the nuances over the din of gameage, but I think it's a fun comp. Here's the tracklist:


Disc One / 26 Tracks / 77:16:40

01. RISK commercial 1980s (0:14) YouTube
02. I Will See You In Far Off Places (edit) (2:53) Morrissey
03. Fight Test (3:58) The Flaming Lips
04. Alphabet of Nations (1:20) They Might Be Giants
05. "Australia's the key to the whole game" (0:42) LOST, Season 4, Episode 9
06. Down Under (3:37) Men At Work
07. Australia (edit) (4:00) The Kinks
08. War On War (3:47) Wilco
09. We Can Work It Out (2:12) The Beatles
10. RISK on Seinfeld Part 1 (1:03) Jerry, Kramer, Newman
11. Old Siam, Sir (4:04) Paul McCartney
12. China Girl (4:10) David Bowie
13. Turning Japanese (3:42) The Vapors
14. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1 (4:46) The Flaming Lips
15. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 2 (2:53) The Flaming Lips
16. RISK on Seinfeld Part 4 (0:50) Kramer, Newman, Ukranian
17. Back In The USSR (LOVE) (2:38) The Beatles
18. You Can Call Me (Ural) (4:38) Paul Simon
19. Hunting Tigers Out In "Indiah" (3:02) The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
20. Rock The Casbah (3:36) The Clash
21. RISK on Seinfeld Part 2 (0:31) Jerry, Kramer, Newman
22. Africa (edit) (3:44) Toto
23. Walk Like An Egyptian (3:19) The Bangles
24. Foux Du Fafa (2:44) Flight Of The Conchords
25. Impossible Germany (DVD) (5:41) Wilco
26. You Have Killed Me (3:08) Morrissey

Disc Two / 25 Tracks / 71:15:08

01. RISK commercial 1990s (0:25) YouTube
02. English Tea (incomplete) (0:36) Paul McCartney
03. Anarchy In The U.K. (3:31) The Sex Pistols
04. I'll Fight (4:21) Wilco
05. RISK on Seinfeld Part 3 (0:41) Jerry, Kramer, Newman
06. South American (3:39) Brian Wilson
07. The Girl From Ipanema (2:53) Astrud Gilberto & The Stan Getz Quartet
08. Run Through The Jungle (2:59) Creedence Clearwater Revival
09. Mexican Radio (3:06) Wall Of Voodoo
10. Tug Of War (DVD mix) (3:58) Paul McCartney
11. Immigrant Song (2:21) Led Zeppelin
12. Tropical Ice-land (3:25) The Fiery Furnaces
13. Dear Old Greenland (3:25) Andrew Bird
14. War (3:18) Edwin Starr
15. Ontario (2:37) The Posies
16. Alberta (live) (3:34) Eric Clapton
17. Slaughter (4:17) Billy Preston
18. Northern Exposure (Theme) (0:45) David Schwartz
19. Anchorage (3:22) Michelle Shocked
20. I've Been Everywhere (3:15) Johnny Cash
21. America The Beautiful (2:57) Neil Young and 100 Voices
22. Handlebars (3:27) Flobots
23. We Are The Champions (3:02) Queen
24. Like A Soldier (Alternate) (2:55) Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson
25. Going Home (1918) (2:26) Randy Newman


A Few Notes...

I wanted my RISK soundtrack to be eclectic, fast-paced (mostly), and FUN. No politics, and, as this isn't a Social Studies lesson, I wasn't interested in "authentic" songs from any region -- hence "Hunting Tigers" by the Bonzo Dog Band, "Turning Japanese," "Mexican Radio," etc. To sequence the CDs, I basically collected as many region-specific songs as I could and arranged them as a tour across the RISK map, starting in Australia, traveling through Asia, Africa, and Europe, and then performing a "Malachi Crunch" of the United States between Iceland/Greenland/Canada and South & Central America.

Interspersed with these songs were songs that referred to war, conflict, and defeat or triumph. I also used sound-bites from the two most prominent appearances by RISK on television that I'm aware of, LOST and Seinfeld. The "war" songs are also specifically placed; for example, "We Can Work It Out" reflects the optimism of the early stages of the game, when people make alliances and try to shore up their positions, while "You Have Killed Me" represents the first player eliminated from the game and "Slaughter" is what happens at the end when people start turning in sets of cards for massive numbers of armies.

As with any good compilation, I've been turned on to some new music, and been reinvigorated towards some old music. I knew "Mexican Radio" and "Turning Japanese" from hours of MTV watching in the 1980s, but never would have purchased them if not for this comp. I'd never heard the Andrew Bird or Fiery Furnaces songs, but they were too perfect NOT to use. "Down Under" reminded me that Men At Work were pretty damn cool, and "Alphabet of Nations" was a post-New Year's addition suggested by my sister, whose daughter listens to They Might Be Giants' kiddie albums.

When I was working on this -- in a continuous marathon session from 5:00 pm Friday night until 10 am Saturday morning -- I searched the interwebs for other examples of RISK playlists, certain that others had preceded me. I figured I might find a song or two that I had overlooked, but I was shocked to not find a single mention of anyone listing RISK-themed music. So if you stumble upon this, and you love RISK and music, check it out. All of these songs are available on iTunes or Amazon. Enjoy!

As always, on the cutting edge of human interaction...

I'm always saying to myself, "I could write a book about that." I think this about a frightening number of topics, but the truth is, I haven't and probably never will. I still have thoughts and opinions on things, though, and I love to write. When I have a spare hour or three I will spout off on a forum or a comments section if something riles me up, but I'm frustrated by the fleeting nature of the exercise.

I've decided on this New Year's Day, 1/1/11, to accept that even if I never write any of those books about all the topics that fascinate, puzzle or annoy me -- all the parts of my sum -- I can at least establish a place of my own to write about them. I don't care if I'm the only one who ever reads this blog; just knowing that I am at the forefront of this little-known communication tool is satisfaction enough.

Now, about those "chat rooms" I've been hearing about....