Monday, April 26, 2010

Conan O'Brien at the Gibson Amphitheatre, April 25, 2010

I didn't watch a movie yesterday. One week in and I've already failed on my "watch at least one movie per day" goal.
On the other hand, I saw Conan O'Brien! Hooray for the Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour!
Reggie Watts opened for him, which was awesome. Reggie Watts is a sort of experimental comedian / musician / beatboxer / DJ guy and as far as I'm concerned he's a freakin' genius. I love Reggie Watts and last night was only the second time I'd seen him live. I ought to take more opportunities to go to his shows.
Anyway, then the Legally Prohibited Band (formerly the Tonight Show Band, formerly the Max Weinberg Seven ... Max Weinberg wasn't there, though) played a couple of songs and then Conan came out.
I have never seen an audience go from sitting to standing that quickly. Team Conan is a loyal bunch.
After that I don't really remember the order of things. Conan monologued, he and the band played songs with backup singers The Co-quettes. ("Since we're on tour we were going to call them the Tour-ettes but they wouldn't stop saying 'fuck.'")
Andy Richter wore a "guy riding a horse" costume and told the audience some things he's learned. At one point Conan threw to a commercial, provided by Andy. A video was played of a Generic Network Executive, who mocked us and booed us and got very angry and killed his stuffed cat. They showed a video of Triumph The Insult Comic Dog. Conan and the audience had a (scripted) conversation where we demanded he kiss La Bamba "like he's your girlfriend and you've been on a submarine for six months."
Conan played a lot of songs, including that Superman song by Five For Fighting (also known as the only song by Five For Fighting as far as the general public is concerned), in the middle of which Jim Carrey showed up dressed as Kick Ass and sang along. (Why is it the second he breaks up with "Little Miss I 'Cured' My Son's Autism And I Think I Know Enough About Anything To Write Four Books," I like Jim Carrey again?)
Because NBC may own the intellectual property from Conan's shows, he couldn't really use popular material such as the Masturbating Bear or the Walker Texas Ranger Lever. There was, however, an appearance by the Self Pleasuring Panda and lots of celebrity guests came out to take turns pulling the Chuck Norris Rural Crime Fighter Handle. (As far as I'm concerned, the coolest guest was Seth Green. The rest of the audience seemed more thrilled with Aziz Ansari, by whom I am unimpressed, and Sarah Silverman, by whom I am much less than uninmpressed).
During his encore, Conan ran through the audience with his arm out, letting everybody who could reach him give him a high five. For the first time in my life, I was thrilled to have an aisle seat. I high fived Conan O'Brien. That's almost-to-equally as cool as getting to shake Eugene Hutz's hand.
I just realized this isn't a review so much as a list of some things that happened at the show. You know why?
1) I can't remember everything that happened (hence the "some").
2) It goes without saying that I had a wonderful time.
It hit me last night that simply by hosting a couple of television shows, Conan O'Brien has become a rockstar. Getting screwed over by NBC probably helped, but even before the Tonight Show Fiasco it was pretty obvious that Conan fans are very loyal and very fan-ful. He very well may be the luckiest guy in the world. And I'm more than willing to help to keep things that way.

End of line.
-Sally

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, even though you missed the movie, you still had something to review, so it's a win!
proffy