A lot of Conan's sketches never really worked for me. His particular brand of humor (ie. showing a roast-beef with a tiara dancing the mexican hat-dance) might sound good on paper, but these sketches rarely got more then a 'meh' out of me. On the other hand, the year 2000 and the Walker lever were (are?) pure genius. What I really liked about him was his quick wit when it came to interviews. With that in mind, here's a question: There was an interview he did with some woman quite a while ago. She was acting quite bitchy and blamed Conan for making her "funny stories" (something about her dogs) flop etc. Conan on the other hand was bending over backwards for her. When the time came to plug the show/movie, she said she had to play a bit of a bitch and Conan came back with "was that a HARD role to play?" That's pretty much all that I can remember and even though it's a fucking long longshot (akin to this situation), I was hoping that someone remembers this and can shed a bit more light on this (what's her name, a clip of the interview, whatever).
I think the reason Will Ferrell was picked to close the show was more symbolic, since he opened it. Could have done without him singing, but as old as the bit is, the cowbell still made me laugh. Making out with his wife on stage? Eh, who cares, really. But, do realize that Conan got to close his show down jamming with Beck, 1/2 ZZ Top, and Ben Harper, along with his entire band, which is bad ass. Whatever you thought of the show, you have to give him props for going out like that.
That was Will Ferrell's actual wife who is actually pregnant, I believe. (Viveca Paulin) One of the thing's I enjoyed about that version of Freebird, was Beck and Billy Gibbons just standing there playing. As a bookend to Neil Young's awesome, poignant performance, Ferrell's silliness bringing back the "more cowbell" move was nice. Most people that are average singers would crack up when they tried to hit a note they couldn't, kind of knowingly look around with a shoulder shrug (I'm bad, but isn't this fun and silly?). But Ferrell stayed in character the whole time, and it felt like he was doing that more for Conan than the audience. Conan's thank you to NBC and staff was pretty classy. I don't know if he was "putting on" to gain support for his future, but it seemed very sincere to me.