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Conan kicks off his live tour, doesn’t say much about his new TBS show

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After 2 1/2 months out of the public eye, except for tweeting, Conan O’ Brien took to the stage at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Ore., to kick off his two-month live tour Monday night. The Times sent theater critic Charles McNulty to review the show, and he reported that it began with ‘a film clip of Conan one month ago with a grotesque beard and a whole lot of extra poundage. He’s lying amid pizza boxes and beer bottles. We see Conan eating KFC by the pool, loading up on wine bottles, daughter tells him he smells like pee. ‘All by Myself’ plays in the background. Then he gets the call to do ‘The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,’ and he goes into Rocky mode, working out on a treadmill, cutting his beard, getting his act together.’

Once on stage, O’Brien announced, ‘I’m not allowed to perform on television, radio or the Internet’ and listed certain words he cannot use, including maybe his own name. After going through the eight stages of losing a talk show, he revealed the last step was to get to Eugene, Ore.

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Although the show is peppered with references to his obsession to returning to television, even if meant being on the Oxygen network, O’Brien didn’t say much about his new five-year contract with TBS to host a talk show in late fall. In fact, the only new job he mentioned having was assistant manager of Banana Republic in Eugene.

-- Maria Elena Fernandez (follow me on Twitter @writerchica) and Charles McNulty

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Conan O’Brien going to TBS in a return to late night

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