Saturday, January 23, 2010

MORE THOUGHTS ON CONAN O'BRIEN


I wrote about Conan O'Brien's last stand at host of The Tonight Show in my last post, but I wanted to dedicate a post to his final words on the show.

"To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. As proof, let’s make an amazing thing happen right now."

What a lovely sentiment.  What a dignified way to sign off. What a great attitude.  Words to live by.

Also worth mentioning here is what Neil Young said to Conan after his great performance of "Long May You Run": "Thanks for all you've done for NEW music!" It's true: I'm listening to the 1997 collection: Live From 6A: Great performances from Late Night With Conan O'Brien.  Like Arsenio Hall in his day, Conan brought artists onto TV who wouldn't necessarily get on network television at the time. Some of the artists on the collection, like them or not, include Cake, Ani DiFranco, Edwyn Collins, 311 and Matthew Sweet. Conan is a true music fan, and it showed when you watched whatever he was hosting, Late Night or Tonight Show. Long May You Run, Conan.

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