Heeere's...

Dear Conan O’Brien: So the job goes from an Andover kid to one from Brookline? Who knew I was living in Eastern Massachusetts, Cradle of Liberty and NBC talkmeisters? Jay Leno handed you The Tonight Show, which was handed to him by Johnny Carson, to whom it was handed by Jack Paar, and to him from an assortment of other people, including Ernie Kovacs. Once again, we hear that the latest host is going to make the show “edgier,” more “hip,” as the young people say, and less familiar to people who still pine for the days when Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme crooned while George Gobel did whatever it was that George Gobel did. It has always been deep in the DNA of the show -- at least when Ernie Kovacs wasn’t hosting -- that the acts booked were on the cheesy side of hip. Nevertheless, you’ve had a pretty promising start. But there’s really not much anyone can do with The Tonight Show. It’s a desk and a couch, and the guests still look like the neighbors who dropped by for Scotch and the bean dip. People of a certain age -- i.e., mine -- believe that The Tonight Show, basically, is fried clams. Fried clams in 2009 taste the same as they did in 1909 -- like fried clams. Let anyone host, at any time, and The Tonight Show is still The Tonight Show. A couch and a desk. Maybe you could add a new end table.