From: nebusj-@-rpi-.edu   
      
   	The warm-up to the final Late Night promised there would be   
   surprise guests; simple logic also dictated there would be as the only   
   scheduled guest was musical group The White Stripes.  The first guest   
   actually properly appearing on stage would be Will Ferrel, who showed up   
   as George W Bush to stumble along and do a stray Saturday Night Live bit   
   making fun of Will Ferrel, and then as always strip to this little   
   leprechaun gear for a bit that works a lot better for people with   
   slightly different senses of humor to mine.  I did like his stumbling off   
   stage in-character as Dubya, though.   
      
   	After the first commercial break came what everybody in the world   
   expected would be the next ``surprise'' guest because they have any ability   
   to reason logically.  Conan started out by showing one of his favorite   
   moments, a prank played on Andy Richter back in the day, by showing Andy   
   to NBC's new Turkish spa which, of course, you have to be naked for.   
   Conan strips the towel off Andy and pushes him in ... to the Today set and   
   a flustered Matt Lauer.  It's always on the clip shows.   
      
   	This brought out former sidekick and future announcer Andy Richter,   
   to (another) standing ovation and chants of ``AN-DY! AN-DY!''  Not that it   
   wasn't fun, but if you were going to guess at who might show up on the   
   final Late Night With Conan O'Brien it's impossible to not notice that   
   neither Andy Richter nor Bruce Springsteen were among the guests the final   
   month.   
      
   	For the most part, again, what you saw on the episode was what   
   we saw in the studio except that there was the busy work of television   
   production and people scurrying around carrying things or sweeping the   
   monologue area free of construction debris or the band going over notes   
   for the commercial break song.   
      
   	There were some differences for editing, however: the first set   
   of best-of clips watched with Andy Richter included a lesser-known mascots   
   bit in which a guy dressed up as a videotape of quite forgotten movie   
   _Hope Floats_ is shot and falls over, revealing that the box didn't have   
   a top because either they forgot that the top would be visible or they   
   couldn't afford a top.  Conan pointed out the guy in the box was former   
   intern Jack McBreyer, who also played many sketches as a naive, easily   
   confused, backwoods Appalachian hick for Late Night.  He's since gone on   
   to 30 Rock where he plays Kenneth the Page, so you see what kind of range   
   he gets to show as a comic actor.   
      
   	Also cut was a bit after Conan went to commercial break in which   
   they showed, in-studio, an ancient commercial created for Late Night done   
   in the style of those low-budget discount furniture commercials that pop   
   up whenever ad rates are slackest, with Conan as a hyperactive owner/host   
   and Andy as the guy clearly roped on stage without any thought given to   
   whether he could act or even read cue cards and an elderly woman there to   
   sit in a reclining chair.   
      
   	I don't have access to a copy of the sketch but it was well-done   
   and it's odd that they cut it from air. Maybe they were running long, but   
   since the show did run long how important could that be?  Heck, why were   
   they running so long they couldn't tip a hat to 30 Rock?   
      
   --   
   								Joseph Nebus   
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)