The Conical Glass: Oh, the Conanity

Friday, May 04, 2007

Oh, the Conanity

I'm really not a big fan of Conan O'Brien -- I find his tics and mannerisms more annoying than endearing -- but his weeklong series of shows in San Francisco has rekindled my civic pride. Look at Monday's show, which featured scripted banter between Conan and bandleader Max Weinberg about the MacArthur Maze meltdown, or the taped bit where Conan roams around the city, doing tai chi in a park with senior citizens and trying to find someone in Chinatown who recognizes him. It's all about us! We really are the most fascinating place in America! (Well, of course, next to New York, where Conan's show usually originates from.)

Anyway, I figured I would try to leverage my contacts in the late night talk show biz -- thanks to the ever-popular lineups page, I actually have a few -- and see if I could get tix for one of this week's Conan tapings. My favorite comedian, Patton Oswalt, was one of the guests on Thursday, May 3, so it seemed like it would be a good show to see.

When NBC made tickets available for the five tapings, they received over 85,000 requests, so it seems that Conan-mania is alive & well in SF. When we arrived around 1:45 PM, hundreds and hundreds of people were already waiting in line. Apparently some folks arrived as early as 7 AM for the 4 o'clock taping. Joe and I agreed that there's no way we would wait nine hours for a taping of any show.

The VIP ticket holders were herded into a little room at the Orpheum Theater. Not surprisingly, the better seats all went to the people who had been waiting outside all day, as opposed to the couple hundred "VIPs" who swanned in at 2:45. After being herded into another room, we were then herded upstairs to the balcony. Moooo. We were seated at the far right side of the balcony, right next to a platform where a cameraman was operating a camera attached to a very long cantilevered arm that enabled him to get long, swooping shots over the audience and the stage.

After a couple tunes by the Max Weinberg 7, the taping started and Conan was introduced. The audience went insane. Seriously, the applause and hooting seemed to go on for a good 3 minutes. I got kind of irritated, hoping they'd shut up already so we could get to the comedy. Even when Conan was able to get some jokes out, people kept interrupting him with shouts and "wooo"s. C'mon people, let's not ruin the show for people in the rest of the country, OK?

There was a taped piece about a Conan look-a-like contest sponsored by our local NBC station, and the winner came out briefly at the end. The first guest was "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson, who I suppose qualifies as an honorary San Franciscan since he used to live here & play in the band Journey. Then Patton did a brief set of stand-up, followed by a segment where Conan played disc golf with championship player David Feldberg (leading to more audience craziness, since they started throwing discs into the crowd) and a musical number by Bob Weir & RatDog. As always seems to be the case at TV tapings, it went by quickly. I hope the folks who waited in line for 9 hours thought it was worth it!

posted by 125records @ 9:22 AM

1 Comments:

At 7:17 PM, yellojkt said…

I would go see Conan just for Max Weinberg. What a great time.