Category Archives: Watching

Welcome Back, Conan

I’ve nev­er watched much late night tv. Remem­ber see­ing Conan’s very first show…and then nev­er tun­ing in again. Then I caught the late night bug with Jon Stew­art and Steven Col­bert on Com­e­dy Cen­tral, but even that waned. But after the ker­fuf­fle between he and Leno, I became a fan.

One small prob­lem: I almost nev­er stay up that late. What to do?! Well, I’ve moved into the 21st Cen­tu­ry and I’m watch­ing on my com­put­er. Even awe­somer? I can treat it as some folks do Howard Stern and just run it in the back­ground at work while I’m knock­ing out oth­er things.

Radiohead with Michael Stipe

Once upon a time, that would’ve been a dream walk-on for me. Real­l­ly hard to imag­ine Radio­head and R.E.M. togeth­er live now.

Their forth­com­ing album, Col­lapse Into Now, strikes me as the most des­per­ate attempt at rel­e­vance since their last. What­ev­er hap­pened to aging grace­ful­ly, guys?

I get hav­ing Pat­ti Smith and Eddie Ved­der aboard, but Peach­es? In 2010?

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me

Went to see a record­ing of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! at the Acad­e­my of Music last night here in Philadel­phia. If peo­ple think that this week­end’s Ral­ly to Restore San­i­ty is like the Gath­er­ing of the Smug­ga­loes, then they would­n’t know what to make of this.

Let’s just say that Helen and I real­ly love the show, but see­ing the sausage get made was­n’t quite as appeal­ing. Can some­one start a “More Carl!” cam­paign? I think you could make it catch­phrasey, like “more cow­bell.” Who’s with me?

Over­all the show was­n’t that bad, it’s just that, I dun­no, it just did­n’t come off quite the same live. When the jokes are flat, they’re real­ly flat and the pan­elists’ hem­ming and haw­ing was­n’t all that clever, although Tom Bodett was a treat! P.J. O’Rourke got booed once when he joked that ’60s pro­test­ers deserved to be beat­en and tear­gassed. Amy Dick­in­son did had to stand in for women every­where. Weird.

We heard the show air yes­ter­day as we drove back from D.C. Sound­ed much bet­ter. Prob­a­bly best to not see how the sausage gets made, huh?