Sunday, June 22, 2008

No Denyin' O'Brien

I guess it’s finally time I chronicle my past Friday.  Two words with a weird letter prefix: Conan O’Brien. Yes, we made it in.  Well some of us did.  Let me explain.

I got up at 5:30am and got to 30 Rock (absolutely hilarious show, by the way) at about 6:30am. I was 11th in line so I was pretty sure we were golden. Kevin arrived only about 10 minutes later. It was then that Jessika sent me a message saying her and Ashley’s alarm failed to awake them. While me and Kevin waited for the absentees, we took turns watching Rihanna sound check over at The Today Show. I got to see her do “Umbrella.” It was magical. Finally, at around 8:45am, Jessika and Ashley made it. Needless to say, the people behind us were not very happy and made it clear with stupid, under their breath stabs at us. By that time we were 14th anyway, so we weren’t the only ones who were placeholding. It wouldn’t matter in the end.

We headed back to Brooklyn Heights to kill the time. A little before we trudged back up to Manhattan, Ashley was scurrying around the room. Her ticket was M.I.A. Not the Sri Lanka kind of M.I.A. but the John McCain kind of M.I.A. She decided to not even try to get in. With sadness, Jessika, Kevin, and I made our way. Once we got to the final line, they cut it off at the first 23. That made us nervous but we were still positive. They took the first 12 for definite then took us to another line in case more seats were available. Fortunately, there were more. The problem that presented itself was that three seats were open. Well, there were three of us but in addition was one other guy in front of us whose friend already made it. Happy day for him. Realizing we were only where we were due to our early morning vigilance, Jessika let me and Kevin go. We proceeded to the studio.

It’s definitely not what it looks like on TV. Not smaller, but lower. The ceiling played head bump. The warm-up guy, the one who does the “Fun Hole”-storm-out-of-the-audience bit, talked to the audience and got us laughing. Conan then came out and prepped us and instigated a hugfest. The band came out, sans Wienberg cause the man has to pay the bills with Bruce, and played some sweet tuneage. It think I heard The Clash in there.

Finally the show started and rolled along very quickly What’s weird is when Conan is doing the monologue, there are close to 20 people right off-screen doing their various television-y jobs. First guest, Jason Bateman. He was great and a good looking man, I might add very heterosexually. While they were playing the clip from Hancock, I watched him mouth his lines. He wasn’t doing it to be funny but just out of instinct. Second guest, Masi Oka. You know, Hiro, the Asian guy from Heroes.  He was funny.  The musical guest was Alejandro Escavedo, a fun 7-piece Latino rock band.  After the show ended, Conan came out and sang “The End of Show Song” which obviously never airs.  What an experience it was.  And that was my Friday.

Nothing else has been much exciting. I’m well under way at H&M and it’s fun stuff. As mentioned above, if you’ve never seen 30 Rock, you have to check it out.  It’s so smart and full of NBC meta-references that poke fun at the network.  I’m in love with Tina Fey too.

Mash-up extraordinaire Girl Talk’s new album hit the Internet this week for free in Radiohead fashion. If you choose to pay nothing, it asks you why. This is the logical next step in the free albums popping up from every artist.  Girl Talk’s albums are like a fun game show, a Name That Tune for the ADD, Myspace Generation.  In other words, they’re loads of entertaining. How can one deny Jay-Z spitting over “Paranoid Android”?  Who would have thought Karen Carpenter would be trailed by Metallica?  This kid didn’t.

That’s it from the homefront. I hope you’ve had a wonderful week and this upcoming one is fun as well. What a hokey wishing. 

Til next time, baby birds.

- Chase

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very cool! Now I'm obsessed with finding any info about the "end of show" song from Conan. Is it anything similar to his "lullabye" sung over video of animals being killed, slaughtered, and other adult stuff? Would the end of show song keep the censor busy on air?

Letterm@n

Anonymous said...

i know the behind the scenes truth about conan's studio...don't be jealous. haha :)