O'Brien

With downtown Toronto slowly realizing coming to grips with the fact that Rob Ford is indeed the city’s new mayor, Joanne Chianello has a great story in the Ottawa Citizen on the “Fall and Fall of Larry O’Brien”, who came to office on a similar mantra of bringing business principles to the management of city hall. It’s a wonderful bit of long-form narrative  journalism, and is a reminder that — when the paper lets her do it — Joanne is one of the most under-rated political journalists in the country.

How’s that for a needy-sounding subject heading? Anyway, Conan has announced its guest list for the first week, which includes Seth Rogen and Michael Cera, some token Americans like Tom Hanks, Jon Hamm and, for NBC jokes, O’Brien’s old creation Jack McBrayer. (Okay, it wasn’t McBrayer his show created, it was McBrayer’s “page” character, which Lorne Michaels transferred from Conan O’Brien to 30 Rock in a very successful inter-company crossover.) My fellow Ottawan Jon Dore will be a guest comic on the last show of that first week.