Once in a Lifetime

Leno shows up at The Mirage almost every weekend, it seems, except this one. He will miss perhaps the only time O’Brien will bring a live version of his late-night show to town.

“This is a once in a lifetime thing,” O’Brien’s stage sidekick, Andy Richter, noted earlier this week of “The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour,” which visits the Palms on Saturday and Sunday.

“It feels like some sort of happening that’s just bigger than us, that we’re just sort of riding.”

Conan devotees are excited by their first chance to buy a ticket to see their red-headed CoCo-man, and even more passionate since Leno decided to reclaim his old job on “The Tonight Show” at O’Brien’s expense.

O’Brien took a buyout from NBC, grew a beard and booked the live tour, with the title mocking a settlement that keeps him from hosting another show until this fall and from doing interviews until Saturday.

On Twitter, O’Brien quipped, “I’m performing at the River Cree Casino just before Don Rickles. My comedy life is now complete.”

But the tour was barely under way when it was announced he would have a new late-night home on TBS starting in November.

“I don’t think two years from now the enthusiasm would be the same,” Richter says. “We could probably sell tickets, but I don’t think it would be the same.”

Besides, he says, “I don’t think we’re built for it.” Both he and O’Brien have young children, and neither were stand-up comics in their early days.

O’Brien and Richter both worked their way up as comedy writers more than performers. Richter worked in improv and sketch comedy, but not as a stand-up.

“It’s not easy for us to do the same thing every night, to say the same joke,” Richter says. On the other hand, “Conan has done a very particular version of stand-up for many years now, doing the monologue.”

The “Prohibited” tour ended up being more a live celebration of the TV show, referencing famous recurring bits and bringing the band on the road. O’Brien has “gone into his own pocket to pay the staff and to keep them going while he’s off the air,” Richter says.

“We definitely had sort of a pool of material to draw from, but it was all television material.” Some of it translated, some didn’t: “We actually tried to do ‘Year 3000,’ and found it wasn’t working in a big venue.”

The shows do have fun dancing up to the “Legally Prohibited” line of shots they can take at their former network. But Richter doesn’t think they would do more even if they could.

“I can’t speak for Conan, but I certainly don’t have any interest in airing dirty laundry or in venting spleen,” he says. “It also feels too personal, to go out onstage and in a comedy show, to air your frustration and your grievances. I just don’t feel it’s the proper place.”

Besides, the mood has lightened considerably. Richter says some jokes “didn’t really work any more” in the wake of the TBS announcement. “It didn’t feel as satisfying to bitch and complain about what had been done to us.”

“The healthy thing is to kind of go, ‘I’m going to wash my hands of that situation and those people and to move on and try not to give them a second thought.’ And I think that’s kind of what we’re attempting to do with the (live) show.”

“Time has passed, and we have somewhere new to go, and I firmly believe that this is probably all going to work out for the best… For us,” he adds. “I don’t care about really anybody else in the equation.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.