I’ve never been a Conan O’Brien fan. I watched the debacle of his beginning 17 years ago on “Late Night” and just didn’t get it. Even when I checked in a few times in the years since, I didn’t get it. And honestly, it didn’t seem like there was much to get. I also watched an episode or two after he took over “The Tonight Show” and didn’t find much there either. Especially in a time when one can get sharp humor on a regular basis from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Conan didn’t seem that sharp. Moreover, he was trending in the wrong direction (for me, at least) — heading toward the middle now that he was sitting in the old Johnny/Jay seat.

The past two weeks have been different. Mighty different. His anger has helped create some of the finest, funniest television I’ve ever seen.

The other night in a royal screw-you to NBC, he mounted the most expensive comedy sketch ever — cost: $1.5 million, on NBC’s dime. Here it is, if you want to see it (while it lasts; NBC already yanked the bit from their webcast, fearing the royalties they’d owe to the Rolling Stones for use of the original recording of “Satisfaction,” which O’Brien also used to drive up the cost).

This enormous eff-you to the network that was broadcasting the show was shocking. The giddiness, anger, and anxiety surrounding the entire episode was exhilarating. Even Adam Sandler somehow was funny. It left me wondering if I’ve missed other things on this show the past seven months, and then I thought….

Probably not. It’s the liberating anger that made Conan O’Brien and his show funny for two weeks. It couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have gone on much longer.

Next month, the show returns to Jay Leno. Like everyone else in Burbank, I’ve seen Jay around town countless times. He seems like a good guy. On Saturdays there’s a book shop he hangs around at regularly, he always lends his image or his time to good causes, he drops in at auto shows and parades and talks about motorcycles and cars, and he treats everyone around like he’s just another citizen of Burbank. And if I were NBC and one third of my affiliates were going to bolt because the ratings with Conan were half what they were with Jay, I would’ve gotten on the phone with Jay too. And, like most of America, I’ll tune in that first night or two when Jay returns to see what happens. After that, though, I won’t be watching, and no, I wasn’t watching before, either. But those two weeks were delicious.

I knew I liked the internet. I didn’t realize how empty and purposeless I would feel without it. Those long hours, spent here at home at night with no way to get online and truly interact with potentially the entire world, passed as glacially as the middle ninety minutes of “Avatar,” and felt even farther removed from reality.

But that’s all behind me now, because my home internet has been restored. I had the guys we use at my company come patch it all up at home, and here I am, somewhat magically reattached to invisible communications passing through the ether. (AKA wifi.)

The technician’s diagnosis:  The storm blew out my router. And when I say “storm,” please think “monsoon.”  The rain we’ve been getting is rain the way that Hell is kinda warm. The  accompanying winds have been umbrella-inverting. Today I looked out my window and saw a woman riding a bicycle in mid-air, my dog in her basket. Today, lightning hit two planes here in Burbank; the theory is that a surge yesterday took out my router.

Now that I have connectivity again at home — and connectivity through a keyboard, not tapping one digit at a time on my iPhone, which obviously discourages writing involved blog posts — I will be getting to that little review of “Under the Dome,” I promise you. I just know I can’t do it it tonight, and probably not tomorrow either. (I am utterly slammed.) In the meantime, here’s my advice:  Just don’t read the book, and certainly don’t buy it. Don’t even be tempted to read it for free.  In return, I promise to tell you why not to do this, and for an added bonus I’ll toss in a post in the coming day or two or three about why I thoroughly hated “Avatar” and hope you did too. (And no, I’m not a hater:  Remember, “Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans” gets my highest recommendation.)

See you soon.

This video (a spec commercial starring my good friend Mark Chaet) clarifies why I needed to get a BMW.

We interupt this regularly scheduled blog to announce that our Internet is down today for MLK day.

(Either that, or what’s being billed locally as “The Storm of the Century” has knocked out our Internet and satellite.)

We are able to bring you this advisory courtesy of WordPress for iPhone. Please join us tomorrow for the return of regularly scheduled programming, including our special presentation of “Under the Dome: Just Don’t Go There.”

There are two kinds of bad books:  the badly conceived and the badly written.

The former can be insidious, inciting war, genocide, civil unrest, poverty, and more. The past century is a catalog of such writing.

Bad writing can be symptomatic of bad thinking, but usually no one dies as a result. That said, though, the novel I just finished reading almost killed me. I have read countless books in my life, including many bad books and very many badly written books. But I’m thinking that the book I just finished is the worst written book I’ve ever read. And it’s by one of the most popular authors in history:  Stephen King.

More soon about the awful time I spent Under the Dome. I have flagged many pages and I will have much to say about them.

Pat Robertson reminds us why bad things happen to good (or innocent) people, like the people of Haiti. You guessed it:  It’s God’s punishment.

This is the fortune I found today in my fortune cookie from Wokcano. In case you can’t read it, here’s what it says:

You will always live in interesting times.

Although, to paraphrase Wallace Shawn in “My Dinner With Andre,” I don’t believe the fortune cookie has any mystic powers, I was nevertheless stunned to see this. While I didn’t expect an accurate fortune, I certainly never thought I’d get a famous and ancient curse.

I’ve written here many times of my long-standing dislike of John Edwards. (You can find some representative samples of my loathing here.) So I wouldn’t say that the excerpts I’ve read from “Game Change,” the new book about the 2008 presidential campaign that portrays Edwards as a shallow toad, are exactly revelatory. What is new is the attack on his wife for her culpability. I don’t know that I agree — hey, she was battling fatal cancer while, well, being married to him — but at least it’s a new line of attack.

I never count anyone in politics completely out — let’s remember, Marion Barry got re-elected after getting convicted; Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon got partly rehabilitated during their ex-presidencies; lately I’m seeing Eliot Spitzer serving as some sort of pundit on television; and there seems to be a “draft Cheney” movement afoot, which truly beggars the imagination. Nevertheless, I’m hopeful that we’re done with John Edwards. For good.

In November I started weight training again at the gym after almost two years off resulting from an injury. I had torn a ligament in my left arm trying to do tricks on one of my kids’ scooters; that took more than nine months to heal, and so I took up running for a while. (Including doing a marathon in Amsterdam.) But now, finally, I’m back to weightlifting three times a week. There’s still an unsettling internal twang in my left arm, but I’m trying to ignore that.

There’s a stereotype about weightlifters that they aren’t very bright. I’m not sure it’s fair, even if they do get to be governor of California. But today I wondered.

I was doing deadlifts of 75 pounds. (Pleasure remember:  I’m working my way back into this.) Three sets of 10 reps each. A guy next to me asks if I mind if he borrows one of the 45 lb weights near me so he can slot it onto his barbell. I don’t mind at all, because I’m not going to be using that 45 lb weight today, tomorrow, or any time in the foreseeable future. Then he comes back and asks if I’ll spot him. He’s getting set up to do standing barbell presses. He’s about my height (5’10”) and generally humanoid shaped — not disproportionate like this — so I’m especially astonished to see what he wants me to spot him on:  I see seven 45 lb weights on each end of the barbell, plus the 45-lb barbell itself, which leaves me quickly calculating that he’s about to lift 675 pounds.

“Can you spot me?” he asks again.

I look at him. “You do see what I’m lifting, right?” I nod in the general direction of the tinker toy I’ve been lifting. I’ve been mulling over moving up to 80 pounds, and he wants me to cover his ass if he starts to slip with 675.

“Yeah, but all you have to do is stand behind me and if I start to fall back, just push me forward.”

I have pictures of his starting to fall backward — and then succeeding, crushing me right through the floor like something out of a Looney Tune. Nevertheless, for reasons I cannot imagine, I agree to do this. So I stand behind him and he drafts two other guys to stand on each side, and all of us agree that none of us can do anything if this stunt goes haywire.

Then I notice one last thing I think I should mention.

“You sure about this? Because the barbell is bending.” Which indeed it is. I don’t know what its load capacity is, but it’s starting to look like the axle on a much-played-with Matchbox car. He decides to proceed, and I back way the fuck up because now I’m imagining shards of steel sproinging out from a shattered barbell and shooting into my eyes. He manages to get the load up off the rack and replace it twice with no problem. The third time, he’s almost unable to get the right end back into the hook and all of time slows down as three far more averagely built guys try to look useful when actually they’re panicking. But then he slots it and everyone is relieved and I go back to what I’m doing with my Minnie Mouse weight set while debating who’s stupider:  Him for attempting this feat, or us for spotting him.

Then I see him ask a girl with him to take a picture of the barbell he’s just lifted, with all the weights still on it. She dutifully takes the picture from a few different angles. I can’t resist saying to them both:

“Um, you didn’t do that right.”

“What?”

“The photos. She took photos of a barbell loaded with weights. What you wanted was a  photo of you holding the barbell loaded with weights.” When this didn’t quite sink in, I explained that I could take a picture of a car and tell people I had carried it around town, but no one would be impressed. They would want a picture of me actually carrying the car. Then he understood.

So then he asked all of us to spot him again so he could get the picture right. But everyone begged off.

Enjoy.