In case you were wondering why I haven’t been blogging lately, I’ve been busy vacationing. Last night, my wife and I saw Conan O’Brien’s “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television” show, and it was terrific. Special guests were Bears player Brian Urlacher and actor John C. Reilly. Reilly sang a little off-script number that went like this:

And the crowd roared. It was surprising to hear a blatant anti-Leno joke, considering that Conan is prohibited from making fun of Leno or NBC under terms of his severance. But as Reilly explained, he (Reilly) isn’t prohibited from saying anything. I’ll share more later. It was a fantastic show.

UPDATE: Okay, now that I don’t have to catch a train, I can elaborate a little. The show started with a forgettable opening act — a guy named Reggie Watts whose “talent” consists solely of putting profanities to improvised melodies and beat box rhythms. Biggest disappointment of the night. But once we suffered through that, the rest of the show was excellent. The Legally Prohibited Band included most of the people you saw on Conan’s Tonight Show, most notably trombonist “La Bamba.” No Max Weinberg, though. They really got the crowd going with an opening number that saw the horn section dance up and down the aisle.

After that, it was time for Conan. It started with a video piece that recounted the time between losing the Tonight Show and going on tour. It showed Conan lying on the floor, overweight and with a six-inch beard, surrounded by boxes of half-eaten pizza and empty beer bottles. Then he gets a call offering him a job — a multi-city live tour. There’s only one question: “Are you in shape?” Conan’s answer: “Yes. Yes I am.” And the rest of the video shows him working out, trimming his beard, and then Conan himself came on stage to cheers and applause.

During his opening monologue, Conan made several references to Chicago, asking “How about those Cubs!” There were equal parts cheers and boos, so he followed it up with “How about those White Sox!” Again, cheers and boos. Conan laughed about how, in any other city, when you mention the city’s team, they would all cheer, but in Chicago they ask, “Which team? Are you on the right side?” Then he said, “I didn’t come to divide, but to bring everyone together, so how about those Blackhawks?” Cheers and applause. “How about those Bears?” Cheers and applause. “Does anyone like pizza?” Cheers and laughter, followed by Conan chanting “USA! USA! USA!” and the crowd chanting along with him. Gotta love the absurdity of it all. Conan told everyone it was his goal for everyone to leave after the show thinking, “that was sort of worth it.”

Conan’s sidekick Andy Richter was there, and he did a live “commercial” (because Conan said he missed throwing to a commercial like he did five times every show for years) about a local store in Chicago called Garrett’s Popcorn, where he said people wait in line for half an hour for popcorn because they’ve never heard of microwave ovens.

Conan sang a few numbers. One was Poke Salad, a take-off of an Elvis song which was supposed to be about growing up poor in the south, but Conan changed the words to match his life to comedic effect. Conan grew up in a wealthy suburb of Boston, and his mother was a successful lawyer in a prestigious law firm and his dad was a microbiologist — “real white trash,” said O’Brien facetiously. Another song was “On the Road Again,” with lyrics changed to, “Just can’t wait to get my own show again.” Later, Conan took to the keyboard to sing a song he said he had been trying to write for nine years about a girl who looked like Conrad Bain — the father from the TV sitcom Diff’rent Strokes. He had a life-size cardboard cutout of Bain with him next to a suggestion box where fans could submit their ideas for another line to the song that rhymes with “Bain” or “strokes,” and he would use those suggestions to finish the song by the end of the tour. At the end of the show, Conan sang Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” with more tailored lyrics.

Other highlights included Conan dressed in Eddie Murphy’s pink paisley leather suit, a giant inflatable bat from Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” tour, staff writer Deon Cole trying out some new jokes on the audience, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (what was most funny about this piece was that it was taped, and whenever the city or a specific place would be said, it was overdubbed just like a really bad Godzilla movie), and the Walker Texas Ranger Lever (renamed the Chuck Norris Series Handle to sidestep any intellectual property objections from NBC) which concluded with the audience favorite: “Walker told me I have AIDS.” Andy Richter quipped, “Walker should have told him how to make a segue!” It was during this bit that John C. Reilly and Brian Urlacher came out and each took a turn at pulling the lever to reveal another out-of-context clip.

Conan made a lot of thinly-veiled references to NBC and Jay Leno. He would do a dead-on impersonation of Leno, then tell the audience, “That was my impression of rapper Ludacris. Okay? Are you all with me? Ludacris.” After a taped bit of a television executive berating Conan and laughing maniacally, Conan said “that was about no one in particular.” And after John C. Reilly sang his improvised song, O’Brien deadpanned, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Conan had the crowd eating out of his hand, and returned for an encore after sustained cheering and chanting of his name. My wife and I laughed a lot — like we used to laugh during the Tonight Show for those few months it had a real comedian for a host.

Here’s another review, and here are some pictures from the show.