The Electric Kool-Aid Conan O’Brien Must Go Test
Written on the Occasion of Conan O’Brien Must Go’s premier—what better time to provide input for how it can end in epic style?
The kickoff of season three lends even less urgency to these hare-brained, long-winded writings.
Conan O’Brien
Conaco, LLC
4000 Warner Blvd Bldg 34
Burbank, CA, 91522-0001
Approx. Reading Time: 19 glorious minutes
Mister Conan,
This letter is the product of an unwitting conspiracy between Lazlo Toth, Phineas Gage, Moses Kelly, Darryl Anka, William Faulkner, and Robert Caro, among others. It will disparage France and Jordan Schlansky. And it will resolve the story arc of Conan O’Brien Must Go. It promises to be one HELL of a letter. Let’s get started.
Prologue: Level One UNLOCKED!
I pause here to acknowledge this will likely fall first into the youthful hands of an exceedingly bright, humor-savvy assistant, unsusceptible to FLATTERY or butter-uppery. A GATEKEEPER from among Conaco’s phalanx of lackeys, who has been instructed to elevate only the very CREAM of the crop (later, we’ll discuss how Conan would ROLL THE Rs in words like CREAM) of incoming correspondence to “Mr. O’Brien”. It will be a challenge to get past you, skilled filterer, so that my letter might meet Coco’s own eyes. Plus, you are almost certainly superior to me at WRITING, and MOST OTHER THINGS—an undeniably FORMIDABLE talent your boss has been callously IGNORING to his eternal DETRIMENT.
I just know that if Conan doesn’t get this, and later finds out that it was withheld… I've heard it said, “Hell hath no fury like a Conan SCORNED.” You’ve not seen that side of him? Ask yourself, how do SOME people find themselves working on that godawful Vanderpump show, or (worse) writing jokes FOR Jay Leno’s CARS?
I do believe you will immediately appreciate the sheer EFFORT that’s gone into the crafting of this letter. It is likely to be long, YES. But I intend to arrange it into CHAPTERS as I go. The better to make it easier to DIGEST, and give it a certain HEFT that most letters—of the kind where one paragraph endlessly blends into the next like the vellum spool upon which Jack Kerouac originally penned On The Road—cannot equal.
So together, let’s view this as Level ONE of a video game where our shared goal is to get to the Final BOSS level. We rubber stamp it on through QUICKLY because we’re both trying to get promoted up through to the TOP of the LEVELS.
Plus, it’s easy plane n’ POTTY readin’ and soothin’ at bedtime. A lot of this letter, it turns out, is just about ITSELF.
Preface: What IS This Letter. Also, what is it NOT?
Conan, listicles are popular for good reason, so I will first “listicle the principles” upon which this letter is based. Please keep me HONEST on these 8 things:
The goal of this letter is to be the GREATEST fan mail ever sent or received (and to IMPROVE the universe).
Maybe you’ve gotten letters from terminally ill kids or cherished family members or Prince (who, I’m told, LIED to you). They wrote you TWO sentences and reduced you to tears of joy or laughter. Well, kudos to THEM. But I’m fixing to fill 6.5 pages (single spaced) with Grade A blather in a futile, pathetic attempt to feel SEEN. That is the ESSENCE of the fan mail genre!
Confidence: HIGH!
Aside: as I explained to your INTERNS above, you’d be well-advised to pronounce GREATEST with a flamboyant rolling of the R—I don’t know how to spell you into that pronunciation without just adding gratuitous Rs (which may lead you more toward the vocal stylings of cereal spokestiger Tony the Tiger). But if I know YOU (which I don’t) you probably already read it as intended—like an old time medicine show hawker or POMPOUS English lord.
As I have stated, this letter shall come in chapters, each with a number and a title, plus a preface, prologue, and epilogue. Let’s not belabor this point, I think you’re getting it already, HARVARD boy.
The letter shall be committed to paper. In the way that almost no correspondence changes hands of late. It shall not be a TwitterX thread or a 6 pt type email capped by links to all my DIGITAL destinations. It will require that I buy and affix a STAMP. As a man of advanced AGE, I am skilled in the ancient postal ways. For this reason, it seems unlikely you’ll receive it during this calendar YEAR. If EVER. I’m sure a man of your infectious mirth receives a TON of fan mail. It’s delivered in giant canvas USPS duffels, then you dump them out on your smoothest flooring and make snow angels in the pile as you CACKLE with delight. That’s what I’d do! Nowadays, you probably mostly get emails and tweets and snapcrackles. Inferior MEDIUMS precisely because there are ZERO opportunities for cackling mail angels.
The letter shall be flattering, in a roundabout, brow-furrowing way.
The letter is definitely not in any way to be interpreted as threatening or creepy. I sincerely hope I did not bury THAT lede.
The letter shall be DAFT. Neither reader nor writer will be entirely certain whether it is for reals or not. You will hear ECHOES in it if you have read the collected works of Lazlo Toth—this letter may seem nothing so much as a PALE homage to his craft. Lazlo and I are, as far as I know, currently convening a secret society of letter writers to resume his WORLD-ALTERING pursuits. I have written to Lazlo, which is made all the more POIGNANT because through the letter-writing process I learned that he’s lived six blocks from me for 20 YEARS. Aside: would it kill you to STOP BY Lazlo? I have not heard back from him, but then again if we were overt about our SECRET SOCIETY… My guess is, the society is already WELL UNDERWAY! You might even be IN IT—GREAT!
The letter shares an IDEA(S). I will get to that, by and by. Which is to say, I will definitely use the writing PROCESS to not fail to come up with one idea or more SOON. I consider it my DUTY to provide some kind of food for thought as a REWARD for wading through all these WORDS. Note: I hereby SURRENDER all right, title, and interest to the ideas contained herein specific to your show Conan O’Brien Must Go. Such is my high confidence, sight unseen, in the quality of what’s to come that I don’t want to withhold them from the world whilst you worry about copyrights and licenses and all those particulars of modern business-ery. These are FREEBIES!
Most reassuringly, the letter is NOT a job application. It may be funny (or SAD). If so, it’ll be at the level of your quirky UNCLE who will never be a JADED humor PRO. I am a paunchy middle aged man unsuited to sequestering with the CLEVER people who come up with your ideas (ESPECIALLY that assistant mentioned above who has LONG SINCE punted this up the ladder to you). If you put me in a writer’s room, or any SOCIAL sphere, I would instantly become sheepishly self-conscious and clam up like a…clam. SEE, it JUST happened with that FLOP of a metaphor! The writer JUGEND would all smile and nod and their eyes would glaze over as the tiny voices in their heads repeated “dad joke dad joke DAD joke” only it would be that dad joke EMOJI repeating in their heads because they live in a thumb-typed world of LOLs and GIFs. No, the best you could hope would be to invite me to WRITE you MORE letters.
Chapter 1: Shared O’Roots?
Once, while playing Yahtzee, so to speak, with some of my lollygagginest chums, the topic of which celebrity we each resemble most came up. We went round the room with a Ulysses S. Grant here and a Lucy Liu or a Ricardo Montalbán there. When it came to my doppelgänger, it was a foregone conclusion: “oh, we’ve all talked about this a LOT and you’re a ringer for Conan O’Brien. NEXT!”
I was all, “Wait a minute, was Burgess Meredith TAKEN?” I am 5’10” soaking wet (YES, moisture impacts height) and my hair is neither red nor SWOOPY. You are 4-5 years OLDER than me but far less GRIZZLED. Apparently, though, it is something in my MANNERISMS—my WAY—that has evoked this association. I’ll take it. But WOW.
Here I should mention that I will sign this letter as Phineas Bling. But that is NOT my real name, it is a pseudonym I use—it’s an extremely pseudonymmy pseudonym, I think you’ll agree. It’s inspired by Phineas Gage, a man who taught us much of what we know about BRAINS when an exploded iron rod rocketed through his CRANIUM and stayed lodged there, without killing him, while the BRAIN doctors of the day studied him at LENGTH.
I often laugh to think about a busy cluster of MUTTON-chopped 19th century doctors hovering around this poor man with a four foot rod through his head asking questions like “what brings YOU in today?” and “do you still smell, what was it, daffodil soup?” and “would you be so kind as to sign this WAIVER?” Anyway, my real last name is of immediately-obvious IRISH ancestry, a secret I’ll ask you to keep (even Lazlo doesn’t know).
Let’s just use Kelly, for purposes of storytelling. And shout out to the OG Moses Kelly who fell OVERBOARD en route to the US of A, leaving his wife named—of COURSE!—Mary, and 7 kids to have a go in the New World. This included young Abraham Kelly, who could not have then known he would be my 6th great-grandfather since he was not yet a year old.
Aside: imagine trying to explain ANY part of Ancestry.com to ANY of the homeys of ANY age on that boat, amiright?
This was 1730, The Kellys presumably still reeling from the incursions of a certain Oliver Cromwell, methinks, and maybe starting to get a prophetic sense that sometime in the 1800s the proverbial potatoes (pronounced with protracted broguey A!) were going to hit the FAN. They got out while the gettin was good. Your O’Briens, as you may know, came later. I’d like to say we PAVED THE WAY for you guys, but TBH we didn’t recover from the “Moses overboard!” debacle until deep into the CARTER administration.
But we’re HAPPY for the O’Brien’s great success, really.
I bring all this up not for the ancestral high FIVE, but because it gets me thinking about the GENES we don’t see—did some DNA emerge from deep in Eire’s soggy boggy dew for twitchy mirth, and disarming LEVITY that can draws people in and yet also deflect them to arm’s LENGTH all at once? I don’t think it’s about IRELAND—we need to think more about how the human MIND works to understand what really ANIMATES and CONNECTS people. And we need to do it BEFORE the ROBOTS take over and before your new SHOW ends.
Aside: it would be great to do the NEXT round of study without relying on rocket-propelled railroad spikes through any poor slob's noggin.
Related: my son just finished all the Robert Caro books. In his early 20’s. For FUN. That says SOMETHING, amiright. What makes SOME OF US need to know what LBJ had for BREAKFAST in 1964?
Chapter 2: Let’s F^$(#ng Go!
As I write, the premier of Conan O’Brien Must GO looms, happily, TONIGHT. I’ll watch AND we are a NIELSEN household!
It’s a show I’ve been holding my BREATH for since I first learned of it. HYPERBOLE, since I would have died 525,600 times by now if I’d held my breath that long (the musical RENT says there are 525,600 minutes in a YEAR, the Internet says the average human can hold their breath TWO minutes MAX, and I’ve been waiting TWO years, so that brings us right back to the number in the RENT song—do the MATH!).
Like all quality entertainment, I see in Conan O’Brien Must Go the same opportunity I see in this letter—to ALTER THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. Maybe you were aiming lower, I don’t know. But obviously we can hinge a loftier goal on our growing knowledge about how QUANTUM fields intersect with human consciousness. It’s all on TikTok. Watch 12 seconds of Michio Kaku, or Paul Anka’s cousin Darryl Anka channeling an alien being named Bashar, and the app will take it from there, algorithming you into a depth of metaphysics-meets-physics content forevermore. I’m absolutely SOAKING in the stuff.
All I’m saying is, I’m sending this BEFORE your new show airs, yet I KNOW for sure it’s gonna proliferate VIBES of the finest frequencies!
Chapter 3: Your Show’s Doomed, Of Course
While we’re doing all this MATH, though, I want to hip you to a little thing called GEOGRAPHY. Fact: there are but 195 countries in the world. I don’t know if they count the Arctic, or it’s antonym the Antarctic, in that number. But let’s just say 200, which is a nice ROUND metric system-like number.
There are probably a few in there you don’t WANT to visit. I won’t name them all because I’m not RACIST but I think we all know the danger of showing up in a place like FRANCE, for instance, with all their buttery foods and readings of existentialism and those MANIAC scooterists endlessly lapping the Champs-Élysées. Then again, for every cesspool like FRANCE there are probably some countries you’d go to TWICE. So maybe we’re back to 200.
Aside: my calculations of numbers often END UP back where they STARTED. Math sucks.
Aside: I count TWO instances of BUTTERY in this letter. Make it THREE!
Here’s what I’m getting at. At some point, you’re gonna run outta nations. Because here you are, LA DEE DA, flitting about the globe cracking wise and hanging with locals and then one day you come back from, say, San Marino (it’s a real place, LOOK IT UP) and realize that’s IT! Done ‘em all. Or, at least, all the ones that don’t try and SHOVE croissants and SARTRE down your gullet the second you step off the plane.
Once you’ve gone through every single “pick a country, go there, hijinks, tomfoolery, come home” episode, where do you GO from there?
I suppose you could PIVOT the concept and revisit all the nations with a narrower focus, like traditional DANCE or the FURRY underground.
But I think what you really need is to begin working toward a grand FINALE, like, right NOW.
Before your new show has even started. Let’s begin bending it toward some epic ways to END it.
Chapter 4: The Electric Kool-Aid Conan Test
Whensoever you have completely exhausted official NATION states, and assuming we have not developed a means for interplanetary travel yet (which would dramatically SKEW a lot of my NUMBERS), there is one final existing destination.
Conan O’Brien Must Go WITHIN.
The ultimate destination. The final big boss. Guide us into the MIND of Conan O’Brien.
This is not EASILY accomplished.
It will require jurisdictionally-legal drugs, safely administered.
So. In this episode—which, incredibly, is not even the FINAL episode but the PENULTIMATE one—we follow Conan as he travels deep into the rainforests of South America, dodging blowdarts and wrasslin’ crocogators, to find a MYSTICAL village where you can lick one of them psychedelic frogs they got that turns your mind inside out and gives you a brief audience with The CREATOR of all things. The Big Bang Big Boss.
Sorry, it’s actually a TOAD, I just looked it up. And there’s a whole hospitality EXPERIENCE, the lodgings have pretty decent thread counts and (I believe) a Nespresso machine. We follow Conan into a tent with a SHAMAN (he looks super Shaman-like, and we will not reveal that his name is Tad and his last job was spinning table side salads at the Amangiri in Utah neither of us can AFFORD. Well, you can afford it but you’re too DOWN TO EARTH, I can’t afford it even though I’m NOT).
He doesn’t actually make you lick the toad, but grabs a little VIAL of the toad sweat and brews it into a lovely tea or savory broth. As your billions of loyal COGO viewers look on, rapt—did I mention this was broadcast LIVE?—you descend into a 15-minute DMT revery wherein you witness the almighty in KALEIDOSCOPING color. It lasts a few minutes, then you come on back and give us the SKINNY. Cut to commercial. This is SOMEHOW great television.
I need to do a little MORE research, but that’s the gist.
There’s a possible promotional ACTIVATION, too. You can’t bring us ALL into Tad’s shaman tent. BUT! You can orchestrate a live global simulcast where everyone gets a micro dose of ketamine (this stuff is all E-COMMERCED now, Conan!) and we play along. All past traumas evaporate and we all leave as willing and expert ambassadors to the world. We usher in centuries of BLISSFUL co-existence. The Troubles over forever, peace in the Middle East—the whole NINE.
It’s INTERACTIVE.
Aside: maybe cut to commercial AFTER the world peace but BEFORE the credits roll so people don’t tune out on your sponsors. Goes without saying, you get a cut on the BACK END of whatever online psychedelics startup partners on this (or START one!).
This kind of TRAVEL has already started. But as AI absorbs all other thinking humans could EVER do, and leaves us wondering “what am I even HERE for?”, people are going to look to get off the information superhighway and take some brain-bending roadtrips. Just when you’re done checking off all the countries that EXIST, we’re going to be looking to delve into our higher planes of EXISTENCE. Perfect TIMING!
This took a WEIRD turn, I know. But Conan, SHIT is getting extra weird EVERYWHERE, amiright. Have you BEEN on TikTok?
Aside: I’m from NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.
Reminder: that was merely the SECOND-to-last show.
Chapter 5: The Arc of History Bends Towards…
While you struggled mightily to imagine how that PENULTIMATE episode could possibly make for good TELEVISION, this question undoubtedly occurred to you: what did the SUPREME being SAY to Conan in his brief DMT marmalade-minded kaleidoscope VOYAGE?
It’s during these kinds of FUGUES when people OFTEN receive a set of instructions that might be most accurately described as “delusions of GRANDEUR”. This is DEFINITELY one of those times—I KNOW what (s)he’s going to say to you.
First, NEWSFLASH: we The Viewer follow your travels because we wish we could go places WITH you or, better yet, armed with your ways and mannerisms. Of interacting. Of experiencing. You SPEAK for us, in the way that authors like Sherwood Anderson spoke for the townsfolk of Winesburg, Ohio, or William Faulkner spoke for…all those Southern places. We also wish we had your BUDGET and STAFF. Mostly, we want to SURF those NEURONS that are equally as suited to endearing ourselves to a Kathmandu local or mercilessly denigrating, say, a nearby Jordan Schlansky.
You do this already. It’s part of the M.O. to bring “real people” along for the ride—an avatar for all of us to IDENTIFY with, whether it’s learning to drive, personal assisting, joining your podcast party, or exploring Norway. ALWAYS someone you laugh WITH, while you laugh AT yourself. These are your PEOPLE (and you theirs).
That’s why, what the big KAHUNA tells you whilst you’re on Tad’s gourmet hallucinogens is OBVIOUS: you shouldn’t be just VISITING countries, you should be STARTING ONE.
Chapter 6: Conan’s Ark
The time is NOW to start thinking about the END of your yet-to-air show, which is COMING in a scant ~200 episodes, when you assemble all your kindred CITIZENS.
Aside: you should have their NAME and ADDRESS on the RELEASE forms they signed but if not start keeping a spreadsheet NOW.
Every time I skim the cockeyed travel photos stored on my PHONE, I quickly realize that all the shots of buildings, landmarks, and vistas are but POOR imitations of ones I could GOOGLE anytime. The only INDISPENSABLE shots are of PEOPLE (or evidence/reminders THEREOF). People you know, people you MET, people poking snakes on the curb as you passed by on a JITNEY in the rain pretending to be a marauding PIRATE.
In your travels you will COLLECT these people. Not, like, in a JAR, it is to be devoutly HOPED. But you’ll collect them via FOOTAGE, real or remembered. Maybe you just let them have that distinctly ASYMMETRIC experience of meeting a celebrity (i.e., they will talk about it DAILY, FOREVER, while you forgot it the INSTANT they were out of sight). But NO! In this instance, you will actually remember THEM. These, too, are your PEOPLE. They can’t be replicated by Googling, or TikTokfoolery.
I thought, maybe fly them ALL to a location—FYI, Vegas has a lot of ROOMS—so they can all give each other this new kind of ancestral high FIVE. This ragtag, disjointed flash MOB that has NOT synced DANCE moves in advance. Maybe an “I’d like to buy the world a COKE” moment. If we’re thinking BIG, we could jointly stub out a CONSTITUTION.
I will open the dialog with these FOUR amendments for consideration:
Laugh AT yourself, a lot
Laugh WITH other people, a lot
Do not laugh AT other people, unless they’re DICKS
Assume no one’s a DICK until proven otherwise
We don’t have the scratch to buy a big, cool ISLAND, so that’s where these annual conventions in exotic places (Malta, Secaucus) come in. But I don’t think the PLACE is the key PART anyway.
I think the SHOW is going to flip the script. People used to migrate, hunter-gatherer style. Setup shop, farm, build a culture, then fan out into a diaspora. Example: IRISH. But now, the diaspora comes first. It’s based on this elusive QUALITY of… whatever it is that CONNECTS your people, genetically (GENETIC. ALLY. GET IT?) that supersedes nation states, races, and even RELIGIONS.
The new “Conanation” has 199 languages (French is NOT one of them SORRY), flags, anthems, cultural garb, there’s a super fun cultural holiday almost EVERY DAY except Bastille Day, and just a cornucopia of incredible non-French food.
For the most part, it’s dual citizenship—people remain in their home lands where they plant the seeds of global unity, which depends not one whit on real estate and borders. There’s a whole SPIEL about quantum interconnectedness and ONE LOVE because it’s TRENDY and also backed by TikTok SCIENCE. Above all, we will celebrate the NONSENSE that binds us.
The working country name is Conan’s Ark because it implies BIBLICAL impact, rescuing people from the modern day flood of bad vibes (and, soon, ROBOTS). Also works if you pivot to an ANIMAL show.
BONUS: You get to wear your choice of DICTATOR garb ranging from heavily decorated admiralty to minimalist MAO to business suit. Aside: I think it was interesting how CASTRO merged the soldier chic of African dictators with the sparing lines and muted fabrics of fearless Asian leaders. But you’d only be a FIGUREHEAD—EASY!. Sona, or someone CAPABLE like her, would do all the governmenting.
This, I believe, is the LAND that old Moses Kelly (and all his extended kindred spirits) have been trying, unsuccesfully, to reach for EONS.
Epilogue: Think About It
The old AD MAN Leo Burnett had a saying, “When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one but you won’t come up with a handful of mud, either.” Leo was no naturalist. And he obviously never read THIS letter. But I still like the QUOTE.
So I went for it, and maybe got over my skis.
Aside: raised by a single mom in a tiny apartment in San Francisco, I never skied and didn’t glimpse snow until age 20. So when I use the ski IDIOM, ignore it.
I do truly believe it’s not too soon to think about the ARC of the show and that there may be a metaphoric ARK in the arc. I just feel like the show is UNIVERSE-BENDING BIG.
In closing, while I did not bore you with my bonafides earlier (there were so many other things to bore you with first), know that my letters generally DO alter the universe. For instance:
Remember the Chili’s logo where the H and L were connected by a descending loop that made their name appear to be “CHIJI’S”? One guess who got that FIXED.
Remember how Don Trump used to own the Miss Universe pageant? Was it an accident that he divested when he realized there was not one lovely lady repping any other galaxy or non-human species?
Has the odor of dry eras white board markers offended you lately?
Does George W. Bush, free world leader and keeper of The Button, still pronounce nuclear “nukular”?
Okay, that last effort failed, but all the other stuff WORKED.
Anyway, think about it.
Phineas Bling (wink)
2055 Lombard St, San Francisco, CA 94123
PS: I was kidding about ALL the French stuff. God bless ‘em and the Rousseau they rode in on.
