Conan

Today Lei and I went to see a taping of Conan at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank. The last time I saw a Conan taping was in 1998 in New York when he was doing Late Night with Conan O'Brien.  We got their early to make sure we could get good seats in the studio audience.  I was wondering if they would have any Conan merchandise for sale and lucky for us a guy came and opened up a stand in the waiting area.  Lei and I picked up awesome blue t-shirts of an animated owl Conan in a tv shaped bird cage that are only available for sale to audience members.

As expected there was a lot of waiting around, standing in lines and walking as we went through the Warner Brothers lot to get to Stage 15. The Conan studio is decent sized and the set looks great in person.  We had seats a few rows up in the center with a good view of everything. During the audience warm up Lei pointed me out to the comedian as someone from out of town.  Thankfully he didn't seem to question my lack of an Aussie accent.

The guests for this evening's show were comedian and tv host Howie Mandel, boxer Floyd Mayweather, and musical guest Alexander Ebert (lead singer of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros).  We had some funny comedy bits including John Galliano's brother and his many hats, and a cow committing suicide by jumping from the studio rafters and hanging itself after listening to the Basic Cable Band.  Despite the cow incident the Basic Cable Band were awesome and it was a treat to get to hear them play full songs before the taping started and during the commercial breaks. Alexander's performance of "Truth" was amazing and had me wanting to check out his solo album. After the show finished taping we were asked to stick around for a special surprise and were treated to an additional interview with Ashton Kutcher, which will air as part of Thursday's show. It was a fun taping and Conan came up into the audience and sang to the crowd at the end.

Here is Alexander doing "Truth"