As a former 14 year old male with cable television (former referring to my age, let’s just clear that up) I spent a lot of time with Conan O’Brien. He was, as he is now, consistently hilarious, an endearing interviewer, and the charming pivot between brutal self-deprecation and swaggering confidence. A gangly, ginger everyman who peddled non-nonsensical skits about masturbating bears, stupid predictions and surly, cigar puffing dogs.
Seven months ago Conan inherited Jay Leno’s seat on “The Tonight Show” the “longest currently-running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States”. It was his dream job and one he held til a couple of days ago, forced out due to an amalgam of network mismanagement and scheduling bait and switches. The NBC kerfuffle that lead to O’Brien’s removal has been well documented elsewhere, but we had to post about O’Brien’s final musical guest. As expected he went out with a bang (and some cowbell) with help from Will Ferrell, Beck, Ben Harper, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons.
“We’ve had a lot of fun being here,” O’Brien said Friday night “But like everything in life, the fun has to come to end…a decade too early.” Then this happened. Goodbye Coco, we’ll miss you.
[Apologies in advance for the terrible quality of the video. NBC has claimed copyright infringement on pretty much every clip of the performance. I assume this below will meet the same fate by the time you read this].
