Clementine Yost News Staff
On Thursday last, former Late Night host Conan O’Brien visited the GMB to accept The University Philosophical Society’s Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage. O’Brien, presented with the award by Provost Patrick Prendergast, received a standing ovation from students who had queued for hours to see him. Conan struck poses with his medal before the cameras, while his famous hair stood a good six inches above his head.
Conan whipped out paper from his back pocket like a cowboy in a quick draw. He thanked the Phil, saying he was ‘overjoyed to be made honorary patron’ and upon receipt of his Phil invite, could finally claim to have ‘made it’.
Conan whipped out paper from his back pocket like a cowboy in a quick draw
Conan remarked that viewing the Facebook pages of Trinity students, filled with ‘lust, depravity, drunkenness…A naked slave auction…Men wearing bras…Women wearing no bras’ felt like he was ‘watching the fall of Rome.’ A forty-nine year old man, he claimed to have downloaded some of the facebook photos he found of students and fold them into his wallet. He followed this remark with a cheeky wag of his finger at attractive female committee members whose photos he allegedly kept. ‘Today’ he said, ‘you’re honoring a pervert.’ With the audience in a fit of laughter, Conan went on to poke fun at Trinity’s obsession with the Book of Kells. He said Trinity is ‘coasting on a thousand year old book…get over it!’
The chat show host related to his audience by appealing to what it means to be Irish. According to Conan, he was ‘genetically engineered to live [in Dublin],’ and that living in Los Angeles makes him feel like a ‘penguin in the Lebanon zoo’. Despite his family leaving Dungarvin, County Waterford around the time of American Civil War, Conan claims he is 100% Irish. In his own words, his family moved to America in 1850 and then ‘proceeded to marry each other’. This has led O’Brien to draw the conclusion that he is ‘dangerously inbred’.
the ’comedic philosophy is not to have one.
Conan thought the Philosophical Society would like to hear about his personal philosophy, so he said, ‘as soon as I get one, I will email it to you…as one easily downloadable pdf.’. He claimed that the ‘comedic philosophy is not to have one.’ and he enjoys people who make him laugh like Peter Sellers, the Marx Brothers, and the cat on YouTube who plays the keyboard.
Relating to the essence of what it feels like being Irish, Conan said ‘like you, I bruise easily and have a tendency to blame others for my problems’. O’Brien offered some words of wisdom to those in attendance, claiming ‘no one looks good in lycra shorts’ and ‘if you go to Disneyland, pretend to be disabled and request a wheelchair. They have to give you one and you skip straight to the front of every line!’
like you, I bruise easily and have a tendency to blame others for my problems
Reflecting on his time as a writer for the The Simpsons, O’Brien said his first day at the dilapidated offices of Fox studios was to be one the strangest days of his life. Conan left his new office to grab a coffee and heard a weird noise. He came in to find the window broken and a large black bird lying on its back, wings open, dead on the floor. The bird had broken the window, broken its neck against the wall and died. A fellow writer walked past him and said ‘bad sign man’ while shaking his head. Conan enjoyed his time at The Simpsons, but after a while he knew if ‘I didn’t get out of there my head was going to explode.’
When asked about strange obsessive fans, Conan said an Irish Catholic priest once threatened to kill him and another man made a 9ft tall Conan O’Brien figure out of 600,000 legos. He lamented that sometimes people read too much into the meaning behind his words. He said he never has a message behind his humor, yet some fans subscribe to a cult of personality around him. Conan claimed, ‘I know what it’s like to be Stalin’ because a crazed fan would probably kill for him if he asked them to, which is why he hasn’t.
An audience member asked Conan how he got his slash and burn comedy style. He said he got this style during his time at the Harvard Lampoon. Conan said he just tries to have fun with his show, having a ‘nervous breakdown…Acting like a cat and dancing.’ Although his life is incredibly fun, Conan told how he misses when nobody knew him. When he was in London a month ago, a place where O’Brien never found the same degree of fame as in the US, the only people who recognized him were American tourists and he said he felt free. Yet, he wouldn’t trade his life for the world. He got his job on the Late Show, as he put it, ‘on a lark’. He went to the audition knowing he had no chance, so the pressure was off and he put in a stellar performance. For the following year and a half, he received nothing but horribly negative feedback from Americans. The Canadians kept him afloat.
In one of the final questions from the floor a girl asked, ‘If you could define your career in one word, what would it be?’ To this, Conan O’Brien replied, ‘Unexpected.’
