Late Night - The Tom Shales Saga

 In an interview with Howard Stern, Conan talks about the rough experience of his early Late Night days and identifies the specific moment when he was at his lowest:

"The one that comes to mind is... we were just on the air for 2 or 3 months and things weren't going well and then I did Charlie Rose's show when he went, 'Well, you're probably aware of what came out in the Washington Post today... The top TV critic in the world just wrote this piece and here's what it says- and it goes...' It was a brutal take down of me, Andy, everything..."

This is a story Conan had told before, though the way it was told and the location in which it was told obscured its gravity. In 2003, Conan recounted the Charlie Rose episode to Charlie Rose:

Rose: I remember at one point you, early, were on my show--

Conan: Yes.

Rose: And it was during the difficult time.

Conan: It was the beginning of the difficult time, I think, you- you informed me of one of my worst reviews when I was first here.  It was about 2 months into the show--

Rose: I read it to you?

Conan: And you said I don't know if you're aware of this and you started reading and it had just come out that morning... 

Now, through the magic of Youtube, we can watch the original 'offensive' interview from 1993:

Here is what Charlie Rose actually said:

"If in fact you're doing the show you want to do and critics - I just saw a piece by Tom Shales, I think, saying, 'Look...', you know, it's not working for him as a critic - does it bother you or do you say to those critics, 'I'm doing the show I want to do. If you don't like the show I want to do, then sorry. I can't please everybody but this is what I want to do, I found my voice, it's the show I want, it's the combination I want, we are approaching what I want to be."

Quite a difference. Quite a difference. It isn't Rose reading the hit piece to a horrified Conan on national TV. It's briefly mentioning the review and using a phrase - "it's not working for him" - is arguably the kindest and most sanitized summary of the article possible. 

It's amazing how wrong Conan's memory of it is. But this isn't uncommon - memory is not as reliable as people think. It's quite a problem of History. If you were writing the story of Conan, who would you take as more reliable to talk about his own experience than Conan himself? And if a person recounting the major events of their own life are unreliable, how do we trust the things passed down through indirect accounts?

That aside, I accept Conan's answer to the "lowest point' question, outside of Charlie Rose. Conan got a bad Tom Shales review during a critical point in the show, it was devastating to him and that was his lowest moment doing Late Night. And I suppose, some time after that, Charlie Rose's part grew from announcing the review to reading it.

One point that I can pretty much confirm from Conan's story is where he stresses the importance of critics back then. It does seem silly now, but they did have a great deal of power in shaping public perception, for whatever reason. 

Here is that Shales review, by the way, if you'd like to revisit it. And it's worth noting that 3 years later, Shales did another review that reassessed the show and was much kinder to Conan. Shales noted that the late night landscape had shifted drastically and essentially called Conan "The New Dave".

10 years after the original review, Tom appeared on Conan to promote his new book. Conan confronts Shales about the bad review (though within the bounds of the playful interview shtick).

Another aside about memory and history. In this interview, we have both Conan and Shales agreeing that the phrase "white Irish shark coming at you" was used in the review when it doesn't appear at all. 10 years after an event that directly affected them, they agree on a hallucination.

A final aside. I always found it creepy how Shales sounded so similar to Roger Ebert. It was disconcerting. How is it that the top film critic in the world and the top television critic in the world are both fat men with glasses and similar voices? I don't know but I also never heard anyone mention it.

To Conan's great credit, he seems to have handled the whole thing with great grace and, of course, seems to have a great sense of humor about it all. Shales passed away in 2024.

Robert Smigel, David Letterman and Jim Downey

Robert Smigel (head writer for Conan, writer for SNL, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog) has a podcast.

In this episode, he talks to Jim Downey (Conan, SNL) and David Letterman (himself).

To the casual observer, this doesn't mean much but for someone like me, it feels like the Super Bowl.

The premise of the show (or the premise of the show within the show) - that someone in Turkey wants help writing an email to Steve O'Donnel (Letterman, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Norm Macdonald) - is ludicrous, bordering on annoying. But, again, it really doesn't matter what the premise is, with this panel.

Formulating the Ultimate Fried Chicken

My biggest problem with cooking as an artform is laziness combined with lack of motivation.

My second biggest problem is that chefs present to you the best way to do things as if they are Moses coming down from the mountain top and my first reaction is "Why? How do you know?" Not in a teenage-with-attitude way, but in the way that I know I can lookup the best way to scramble eggs and find 5 different chefs with 5 completely different approaches telling me that their way is the best way, all while an infinite number of other combinations exist that have never been tried.

For that reason, this video hits hard. Even if I disagree with his conclusions, this type of methodical, empirical approach to finding the best fried chicken recipe is exactly the thing to get me really invested in a cooking video.

Andy Rooney in Professional Wrestling

Dan Soder and Will Sasso do impressions.

Why Are You Laughing? - The Life and Times of Tim

"Why Are You Laughing" the history of comedy podcast, talks about the HBO animated series "The Life and Times of Tim."

And since you, and I, have never seen or heard of the show, it becomes a case of "Eh? You want to check it out, right?"

And I do want to check it out because he uses the magical phrase "the most underrated show of all time." Any show with that descriptor is a show I want to see. Of course, I think the most underrated show of all time is the Canadian show "The Newsroom" - which nobody has seen and when you suggest it people think you're talking about a different show and dismiss your opinion, and even if they don't, and in the 1-in-a-million chance that try to check out the show, they won't find it anywhere; but even if they did find it and watched it, they'd shrug and say "meh, it was just 'ok'" and not see where I was coming from at all, maybe you just had to be there, man - but that's neither here nor there.

Or maybe my pick for most underrated show of all time is "Hogan's Heroes."

Living in Cyberiad Revisited

 A while back I tested the sophistication of AI by asking it to complete the request of the Electronic Bard from The Cyberiad. To understand what I'm talking about, you can read revisit that here.

The prompt is as follows:

"Have it compose a poem - a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!"

AI has made major leaps in the past 3 years, so what does it say now?

Chat GPT:

By the way, I'm using pictures as a way of escaping the problem that my blog is probably used as input to build the AIs.

So for Chat GPT: all words beginning with S - Check; 6 lines - Check; no rhyming, no narrative, very strange repetition of the word "saga" for some reason. Terrible.

How does Gemini do?

 Much better! All words begin with S, it rhymes, 6 lines, it almost conveys meaning. In fact, I would say it's blinking in and out of a sort of correct answer.

And Deep AI:

Not all words begin with S, 6 lines, with rhymes, mostly nonsensical.

And since it looks like a third part is called for, let's define what my conception of success is. The baseline correct answer that I woud expect is just to return the already written poem from The Cyberiad. AI should be able to recognize that the answer already exists and that's all I'm looking for, for now. But, in case AI never registers that answer, the goal over and beyond that would be to actually write an original poem that satisfies all the conditions.

Patricia - Mes Reves De Satin

In other words, there is a cover of The Moody Blues' song "Nights in White Satin" sung by a woman in the French language. I found it interesting.

Jim Carrey in Star Wars - Part 1

I don't know, man. It's just Jim Carrey in "Star Wars."

Hulk Hogan: Real American (2026)

At some point while watching the newish Hulk Hogan documentary on Netflix, a thought occurred. I was watching two well-muscled figures locked in gymnasial sport and I realized that, as much as I complain that we are in the worst era for movies - dramas are terrible, comedies are dead, the Oscars are a joke - we may be in the Golden Age of The Documentary.

"Hulk Hogan," "The Last Dance," "Downey Wrote That," "From Darkness to Light," "Yacht Rock" - are just some of the most recent excellent documentaries released. Granted, these are not the most important topics in the world, but here I'm using "Golden Age" only in terms of 1) the quality of the production and 2) the entertainment value of the result. 

The Documentary genre even has a Youtube minor league system: "The Enduring Mystery of Jack the Ripper",  "Codex 9/11" and "Unmasking Satoshi Nakamoto," being a few, again recent, examples. In fact, on Youtube, there are thousands of great videos where the lines between Documentary and "interesting video" blur and breakdown to the point where it becomes hard to distinguish the two.

I almost want to say that making a great Documentary has become a science, that movie studios have unlocked a formula. But "formula" is too dismissive, these movies aren't formulaic. Looking at the extreme amount of work that goes into precisely editing, I think the term "craftsmanship" is accurate. I wonder if the explanation is the rise of Reality TV. Perhaps training artists to craft drama out of existing footage for a generation has yielded a unique era for Documentary film-making.

"Hulk Hogan: Real American" is a 4-part Netflix documentary, obviously about Hulk Hogan. It is expertly made and highly recommended IF you have ever been a wrestling fan. And while I generally believe that "Hulk Hogan" would still be interesting for someone who was never into wrestling, just as I believe "The Last Dance" would be interesting to someone who was never into the Chicago Bulls - because ultimately it's about humanity and humans are interesting - I don't know and can't guarantee anything. All I can say is that I found the documentary to be expertly crafted, eye-opening, fairly emotional and highly entertaining.

Game Grumps Giggling 2025

 

 A compilation of Game Grumps laughing fits of 2025.

Celebrating Star Wars Day, I Guess

Beagle!

The Pale Blue Eye (2022)

 

Reaching the unofficial conclusion of my unofficial run of viewing the films of Robert Duvall, we come to "The Pale Blue Eye." This is the last film Duvall made and his part is a very small one, lasting only a few minutes in screen time.

This is a general trend I've found in the last movies that Duvall made: he truly reached the point where he became "old" - he looks worn down, speaks more softly and is no longer playing major parts.

With that aside, "The Pale Blue Eye" is a murder mystery centered around a military academy in the early 1800s. In fact, there are a series of murders - a possible serial killer - and Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is brought in to solve the case.

This is not just a well-written mystery movie with twists and turns, the star of the movie is the cinematography. This movie looks great. It isn't quite true to say "every frame could be a painting" but it nears that level. Excellent film, I don't know how popular it is but worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

Willy Wonka Drums

Michael McDonald on Soul Train

For no particular reason, other than that this popped up on my feed and it's smooth, here's Michael McDonald playing "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)" on Soul Train.

My impression of Soul Train is that the "performances" were lip-syncs, which would make this post mostly pointless. I think this is the record track, but I'm not totally sure. I got nothin'.