  Conan O’Brien brought his 30-city Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour to the River Cree Resort and Casino on Saturday night. (Jordan Verlage/QMI Agency) |
EDMONTON - Superstitious or foolish people will often claim “everything happens for a reason” to justify personal growth in the face of adversity, when what’s really going on is a typically human adaptation to an unexpected, unpleasant event.
You feel empowered if everything works out OK, you celebrate ending up “in a better place” than you were before. So you invent the reason. Then you spout the cliche, “It’s all good.”
Conan O’Brien will undoubtedly look back on his humiliating depantsing by the vastly inferior but infinitely chinnier comedian Jay Leno as the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
Sucks at the time — great for his character in the long run.
What’s he complaining about? Conan got a new show, a truckload of money, and while he’s waiting for the NBC non-compete clause to wear off, he’s launched an ambitious stand-up tour that promises to give this gifted, towering comic a fresh outlook on his comedy career, as the live stage should to any entertainer worth his or her salt.
In short, “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Or vinegar from sour grapes.
The bile sure was flowing during O’Brien’s Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour at the River Cree Resort and Casino last night — Jay Leno and NBC getting equal measures of ridicule. Hey, he’s pissed off. Write what you know.
One of the first things he said was “This is the first time anyone has paid to see me — oh, they paid me to go away ... I won’t say who. I don’t want to get sued.”
That wasn’t the last word on the matter. He wasted no time outlining the eight stages of grief over losing a television show, to which we can all relate.
There’s “denial,” then “blame myself” — he said angrily, “I didn’t spend a lot of time on that one; what the hell did I do?!” — and then the big one: “Blame everyone else around me.”
Cue another angry rant and a list of all the less worthy people who still have a television show, like Kim Kardashian or that guy with the question marks on his suit. “Paranoia” came next, as when you start hearing voices: “Daddy, we need food.” And the list ended on a positive note with “get your ass to Edmonton, Alberta.”
It was nice that Conan and his team made such an effort to inject local content into the routines.
He walked out in an Oilers jersey — which never fails to win us over — made fun of the giant tent that serves as the venue here, likened the Calgary Flames to girly men and slammed West Edmonton Mall in one of several “commercial breaks” read by loyal sidekick Andy Richter.
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog also made a pre-taped appearance to refer to Michael Phair as “the state flower.” Hey, the reference is a little dated, but we’ll take it.
The evening was less a straight stand-up show than it was a live, uncensored, loosely-scripted, musical-variety version of his beloved former television program.
Conan and his band — the actual band from his show, minus Max Weinberg — pulled out all the stops to entertain while still airing all his gripes. It must be therapeutic. He even brought up special guests. Opening comedian Reggie Watts was brilliant, like a completely off-the-wall combo of Bobby McFerrin and Sacha Baron Cohen.
Later on, the masturbating bear appeared, then was turned into the “self-pleasuring panda” to avoid intellectual property disputes with NBC.
Props were deployed. Apropos of nothing, the giant bat from Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell tour was inflated, then deflated.
Conan donned an electric guitar and sang, badly, a rock song about how difficult it was to grow up upper middle class in an upper class neighbourhood.
He even rapped in an Oilers jersey, after which he remarked, “Now some reviewer is going to write that I rapped in an Oilers jersey.”
Wow, eerie.
It wasn’t all comedy gold, a bit too whiny overall, and it’s clear that for all his gifts and experience as a television host, O’Brien isn’t completely at home on the live concert stage — which he freely admitted.
But it can only get better, he can only get better. And as soon as he’s back on TV again this fall (on TBS, currently unavailable in Canada), he’ll surely thank his lucky stars for this once-in-a-lifetime chance to get up close and personal with the people who made him so famous to begin with.
