Last night was the official kick-off party for RAGE in Chinatown.  While this event was obviously to promote the launch of a video game, it was really just the most recent LA event to see and be seen.

The event took place at Chinatown’s Historical Central Plaza, which was hosted by Charlize Theron, featured music by the creme de la creme of LA DJs, DJ Mom Jeans and DJ Bizzy, plus a special performance by the one and only Black Keys.  Of course the Black Keys were the big draw, as they consistently put on a great show, but what elevated this event even more was the involvement of LA nightlife guru, Brent Bolthouse.

There were approximately 3000 people on the special list to the event, but only a fraction were actually able to get in after waiting in an enormous line to check in with the Bolthouse crew.  Once inside, there were waiters and waitresses walking around handing out gratis cocktails and food, as well as numerous bars to hop between and skirt a line for the free booze.  In addition, the shops that lined the streets were still open, so the drunken hipsters could get some shopping done (parasols were plentiful).

The crowd consisted of fashion-forward young LA scenesters and celebrities.  The many public figures in attendance included Charlize Theron as host, Victoria’s Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio, Seth Green, Michelle Rodriguez, Dane Cook, Rumer Willis (spawn of Bruce and Demi), reality TV personality Whitney Port, True Blood hottie Joe Manganiello, CSI’s Gary Dourdan, Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, How to Make it in America’s Bryan Greenberg, and Snoop Dogg.  And these are only some of the ones I personally saw- there were many more famous people roaming around the crowded plaza.  While the celebrities were a great PR and marketing ploy for RAGE, the other attendees didn’t seem to notice nor care–as the jaded Angelenos rarely do–about the celebrities who were making appearances at the event.  It was like a fashion show where the clothes were of more interest than the people wearing them.

All in all, disregarding the glitz and glamor of the event, the RAGE party was a good time to dance, drink, and hang out with the beautiful people in LA, AKA your friends–if you’re lucky.

-SO

Do you ever get sick of hearing the same old music at a bar and not being able to do anything about it (you know how DJs don’t like you going up to them and requesting songs)?  Now with RoqBot, you have the music in your hands, without the expense of purchasing a turntable.

Here’s how it works: Download RoqBot to your smartphone.  When you get to a participating bar, check in through Foursquare.  After that, you can look through an extensive music catalogue and pick a song (or 10) that you want to hear.  And unlike a jukebox which plays songs in the order they were purchased, you can help move your songs up the queue by gaining credits through giving your e-mail address, buying drinks, and getting your friends to vote for it.  Even if you don’t end up adding a song to the line-up, by simply scrolling through the app you gain access to drink specials exclusive to RoqBot patrons.

This social jukebox was launched in beta earlier this year.  Out of over 500 startups at SXSW, Roqbot won Best Music Tech Company.  If you want to see the app in action and get involved in the next-big-thing (so you can brag about knowing about it before it was so “mainstream”), head to RoqBot’s LA launch party this Wednesday at 901 Bar & Grill (the 9-0 for you USCers) from 8PM to midnight.  Here you’ll indulge in great music, drink specials from Red Bull, prizes to the top DJS, and free credits.

See you at the 9-0 with your dancing shoes — and smartphone.

-SO

If Sunset Junction does go on as planned, there will be great vendors (food/clothing/accessories/drinks/you-name-it), as well as great live music at the Silver Lake festival.

Feel like listening to a little soul?  Hit the Hoover Stage on Saturday to catch Big D, which is a tribute band to Little Richard at 1 PM, and the Ladies of Motown review at 6:30 PM.  Take a break from shopping and eating to support an up-and-coming act as the Battle of the Bands winner takes the El Cid Stage at 2:40 PM.  Then there are the popular Cary Brothers at the Hyperion Stage at 9 PM.  And you can’t forget about the Butthole Surfers at 9:15 PM at the Bates Stage – I mean, who doesn’t like their hit, Pepper (and the video featuring “Ponch” aka Erik Estrada)?

Then Sunday you can look forward to numerous acts like Ozomatli at 6:30 PM on the Hoover Stage and, fresh off a tour with Los Angelino songstress, Christina Perri, Honehoney at the Hyperion Stage at 6:30 PM.  Clap Your Hands Say Yeah hits the Bates Stage at 8:30 PM and five minutes later Peaches works her DJ magic at the Sanborn Stage.  Or if you’re more into listening to some pop, there is always Rooney at 6:30 PM and Hanson at 8 PM, both at the Edgecliffe Stage.  (And for those of you are picturing Hanson from the “MMMbop” days, you clearly didn’t catch them frequenting many LA clubs last year, at times putting on performances there.)

For the full line-up and set times, as well as other info, head over to www.sunsetjunction.org.

-SO

SUNSET JUNCTION IS CANCELLED.  From the festival’s twitter feed: “Seriously, we tried our best on raising the huge amount of money- thanks for all the support.. unfortunately we didn’t meet the expectations”.  City Councilman Eric Garcetti spokesman Yusef Robb: “The fact that they came up with a large sum — not the full amount, but a large sum nonetheless — in just 36 hours, shreds their credibility even more. They should have spent the last 12 months coming up with the full amount.”  Sunset Junction’s executive director, Michael McKinley, had his lawyer, Phil Tate, represent him at the meeting.  Tate implored the city to not cancel the event, saying that if they did, it would be unlikely for the city to ever get its money back as the ruling would most likely mean the end of the organization.  While the event is cancelled, I’m fairly certain we will be hearing more from both sides in the weeks, if not months, to come.

UPDATE 8/24 11:30 AM: While Sunset Junction contends that they have raised the $141,000 the city requested, they do not have it with them at the hearing.  They have asked for the board to give them until tomorrow to deliver the money, but Public Works Commissioner Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza wants to deny this request.  More to come.

UPDATE 8/24 10 AM: Yesterday, the Sunset Junction Neighborhood Alliance raised the $141,000 the city asked for in order to grant the permits for this weekend’s event.  Most of this money raised did not come from Los Angeles residents (as I stated below, asking people to donate and pay for a ticket seemed like a stretch), but rather concert promotions company, Live Nation. 

Although the Sunset Junction festival began as a neighborhood function, over the years it has greatly expanded, making Live Nation’s donation not a huge surprise.  Even though we may like to think of Sunset Junction as a Silver Lake sort of block party, the event hasn’t been that way in much time.  Of course we don’t know if Live Nation will be involved in future Sunset Junction festivals, I think they most likely will be.  This large corporation’s involvement could further change the festival in the upcoming years, making it more like Sunset Strip Music Festival, which is much more sponsored and not focused on local businesses (aside from the concert venues). 

We are still waiting to see if the Los Angeles Board of Public Works now give the festival the necessary permits to take place.  Stay tuned…

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After a great month of music festivals like Outside Lands in San Francisco and the Sunset Strip Music Festival right here in LA, music junkies were looking forward to another good time right in their backyard.  The 31^st annual Sunset Junction music festival and street fair was planned to take place this upcoming weekend, Saturday, August 27 and Sunday, August 27, but the year’s incarnation is in jeopardy.  Representatives of the city of Los Angeles have stated that the street fair owes the city nearly $400,000 from the past two years.

In a 3-1 vote, the Los Angeles Board of Public Works decided not to grant the Sunset Junction Neighborhood Alliance operating permits for Sunset Junction.   If founder of the music festival and street fair, Michael McKinley, is able to raise the $141,978.57 owed from last year’s event, the board members will consider granting the necessary permits.  Although the number is in contention (and seems to be changing minute-by-minute), McKinley doesn’t deny that the bills from 2010 and 2011 have yet to be paid.

This isn’t the first time the festival has been in a precarious situation.  In 2008, businesses in the Silver Lake area were so against the festival from taking place that a city councilman’s office was involved in the negotiations between them and the festival organizers.   Neighborhood businesses are concerned with the festival’s growth in size and as well as charging for the once free event.  When first conceived, the Sunset Junction festival was a community event, but has no turned into a great commercial production – sound familiar?

On the other hand, local residents and artists have been fighting hard for the festival to happen.  In addition, a portion of the proceeds of the event are donated to outreach programs that help neighborhood at-risk-youth, and advocates contend that if the festival doesn’t occur, these programs will be negatively affected.

The Sunset Junction Neighborhood Alliance is now asking for the public’s donations to help the event to go forward as planned (although I do find it a bit funny that I have to donate to an event I then have to pay to attend).  If you want to help bail out Sunset Junction, you can go to donate here.  After all, whatever my qualms with donating, the festival promotes my neighborhood’s love for the arts and its charitable work.

We will find out the festival’s fate on Wednesday at 9:30 AM at the public hearing and will update you here.  Sunset Junction’s website has said that they are well on their way to raising enough money, so cross your fingers.  Otherwise it’s just back to day-drinking at pool parties instead of at the festival – location, location, location.

-SO

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SO: How and when did Dead Country form?

NL: I was living in Europe a few years ago and started writing songs that eventually became Dead Country songs.  I met up with a couple friends in LA and we started practicing and writing together.  A few of us have known each other for years.  We’re like four husbands in a polygamous relationship, minus the gay sex. Twisted Sister Wives, if you will.

SO: Does everyone contribute to writing and arranging the songs or does one person do that?

NL: I usually hang out in Guitar Center and listen to people’s riffs they play while trying guitars out.  Then I go home and piece them together and call it art.

SO: Who are your musical influences?

NL: Rodney Dangerfield put out rap album some years back called, “Rappin Rodney.”  That’s hands down my biggest musical influence.
SO: What made you know that you wanted to be a musician?

NL: I got a guitar for my eighth birthday from my dad.  Shortly after, I found his old records.  Hendrix blew my mind.  Guitar was more fun than anything else I had access to (I couldn’t reach the liquor cabinet yet).  I also found my dad’s R. Crumb comic collection, which blew my mind in a different way.  An eight-year-old boy’s mind is no place for the perverse antics of Fritz The Cat.

SO: What was your experience recording your first EP vs. your newer EP?

NL: We recorded both EP’s at this amazing studio in LA Calle 606.  It’s the Foo Fighters’ studio (watch your toes, folks – I just dropped something) so there is a warehouse full of incredible gear.  It’s amazing in there.  We worked with producer John Lousteau each time, so both experiences were pretty similar.

SO: How was it having your band played on KROQ?

NL: Having our song added to KROQ’s playlist was awesome and definitely helped us as a band.  Hearing “Euro Thrash” on the radio for the first time was insane.  I had just woken up and turned on my clock radio and there it was.  Pretty surreal and super fun.  I was in my underwear.

SO: What can fans expect from you in the future?

NL: We have a bunch of new songs that we’re eager to get out there.  We hope to record our first full length this fall.

—

If you missed Dead Country’s most recent tour with Alkaline Trio, you can check them out this weekend at the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, where on Friday they will be playing with Jimmy Eat World.

For more Dead country, buy their music on iTunes, and check out their website, Facebook fan page, and Twitter.

-SO

Enter: The Drunken Chef

Who is this man, you may wonder?  The Drunken Chef, a.k.a. Dick Booze (and admittedly, a friend of Smogger) is LA’s newest import straight from España (where his past videos all take place, hence the random Spanish in the background).

His videos combine everyone’s two favorite things: drinking and cooking – and are full of quick, tasty, and relatively easy to recreate tutorials that yes, all involve both cooking with and consuming alcohol.   It’s a great way not only to find some new recipes, but also a drinking buddy.

So grab a drink, a pan, and some oven mits and check his sh*t out on both YouTube and The Drunken Chef Blog.

-RW

Currently touring the US – the band will be hitting LA’s Ukranian Center (you may remember the venuce from Arcade Fire’s secret show a few months back) with another personal fave, Cold Cave.

For more info on the band head on over to their website austramusic.com.

-RW

If you’re like me, you love wearing a hoodie with a leather jacket.  But do the sleeves of the hoodie ever ride up and get too bulky?

I know I may sound like an infomercial, but I promise I’m not trying to sell you anything useless (like the fake tank top called Cami Secret).  Well Gavin Tatum has the solution for you: the Schoodie.

In November 2010, creator Tatum came up with the idea for the Schoodie (pronounced skoo-d-ee) and made his very first prototype the very next day.  He spent the next six months perfecting his creation: a hybrid scarf-hoodie with a fleece hood and attached to a knit scarf.  Basically, you get the best part of the hoodie without any of the bulk of a sweater or vest.

While this is Tatum’s first foray into fashion, he is no stranger to running a business.  Since he was 18-years-old he has been his own boss and has been quite successful in the worlds of real estate and web development.  But now Tatum has found is true passion.  “I think I am equally left- and right brained; therefore, I love being creative with art and design, but also like business and finance, so pushing such a fun and new product like the Schoodie…is right up my alley.”

Recently, Schoodie helped sponsor a nighttime poolside party held at the W Hotel Hollywood, hosted by friend of Smogger, Keith Wilson (second from the left in the above photo).  The Schoodie crew handed out some free samples and people put them on immediately.  Oh, I can’t count the number of times I got a swag-bag and looked inside and either hated what I found or had no clue what it was.  Even after all of the samples were long gone, people kept asking for more and where they could buy them.

If you want to get a Schoodie for yourself, you can go to the Schoodie website and order one.  They currently come in two styles and three colors, but you can customize them yourself with various colors and screen prints to put your own unique spin on the look.  How I wish I had a purple one of these during my Northwestern days while I watched our football team (lose).  Look out for the Schoodie in a store near you as well: they will soon be sold by multiple retailers in the top fifteen cities in the U.S.

-SO

Well, here are four reasons you should fight the traffic:

Eat Real Festival: This foodie festival will take place on Saturday, July 16 from 10:30 AM to 9 PM and on Sunday, July 17 from 10:30 AM until 5 PM.  This event will showcase music, films, workshops, and demonstrations all at no cost to you.  What will cost you is the food and beer, but all the food will be less than $5, still making this event quite affordable.  But if you’re just hearing about Eat Real Fest for the first time, you did miss out on one great deal: Thrillist Rewards was selling endless Belcampo Meat’s Wagyu beef hotdogs and unlimited craft beer, as well as a tour of the festival, for merely $29 per day.  Even if you missed the deal, you should go and head over to the Helms Bakery District in Culver City for a lot of good food, drink, and entertainment.

LA Street Food Fest: On Saturday, you can choose between two sessions, the first from 2 PM to 5 PM and the second 6 PM to 9 PM (with the latter being 21+), and attend this festival’s second year.  This year the festival will take place in the Rose Bowl’s Brookside Park in Pasadena.  The tasting event itself costs $60, but with that you get all you can eat from more than 65 street food vendors and drink (including alcohol), as well as photo booth portraits, entertainment, and even your parking is included in the ticket price.

The Saban Free Clinic’s Extravaganza for the Senses: If you feel like spending a little of the cash you saved from quitting your gym and doing Runyon instead, head to this foodie fest at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood.  If you missed the early registration tickets, this Saturday night event will cost you $100 for general admission tickets and $225 for VIP tickets.  A general admission ticket to this high-class tasting function will include unlimited samples from 40 of LA’s top restaurants, drinks, chances to win prizes, and complimentary massages from Burke Williams from 7-10 PM.  The VIP tickets will include everything you get with general admission, but you also get in an hour early at 6 PM, valet parking, and acces to the VIP Lounge which houses more food and drinks.  If this price seems a little steep to you, think about where the money is going to: The Saban Free Clinic gives free medical, dental and other services to the homeless, uninsured, and poor.  Warm your heart while filling your stomach.

Munchathon Gourmet Food Truck Festival: if you feel like leaving LA altogether, head down to Orange Country on Saturday for this original event.  To get ready for eating your weight in food, first you will run through a 5K food-themed obstacle course.  Then you get to reward yourself with food trucks, drinks, and entertainment.  If just watching others exert themselves is enough for you to work up an appetite, you can purchase tickets to the food festival itself and not run.  Tickets cost $12 for general admission and $22 for early admission.  If you do choose to run, it will cost you $55, which includes entry to the food festival (you also get a bib and t-shirt).  If you put together a team of up to 4 people, it will cost you $220.

If you’re still worried about the Carpocalypse, take public transportation to get to these events.  Or be green and bike it; after all, you’ll need the exercise after these gluttonous affairs.

-SO

The documentary, which follows O’Brien during his time of limbo, after The Tonight Show and before his TBS program when he is not permitted to appear in television of on the Internet due to his settlement with NBC.  The film shows O’Brien’s preparations for his traveling stage show.  He is surprisingly honest and candid about his feelings leaving his dream job and uncertainty about the future.

But I’ll get more into the film later.  Here are some parts of Conan’s forty-minute talk with the crowd.

Conan started off by acknowledging the film’s director, his assistant, his show’s executive producer Jeff Ross, and his wife Liza.  Concerning his large support system, he stated that the “movie should be called Conan O’Brien is very well taken care of.”

The questions started off pretty bad.  A man said that he asked the reddit community what he should ask O’Brien, and he followed with this question: “Do the drapes match the carpet?”  Not only was the phrasing incorrect (should have been does the carpet match the drapes), it was a fairly stupid question.  When you have the opportunity to ask Conan O’Brien any question, that is really the one you choose?  But Conan laughed it off saying that the “question really sucked” and moved on.

Conan said that he was in a “heightened state” during the filming of the movie.  He said that he chose Flender to direct because Conan knew that he would make an “honest portrayal” of this state.  Conan admitted that he was in a very “different place” then.  “At the time I was very confused and probably angry about some things and the tour was fueled a lot by my survival instinct and by a lot of the things I was going through and so to Rodman’s credit he captured that, I think, very well.

“A big part of this movie is showing people that it’s not always a comfortable process, and let them see it.  I know who I am, and essentially, for the most part, like who I am, but I also know that when you’re in a writing room, when you’re under a lot of pressure, and you have to go out in front of a couple hundred thousand people a night and Bonnaroo, where you have to put together a show in 4 weeks that you’ve already sold out across the country and you don’t know what it is yet, you’re operating up here and it’s not always pretty.  And I thought let’s show people the sausage factory and let them see how this all happened and sometimes it’s disgusting, but let them see.”

On if he could do another tour: “I don’t even know if I could do that right now, I mean there’s sometimes where I look at myself playing the guitar and I think ‘I don’t even know those chords’…I was fueled by something else.  I’m not sure I’m in the same place anymore and thank God.”

“I would like to do that again, so I’ll have to figure out a way, to do it in a more controlled… This is a snapshot of a moment… I really believe if nothing else what I went through had very little to do with me, it had more to do with how our culture’s changing.  There’s this certain way that broadcast television has been done for about fifty years and things are changing, and I really do feel that I was standing on a fault line, and the earth cracked right between my legs, and instead of jumping back that way I jumped this way, for better or worse.  And I believe that this film is really about a moment.  And so I don’t know if I could replicate the energy and the excitement of that tour.. I just need to get in a big spat with TBS.”

On his performing style: “I come from these people who are very nice and dysfunctional in their own way and we lived in this kooky part of Brookline, Mass and I didn’t know anybody in show business…. When I was a kid, the only view you could get on TV was old movies on UHF stations, on channel 56 and channel 38, and they only showed old movies: Yankee Doodle Dandy with Jimmy Cagney, they would show old movies where everybody broke into a dance at some point.  And as a little kid, I thought I know that I really need to be in show business, and clearly what you need to do is to be able to tap dance.  Well Kim Kardashian has proven that this is not the case.  Show business has changed fifty times since then.  But I, in the early ‘70s in Boston, thought I need to know how to dance and so I told my parents, ‘I’m going to be in show business someday, I need to know how to tap-dance.’  And they, to their credit, went out and found a Vaudevillian, this African-American gentleman named Stanley Brown, who was great, and he was the protégé of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.  And I used to go right near Emerson Music School, and I was like, 9-years-old, bright copper hair, bowl cut, with two dead-front teeth, and I would march up there in my tap shoes.  I was the only white kid there, and he would teach me tap dancing moves.

“I’ve always had a very archaic vision of show business, meaning I wanted to be, and what this movie’s all about, is this is my chance through what many people would say was a misfortune, this was my chance to do what I’ve always wanted to do which is go back to Vaudeville.  Vaudeville doesn’t exist anymore, but this was Vaudeville, this was going fear-to-fear and doing an old-time show, a variety show, and getting out there and giving the crowd not 80% what they thought they were going to get but trying to give them 180% of what they thought they were going to get.  And so that was my real dream.”

Passionate or relentless?: “I like things to be perfect and they aren’t, inherently they’re not.  And I keep trying and trying and trying and trying and they’re not.”

On his musical passion: “I love rockabilly music.  That’s the music that spoke to me, I don’t know why.  And again, like a lot of people in this room, I don’t know why these things speak to you.  I wanted to tap dance when I was eight, thought that was important, and then when I was nineteen, I wanted to be Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis Presley or anyone who was cutting at Sun Records, and I don’t know why because that was the era of Flock of Seagulls and ‘99 luftballoons,’ so I don’t know why I wasn’t drawn that way but I went the other way.  You get these strange inspirations and you just go with them.

“I get a lot of pleasure out of music.  But I’m very clear about one thing: I know the difference between what I do and what real musicians do.  The band I play with, I mean they are real, hardcore musicians and they deserve a shout-out.  What that band basically does is create a rocket, and I sit on the very nosecone and get all the benefit of what they are doing.  But I don’t even consider myself a musician.  I pay the guitar the way that someone would play a kazoo.  A lot of my joy and energy comes through, but I’m not technically very skilled.  It’s just that I know what I like and I do what I do, and at some point I realized, ‘Oh, I’m a performer that just…’ when I was… I came out to LA when I was twenty-two, and a stand-up comedian friend of mine used a guitar in his act and he left town at one point.  And I played the drums in college—badly—and the stand-up comedian left his six-string guitar with me and he said, ‘Can you take care of it?  I’m going to leave town for a bit.’  And so I picked it up and plucked it for a little while and I thought, ‘Maybe I can learn how to do this a little bit.’  And then when he came back and took his guitar back, I said, you know what, I’m going to do it.  So I went to a place called Freedom Guitar, which was on Sunset, and I paid ninety dollars for a Yamaha, all beat-up.  It’s basically a pawnshop.  And I bought this guitar, and I bought the ‘Mel Bay Chord Book,’ and I taught myself.  I used to sit in my apartment on Cochran—and this is a lesson to you guys—you can accomplish amazing things when you don’t have a girlfriend and you can’t get a date.  No one would talk to me.  I was very thin, and I had no money, and I was a little skin-challenged, and I used to work at my job and then come home to my $380 apartment and take out the ‘Mel Bay Chord Book’ and play.  And I just practiced over and over and over again.  I don’t even know where that was coming from.  There was a lot of watching Saved By The Bell in my gym shorts.”

On if he will be playing the guitar in TBS: “The thing is, if there’s a real reason to do it, yes, but it’s a delicate balance because you don’t’ want to be the comedian who is like, ‘check me out.’  And I’m very careful about that.  You know, it can go to cheesy so fast as a performer, where you’re there and I’m the host and everything, and then you’re like, ‘hey everybody, let’s take a little break…’  So I’m very careful about it.  I do love it, but I think this was a great arena for it, and you know when you’re doing one of these shows, to interrupt Harrison Ford to say, ‘that’s great, that was amazing, but let me strap on this telecaster and rock out.’  There’s got to be good context for it.”

On how he met Jack White a few years before their SNL performance:  “My relationship with Jack White is really strange because we… The first time that I had thought that I had met him, was I was doing the Late Night show and he was on Saturday Night Live when the White Stripes first hit it, and I went upstairs just because I like their stuff, and I learned to watch from the background, and he saw me from across the room, stopped playing, and he and Meg came over and said, ‘It’s so nice to see you again.’  And I didn’t know what he was talking about.  And he said, ‘Don’t you remember you were in Detroit a couple years ago shooting a remote and when your remote was done you came to a bowling alley in Downtown Detroit and you bowled, and we were there, and everyone came over and you hung out with us.’  And they were just kids, and I hung out with them for a long time, and we all did it.  And so we all hung out for a long time.  And they said, ‘Oh yeah, you just hung out and talked about music and comedy and stuff, and you were really cool.’  And I thought, ‘That’s nice.’  I completely forgot about that and then they went to become such icons…

“A big part of this movie is showing people that it’s not always a comfortable process, and let them see it.  I know who I am, and essentially, for the most part, like who I am, but I also know that when you’re in a writing room, when you’re under a lot of pressure, and you have to go out in front of a couple hundred thousand people a night and Bonnaroo, where you have to put together a show in 4 weeks that you’ve already sold out across the country and you don’t know what it is yet, you’re operating up here and it’s now always pretty.  And it thought let’s show people the sausage factory and let them see how this all happened and sometimes it’s disgusting, but let them see.

On why he wore the outfit from Eddie Murphy Raw instead of Eddie Murphy Delirious on tour: “There were two Eddie Murphy stand-up movies: in one he’s wearing a bright red leather skin-tight outfit, and the second one I believe he’s wearing the blue paisley [one].  So this is just how show business works and I’ll tell you very honestly how it works which is I thought, when I had the idea for doing that bit, I was imagining the red outfit.  The person watched the other movie, showed up and made the paisley outfit.  And we paid for it.  That’s how show business works.”

On what he thought about himself when he saw the movie: “I’m aware that I have a nervous leg, but I was shocked, it’s like a hummingbird all the time, and that’s probably why I can’t gain weight.  I think I burn 1200 calories in an hour.  And I’m constantly moving and constantly talking, and I watched this movie and I thought, ‘just shut up; shut up and have a nap.’  I think that shocked me a little bit.  We all, when we look at ourselves, see different things, and I just saw, this should be in a private screening for my therapist and a team of psycho-pharmacologists.  They need to watch this and then I need to be put into a deep sleep for about eleven years.”

What he would like to be remembered for: “Strong cheekbones, an exciting shock of hair, no shame.  I would risk being honest for a second, which I never like to do, but I would say, whatever I had, I did the best with it, and I tried to be nice to people.

“I’m really not trying to preach, it’s just something that has been a little bit of a theme with me, and I think that’s something… and my favorite thing in this business is that they took everything else away from me, my favorite thing is when young people come up to me, wherever I am, and say, ‘You did something in 1995, 1999, 2001, or 2008, I saw you do this thing and it really made me laugh. Thank you.’  That, if I’m penniless, homeless, naked, hiding in a bush—which actually sounds erotic—that means everything to me.  And I think that’s a good motivation.  I think we live in a culture where people are really obsessed with getting stuff and having stuff and I really do sincerely think that affecting people in some way and making them feel good is everything.  I would rather have that than anything else in the world.”

On being grateful: “It means a lot to me that you’re here tonight and that you’re seeing this, and that you care enough to come see it.  And I know there are far greater, infinitely greater things in the world than anything I’ve ever gone through and I’m a very lucky person, which is what I’ve tried to maintain throughout this whole thing.  I hit the lottery a long time ago, so this was just a chance to show people a moment and be honest about it.  And the fact that everyone’s here really does mean a lot to me.  And that I have fans at all means a great deal to me, so thank you very much.”

Now back to the movie itself.  Conan admittedly is kind of a dick to people around him, but he is amazing towards his fans.  He is jokingly cruel to his writers due to the amount of stress he is under, but during these times, O’Brien is at his best.  He is quick-witted and creative.  Although I did not see his show in person and have only seen the clips from the documentary, I wasn’t exactly rolling in the aisles laughing at his staged performance, but instead cackled rather loudly during the backstage scenes.  Perhaps his show didn’t translate well to the screen.  Or maybe I am a sucker for dry humor and sarcasm.  Either way, what was certainly made clear from the film, if nothing else, Conan is good to his legions of fans.

In the film, O’Brien greeted his fans with a smile, no matter how exhausted he was or how hoarse his voice was getting.  This is not to say he didn’t complain.  During his tour, he kept saying how exhausted he was and how he felt like he couldn’t do another meet-and-greet, but soon after we see him shaking hands and taking pictures.  His aim in all of this is definitely to please his fans and make them laugh, so that is why he does what he does.  Even when we see the exhaustion pouring from his pale face while doing the string dance or letting someone touch his hair, he’s still out there making the rounds with his fans, who never knew what a love/hate relationship he has with them.  Hell, even after the screening multiple people asked to hug Conan, stroke his hair, one even asked him to call his girlfriend for him!  I found it kind of odd that they asked, seeing how much it sometimes pained him to continually perform for his fans, on and off the stage.  But then again, all he wants is to entertain people and do the best with what he has.

In the end, the film is not perfect.  It sometimes drags on, with clips from O’Brien’s tour taking up too much footage.  But his witticisms and candor make up for what the rest of the movie lacks.  One bright point in the film is when a fan who drove many miles to see Conan’s tour, forgot his ID so could got get in.  O’Brien helps him, despite the fact that the teen said that he didn’t want to get “Jewed out” of seeing the show.  Conan says he will only help the fan if the latter promises to never use that term again.  And that really exemplifies Conan’s spirit: he seems to want to serve his fans, and maybe make a little difference along the way.

Instead of Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, the documentary should be called Conan O’Brien Refuses to Stop.

-SO