The More Things Stray The Same

ALRIGHT, I GUESS this may seem to be getting mono-tonous, but, well, firstly, I like cheeseburgers and beer. Secondly, once you have the ingredients assembled, it gets kind of hard to resist. Thirdly, there is an element of luck of the draw here. I mean, I don't JUST eat cheesburgers. Sometimes I eat chili dogs . . .

Over and above all that, I wish to report that following the UFO with the IPA is both really weird and very rewarding. My mouth had been so attuned to the practice of seeking out the hoppiness of the hefeweizen that the IPA cam across as slighlty sweet and salty, which brought out the pepper element in the ketchupo something terrific.

The movie of the day was Angels in the Outfield. The original. Don't ask me why. For some reason I just didn't turn the damned thing off.

The movie of the day is not Conan O'Brien's new show on TBS, and not for any of the reasons you might be thinking.

One might be that I don't watch late night TV, which by and large I don't. I don't watch Leno or Letterman because I learned many, many years ago, that there's never any guarantee that the show you'r about to see will be funny. Also, the guys are both arrogant jack-offs on occasion, and, well, @#$% them.

But Conan I have a soft spot for, about which more in a mo. So if I did watch late night TV, this might be a good candidate.

One might be that the promos for the new show have been kind of . . . Well, actually, I find most of them somewhat amusing, but the Wifey finds several of them . . . creepy. Particularly the ones set to that Missing You" song, where people are doing all kinds of whacko things because they miss Coco, including making him seventy five bar mitzvah cakes, which . . . You know, I'm going to take that back. For all I know, Conan O'Brien might actually be able to eat 75 bar mitzvah cakes.

I kind of like the one where he's dancing without the music. And the one where he's washing his desk, I think, is a lovely bit of satire. (Seriously, why is washing a car supposed to be sexy? Am I supposed to wanna screw the car as well?) (And seriously, folks, soap tastes nasty. I shouldn't want anyone to taste soap.)

And then of course there's the reasons I might be watching and I won't. One of which is that it means I am in increasingly less danger of accidentally watching the George Lopez show. George Lopez is only ever intermittently funny, he's a lousy interviewer, and whenever he gets on the subject of latinos I begin to suspect he secretly works for Fox News.

So thank you, Conan. If nothing else, thank you for that.*

Secondly, I do have a bit of a soft spot for him. He does seem to be one of the more genuinely funny guys in the business. He seems to have a fondness for running gags, which I appreciate. He's also responsible for one of the very few truly resonant "interviews" with Hunter Thompson in the years before his death.

Conan and crew were whisked to the Owl Farm, handed firearms, plied with whiskey, and told Hunter would be along shortly. (This was at like 7 o'clock in the morning. Quothe Conan: "I think I'm going to throw up.") So Hunter showed up, being Hunter, just doing that off-putting thing where he was very clearly hiding behind his persona, and proceeded to convince Conan and crew, in his rambling way, so commence firing upon the targets, which included stuffed animals for whatever reason. (Somebody thought shooting a teddy bear was funny, I guess.) The proceedings lurched along; Hunter urging them to use increasingly higher explosives in the guise of fulfilling some sort of membership ritual, Conan and crew getting an increasingly queasy vibe about the whole thing as Hunter handed them more and more powerful weapons. (I seem to recall Hunter saying "Here-- throw an grenade at it!" and Conan replying "Why?") At one point, Conan decided to try and placate Hunter by concentrating on the teddy bear, which, unfortunately, he wasn't able to hit with great accuracy. Then, at one point, the combination of the impact of the grenade and the carnage inflicted by a carbine suceeded in ctaching the bear in fire. "Ooh! Look! It's on fire!" To which Hunter said three or four utterly excited, thoroughly indecipherable things.

It was the first time I had seen anyone legitimately interact with Hunter S. Thompson in at least a decade. It was just kind of sweet.

So I have reasons I might watch Coco's new show, but I probably won't. He comes on at 11; so does Jon Stewart. Sorry, but if I have to choose between the two, I am probably watching the Daily Show. Until I find out what the next-day re-run situation is, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

*Also there's the whole network late night crappola aspect. I kind of like the way Conan handled his part in the shennanigans, and it was especially gratifying that people were lining up and buying airline tickets to appear on Conan's non-televised-live shows, while that craphound Leno, who insisted that America wanted him to molest the airwaves every night at ten, so all those poor folk who couldn't stay up past 11:30 could catch his action, crashed and burned. Leno has been funny, but that whole thing was just outrageously presumptious.