Friday, January 22, 2010

Out With the New In With the Old


So I turned on Letterman tonight in time for his
monologue. He began by saying that tonight was Conan's last Tonight Show so I switched to see what was going on. Even with all the hoopla, I'd actually forgotten that this was it.

It's on right now as I type this and I thought his monologue was fairly funny given the circumstances. But I have nothing to compare it to. I've never watched The Tonight Show with Co-nan O'Bri-an before.
I didn't watch Jay at 10 o'clock either. Jim and I checked it out the first week and found he'd brought all the same gags with him and that was boring. We watched it a couple of times last month but then decided he had allowed it to get really raunchy.

I used to watch The Tonight Show when Jay was on it but only regularly on Monday nights for Headlines. The rest of the week I'd check to see who had guests I liked better, Leno or Letterman and watch whichever. So I wonder what Jay will do to get back in the country's good graces. He sure ended up the networks villain or scapegoat in all this. And over at the other station Dave has been making the BEST of it.
The Tonight Show lost out when Johnny Carson retired. Johnny had class and that is something that is sadly lacking on TV no matter what the network. We used to also watch David Frost, Tom Snyder and especially Dick Cavett.
Those were all too cerebral for the American public at the time, or so their networks thought. I guess Conan is in good company and none of them walked off with $33,000,000, so who's the smart one?
Okay, so he just gave his farewell and he was very gracious. Good for him. I also liked the fact that rather than go out on an emotional note he picked up his guitar and joined Will Farrell to go out with a splash and no last goodbye. That was probably the BEST way to do it.

Tonight show Trivia: Johnny Carson's theme song was originally written by Paul Anka for Annette Funicello! No question about her. She was simply the BEST big sister I never had.
Hey, It's supposed to snow tonight!

See ya down the road,
Yarntangler

3 comments:

spiritualastronomer said...

Fun post. However, most of it wewnt right over my head. The things I miss by not watching TV, I guess. That would mean I'd have to get a new antenna for this rig. The old one hit too many trees. LOL!

Geezerguy said...

I guess you can tell how interested I was...forgot all about it and went to bed.
I'm glad he was upbeat. Didn't Neal Young show up to do the last song?
I guess I could be gracious for 33-mil. too.
BTW, no snow this morning around here.
-Geez

Word of the day...parier: A person who likes to pari a lot.

Old Newsie said...

Over my head too. After Johnny Carson retired, I more or ldss adopted a 9 pm bedtime and therefore seldom saw the others that followed on all the networks.