I love how Conan's head is just poking in from the side of that graphic, hahaha. It wasn't like that originally, I had to make it, and I'm glad I did because it's hilarious. Originally, I had his pompadour just poking out from the bottom, but I thought it looked kind of weird so I changed it to this.
Well, after being off the air for five months, Coco Christopher is back!
He's been back on the air for a week now and I have to say, he hasn't skipped a beat. Well, the first two episodes were kind of strange (he didn't even really look at Max until Episode 2 because Andy Richter's back on the show) but he definitely started looking and sounding himself come Episode 3. The crowd is amazing too, 30 second standing ovations at the start of each episode!
So far this week, he's thrown in a couple string dances, a couple hops, a few roams around the outer frames of the shot, a Max and LaBamba cut-to insult, a whole lot of remote videos, a "In the year 2000!" (that is now called "In the year 3000!"), and one "Keep cool my babies!" All in all, it's looking awesome.
The intro of the show is spectacular. I've never felt more proud to be an Angelino until I saw that intro. And Conan's set is very beautiful too, its backdrop is the heart of downtown. The whole set has a nice blue feel to it that, I think, screams Conan. I've always liked Late Night's blue backdrop behind its stage. There have been a couple stories done about this new backdrop and how it resembles Super Mario, but that just makes the set even better.
To be honest, at first I didn't like the new show's logo, but I absolutely love it now. That moon is very Late Night. The show's theme is very Late Night too, it's almost identical to the old theme but sounds a lot more modern. In fact, a lot of things have been carried over from Conan's old Late Night. A quick look at the credits shows that practically everyone that worked on the show in New York is now in LA. All the band members are here (and now the band has two percussionists: Max Weinberg of course, and now also that black guy who used to fill in for Max when he went on tour with The Boss, James Wormworth) – the band's name is has changed too and is now Max Weinberg and the Tonight Show Band – the writers and director are here, Jordan Schlansky is here, Susie Santomauro is here, and hell, even Pierre Bernard is here! Pierre was in a little segment with Kareem Abdul Jabbar on Wednesday; it was so lame but cool, haha.
Conan's guests have definitely been much cooler now that he's on The Tonight Show. He's had all the same guests he had this past week on Late Night, but he's never had them in the same week before. The Tonight Show is known to get the great guests, so I'm glad Conan's going to get the chance to meet all of them. Eddie Murphy's coming on later next week and Conan said himself he's never met the guy, so that'll be cool.
All the guests this past week were LA natives, so we got a lot of LA talk throughout the week. It started with Will Ferrel (a USC man) on Monday, Tom Hanks (who kept calling Conan "Coco" haha) on Tuesday, Joel McHale (who is too funny) on Thursday, and Ryan Seacrest (who I think was wearing lifts) on Friday: all LA people. The show's guest's coolness factor is definitely going to be increased from Late Night, and I can't wait.
And to go along with the whole Laker "play of the game" stuff, I decided I'd show some highlights from Conan's week 1 as The Tonight Show host. Some good stuff. The first one's a basketball joke (keep in mind Conan was born and raised in Boston and is a Boston-everything fan... but don't hate him!):
