From: nebusj-@-rpi-.edu   
      
   	And so we came to the end: Conan's speech was done and the band   
   started playing the show's closing theme and the guys out in the hallway   
   dragged in a bucket with various pieces of the proscenium which had been   
   chopped up some into little chips of wood, some into really good-sized   
   cylinders of lumber still intact.   
      
   	My father remembered the promise how everyone would get something   
   and it did look like this would be challenging but maybe possible as Conan   
   walked up the stage-right aisle --- the one in front of his desk ---   
   handing out pieces, shaking hands, and signing autographs, and at one   
   point looking over a crudely made ``WE LOVE CONAN'' cardboard sign someone   
   had smuggled in this way.   
      
   	The closing theme runs very long in the studio and is almost   
   invariably cut on broadcast; for this episode, though, it wasn't trimmed.   
   They ran a special Thank You to, as far as I could determine, everybody   
   who'd worked on the show who was still alive.  (That's not sarcasm; I did   
   recognize names of writers or directors or performers who had left the   
   show years and years ago.)   
      
   	Well.  The promise that everybody would get a piece of set was a   
   tiny bit overblown.  Over on my and my father's side, no, there just   
   wasn't enough to go around. After all the pieces were done Conan came out   
   again and briefly sang an ear-shattering song about the end, and thanked   
   everybody for coming out and being such a great audience, and then left   
   us in the hands of the pages.   
      
   	And the real mark of the end of the show came: the guy who had   
   climbed into the rafters moments before the show slid his ladder back down,   
   without killing anyone, and shimmied down it.  What he does up there all   
   show I don't know, but it seems to be quite important or else why strand   
   him up there for the whole hour?   
      
   --   
   								Joseph Nebus   
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)