My Year of Conan (Or: Once Shy of Thrice Involved in Big Moments)

I don't often talk about the big ol' car wreck that Other Spencer, Grant, and I got in, mostly because I'm pretty guarded about stuff and don't wanna seem like I'm mining for sympathy (unless you're a hot girl, in which case I'm absolutely going to do that*).

But holy shit, you should have seen my jeans. For some reason, when hospitals cut clothes off of you, thereby ruining them, they feel the need to give them back to you for god knows what reason, I presume just to show you that they ruined your favorite Ghostbusters costume t-shirt that you bought on a whim at Target. But looking at my jeans was pretty nuts. To spare you the gory details, let's just say there was a whole lot of blood and probably some bone chips and muscle tissue everywhere. Wait, I guess that is the gory details, and mostly inaccurate. There was just a lotta blood where my knee would be.

So it seemed strange that while they cut everything else off my body, the wristband advertising that I went to "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" the night before the car accident persisting on my wrist seemed kind of strange at the time. They cut everything else off, so why not that, you know?

It ended up being a bit of a godsend, as it provided great conversation material for the workers at the hospital and me. You guys know me as a pretty awkward dude when talking to new people, but in a hospital with a backless gown, Conan wristband, and tons of morphine, I'm a pretty affable dude. I must have channeled Conan's ability to talk to new people with the mystical powers of the wristband. Of course, I wasn't as eloquent, because, you know, morphine.

"Who was on the show?"

"Uhhhh, some dude from "Glee," that guy in the movie Rocket Man who was really funny but if I said his name you wouldn't know him, and The Pixies"

"Ah, how was it?"

"Andy rode his podium!"

"What?"

I then talked like a giddy child about the show (or made fun of myself, as I'm wont to do) until they were finished prodding my veins or putting saline solution into my IV, which was close to becoming infected, but I didn't say shit because I knew removing would mean they'd have to put one in while I was conscious, and screw that. The point was, the hospital staff liked me, and that was partially because of my enthusiasm for Conan, and, you know, I'm not a dick. That goes a long way in the face of adversity.

I kept the wristband on for a while after that. It was still a good conversation topic.

"Oh my God, what happened?"

"I broke my knee in a car accident"

"...Hey, you saw Conan?"

"Andy rode his podium!"

At the time, we didn't know we were breathing rarefied air on the "Tonight Show" set, but within a month or two of the accident, Conan's run was already ending, quite unfairly, if I may editorialize.

Incidentally, his last show coincided with the eve of my 21st birthday. My roommate Zach and I had the crew for the student film we were working on over at out place, and we stopped the broadcast so that the crew, despite my vehement protests to make this night about drinking and making Christmas decorations for the movie, not my birthday, could present me with cake and a shot, because, you know, it was legal now (and cake is delicious). They couldn't help it, they're nice people who ignore my modesty. One of them even made a cup holder for my crutch, which was a) very useful and b) yet another great conversation topic.

We resumed the broadcast, which we were surprisingly all much more invested in than I expected. I knew Zach and I cared, but a whole group of people all caring about Conan's premature exit was surprising to me. Then, Conan made it all make sense with his final address.

Now, a little drunk and in the midst of a very big moment of my life (the last cool birthday I'd ever have in terms of new rights and privileges), it took everything in my being to not get misty-eyed over Conan's optimistic and good-hearted speech about cynicism and being nice, working hard, and having good things happen. As a film student, it's very easy to become a cynic, mean, and spiteful of hard work, so hearing a successful man say these things on the eve of my full submersion into adulthood was comforting.

Just like it was comforting to have that wristband on to defer prolonged conversation on a real drag of a subject, that being a broken lower right half.

It's also nice to know that Conan has bounced back so quickly, as I like to think I have as well.

And it's really nice to think about Conan as opposed to thinking that I have now officially turned twenty-two, the most anti-climatic birthday since my nineteenth.

So, thanks Conan, for being my rock the past year or so, and for being there almost thrice in my life.


*Not true, and I realize this asterisk gimmick is getting old, but it saves me from doing brackets within parenthesis so you have to choose the lesser of two evils on this one.