On Salting the Wound

As Emmy nominations have started coming out, a wonderfully bittersweet act of providence has granted four separate "noms" to The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

Now, O'Brien in interview recently reacted–there's no better word for his multiple levels of honest and facetious maniacal laughter/tears and sobs–to the news that most Google users didn't even know what The Tonight Show was. Frankly, I never gave a crap either, until the imminent cancellation allowed O'Brien and his crew to be completely unrestrained and, well, good in my eyes. Only in knowing that their time was short did they begin to film the show they wished they'd been filming for years. It's like the cancer patient who lives more in his last week than most people do in their whole lives. You remember Last Holiday? No, you shouldn't, but that's what it was about.

Anyway, knowing that the first episodes of O'Brien's new TBS show will absolutely have to contain some jokes about Peacocks, I was thinking they could try one of these as a really expensive joke for the first week or so:

• The To Knife Show with Conan O'Brien - The Tonight Show set is rebuilt plywood-for-plywood, but with the addition of giant gleaming butter knives to either side of the main interview area. Obvious references to knives are made all night, including bad puns, claiming that their main audience is now survivalists and serial killers and having the first interviewee be Paul Hogan (of Crocodile Dundee fame).
• The To Knit Show with Conan O'Brien - Same as above, but far cheaper. Conan sits in a rocking chair next to a grandmotherly old woman who knits for the entire hour or until she falls asleep mid-sketch. Occasionally, she gives Conan tips on pearling.
• The Two Wife Show with Conan O'Brien - Conan rebuilds his set as a farm compound and dresses as a fundamentalist Mormon for the whole episode.
• The To Fife Show - This is either an opening sketch about feudalism or small flutes, I haven't decided yet.
• The 'To Life' Show - Everyone, especially Andy Richter, is so ecstatic to not be unemployed that every seven minutes during an otherwise typical Conan O'Brien Show the entire crew raises glasses of Manischewitz and a latke in a toast.

However it works out, I would just like to point to the irony that The Conan O'Brien Show is clearly going to displace Lopez Tonight from its current time slot, but no one is going to complain about that because as far as I can tell no one actually likes George Lopez for any reason. The man is about as funny as a paper bag.

Oh, sorry. Sorry! I forgot you can't make fun of ethnic comedians because it might be construed as subtly racist.

I meant to say George Lopez is "about as funny as a brown paper bag." Now everyone's happy.