Conan O’Brien Hits the RoadWritten by LORENZO MARTINEZ
Sunday, 14 March 2010Conan O’ Brien has been sitting around in his underwear, eating absurd amounts of sugar all day. He tweeted it himself, “This morning I watched Remington Steele while eating Sugar Smacks out of a salad bowl. I was naked.” He would love for his fans and Twitter followers to believe that, wouldn’t he? Chances are he would have really preferred tweeting something along the lines of; I spent the morning sitting around and crafting a master plan. But that just doesn’t have the Conan zest. His plan is probably going to serve the greater purpose of proving further to NBC that mistakes were made and that in the long run, they’ll regret it.
Revealed on March 11, again via his Twitter account, “Hey Internet: I'm headed to your town on a half-assed comedy & music tour. I repeat: It's half-assed.” But, if America has learned anything about O’ Brien in his 16 years at Late Night with Conan O’ Brien and his seven months on the Tonight Show, it’s that he does nothing half-assed. When his “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour” hits the road we will find out just how full assed he is. Conan has spent his career being deliberate and quirky, a marriage of wit and purpose; he has been exact in his routines and sharp with his jokes, rarely predictable or dull. And, yet, he has used dullness and predictability with ease and to perfection during his career. And it’s a career that is significantly more illustrious than one would assume.
O’ Brien wrote for the Harvard Lampoon moved onto a writing job for Saturday Night Live and a stint writing for the Simpsons, all pedigreed places in their own right. His writing for The Late Show, O’ Brien gained a slew of Emmy nominations, but, regrettably only one win. It is clear that comedy is what O’ Brien does best. And it’s that fact that has made him the much prized and sought after free agent—now that NBC paid him and his staff $45 million to release the reins to the Tonight Show back to Jay Leno—amongst television hosts. Along with the $45 million came a contractual promise from O’ Brien to not be on TV before September 1 of this year.
So, what does a natural performer do without a television audience? How does he go about entertaining the masses? Whom started the “I’m with Coco campaign” on Facebook in support of him staying on the Tonight Show. What does he do, aside from sitting around naked eating Sugar Smacks? Coco turns to the very vehicle that gave him his nickname in one of his skits—Twitter. And almost instantly his fans followed Coco.
For the time being, that is until the tour starts, Twitter has been the only way to keep up with O’ Brien. In the few weeks that O’ Brien has been on Twitter he has interviewed a squirrel, brought attention to random Tweeter, Sarah Killen, they are now “Twitter pals 4 eva!
” and announced, what
http://www.teamcoco.com is calling, a 30 city tour that will be “ A night of music, comedy, hugging, and the occasional awkward silence.”
At the very least we know that we can expect those four things from his show, but with O’ Brien coming off his brief—some would say forced—hiatus, expecting any one thing would be too much and not enough. You can be sure that his show, like all the shows before him will be a deliberate and quirky marriage of wit and purpose. And, hey, like O’ Brien said in a released statement, “It was either a massive 30-city tour or start helping out around the house.”
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