Summer S’mores with Conan and the Chill Chums Season 4 Episode 3

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0:35It's aged in barrels, toasted by Solo Stove, the world's favorite fire pit. On the rocks, neat, or in a s'mores old-fashioned, camp stock wheat whiskey. With its notes of graham cracker, baking spices, and vanilla is the perfect fireside drink for summer nights. Cheers to whiskey flavored by the flame and savored by the flame. Please remember to pig out responsibly. Summer S'mores with Conan and the Chill Chumps. a six-part series with Conan O 'Brien, Sona Mavsessian, and Matt Corley. Let's get started. Well, here we are, Summer S'mores Episode 3 at Sona's house. Maybe we should start this episode by putting another log on the solo stuff.

1:14Yeah, log it up. Log it up. Log it up! You have a nice yard, Sona. Thanks. I think I want to do some stuff to it, but, you know, I like it. How long have you lived here now? Four years. We moved here right before COVID, right before the lockdown. Remember, you said, should I buy a house? and I said, I think you should. There's going to be a pandemic. Remember? Yeah, you said those exact words and it was like two years before it even happened. I'm always looking ahead. I had my ear to the ground. I knew stuff was brewing. And so, yeah, I remember coming over here and you've done some very nice, the place looks great.

1:49You know, it's nice. It still needs a lot of stuff. Your house is beautiful. It's wonderful. Oh, I appreciate that, but I need new bathrooms. Can you just do it? What do you mean? I'll just pay for it if you want. Yeah. That's what I'm asking. Can you just give me money so I can just... I want to redo my bathrooms. I want a bathroom. What's wrong with the bucket I gave you? It's full. You're supposed to empty it occasionally. You idiot. I don't need a bathroom. I get it. Okay. You didn't understand how the bucket works. It's full. Well, I guess I'll never excrete anything again. Tremendous stomachache.

2:25Also, I don't know this area as well. It's a very different area of Los Angeles, so it's nice to get here. Yeah, it is. Altadena, next to Pasadena, where you live. Christmas Tree Lane is here. Why do they call it Christmas Tree Lane? It's amazing. There's these big deodar trees. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. And they put lights on all of them, and it's this long street. And you're driving down. It's like you're driving by a bunch of really tall Christmas trees. It's beautiful. Okay, this is just like therapy. It just sparked a memory. So when I was a kid, we used to have just regular Christmas trees, you know, sawed off Christmas tree.

3:01And you put a little water at the base just to keep the needles green for whatever, 15 days, 20 days until it would start to die. And then you'd toss it out after New Year's. So then I remember sometime in the mid 70s, my dad, who was always trying new things, found out that you could get a Christmas tree that had the root ball intact. intact and that way. And he said, this is amazing. It's fantastic. We're going to have our Christmas tree have its root. We're going to bring in a live tree with its root ball. Listen to this. We're going to bring in a live tree with its root ball into our living room.

3:38And then we're going to plant it in the side yard after we're done and it will live with us forever. And over the years, the different trees that we have will create a forest. Now I need to explain to the listener that we have really no side yard. Our side yard is like a 40, it's a 45 degree angle drop. And before you get to the Strom's house who are next door, it's a 45 degree, it's like a cliff and it's very narrow. I mean, maybe, maybe it's 15 feet across, if that. And so. What a lush forest. And so my dad, sure enough, Christmas is over and we all had to haul this tree out to the... Even the birds are laughing at this story.

4:24We had to haul this... It's true! It's true! He's off to tell the other birds. He won't believe it. This guy's dad was an idiot. So we would then have to dig a hole. You actually did it. Yeah, we would have to dig a hole and it was really hard ground and my dad was like, come on, hurry up! And we'd be like, I just want to play with my Christmas toys. Hurry up! So we'd dig it And we put the tree in the ground. We did this for like five Christmases in a row until they would always leave soil all over the place. And my mom was always furious and saying, Tom, Tom, there's soil all over the place. And we're like, the tree, it'll shelter us.

5:03There'll be a forest. And finally, my mother said no more of this because I think one year the root ball completely exploded and there was just soil all over the first floor of the house. So that killed that. But anyway, those trees, they never did shit. No? Like they died pretty quickly. I think there's one or two that are still there, but they look like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and it's been like 35 years. So you go back home, and you see the trees that you planted a long time ago, and they're still kind of there? Well, I try. Here's what's funny. I go back to visit. My parents still live there.

5:34My brother Neil is there. I try to go. The last time I was there, I tried to go into the side yard, and first of all, it's like descending a mountain in Switzerland. You need to tie a rope around your belt to go down. and I go down and I'm just looking at these little, oh, hi there. Like it's not the mighty tree my dad thought it was going to be. Oh, it's not a forest? No, it's not a forest. But that's a nice idea because otherwise you cut it. First of all, did you guys go get the trees yourselves? Yeah, it was 1720. Okay. And we would get in a sleigh and we would go out and get the trees ourselves.

6:11No, we went to a lot like everybody else. I didn't know that they did that with the root. What is it? It's a root ball. A root ball. A root ball. I didn't even know that existed. But I also... Well, any tree that's transplanted has a root ball. You know, any tree... I did not know that. Or a plant. Okay. Matt, you understand these things, right? I suppose I do. Okay. Wait, you know what a root ball is? You've heard root ball before? I feel like you're going to be mad at me if I say yes. Yeah, have you heard the word root ball? You have to just be honest, Matt. You heard the term root ball. Matt, when she's this out of control and this wrong, you have to stand up to her.

6:42This out of control? I'm not wrong. I've just never heard of the words root ball. I don't know what that is. Okay. But okay, I'll just take your word for it. Yes. Basically, the roots are still intact, and they sit in a ball of soil, a burlap sack, if you will. Okay, yeah. I do know what that is. I was trying to picture it. You didn't know what it was, though. I don't think I did. But then when the burlap sack thing makes sense. You're the weird one. Who knew what a root ball was? Everybody here? Did everyone here? Okay, Jeff, you don't care. Yeah, a lot of people are saying yes. Stop. You know what I love?

7:15You invited your neighbors to come listen. Yeah. And your neighbors just showed up and they all gave the thumbs up. Thank you for showing up. I love that. You guys should go now, probably. I'm so glad that. A root ball. It's my neighbors that live on Common Sense Lane. Anyway, isn't it funny how all I heard was Christmas Tree Lane and it took me on this. Memory Lane. Memory Lane of my dad saying, I've got an idea. Our Christmas trees will create a magical forest. and he was wrong. He was just wrong. Do you think he'd ever be like, I was wrong about the trees? My father admitted he was wrong? Yeah.

7:50No. Oh. Anyway. Where'd you get? Yeah. Wait. Did that get passed down at all? It sounds like it was passed down from your dad. It sounds like someone got a trait from his dad. You can't share your parents. You're wrong, Gene. It was passed down from the mother. Any geneticist will tell you that. That's just common science. Do they still get Christmas trees? Do I? I always do those trees. Do you get a real one? Do your dad and mom still get Christmas trees? Yeah, there's still a Christmas tree there. A real one? I went fake a couple years ago. Oh, no, no, no, no. We would never do fake. Yeah, I wouldn't either.

8:27I would never do fake. You do fake? Yeah, I do fake. That's gross. That's a blasphemy. That's a sin. Oh. You guys have a fire hazard in your house, and you have to go buy one from an outlaw. lot somewhere. What do you mean get to go buy one? And then you put it on your car and then you drive home with it. What do you have? Do you have something that inflates? It is in a box. It could be Christmas at any time in this house. That's just sad. It's in a box in our garage. That's sad. And you know what? I think everyone here thinks you're sad. That's just sad. It smells like plastic. Oh, another poll.

9:00Nobody else here does a fake tree? Thanks, Sam. Hey! My neighbor's coming through for me this time. It's one to one. Nice. Who else? Yeah, David too. We win. No, you don't win. Yeah, I do win. You lose because you don't get the fragrance. That's fake. If you have a fake tree. You can stink the fragrance. No, you cannot. If you have a fake tree, it's just, you're just saying, I don't want to live life. I choose not to live life. I agree. You know? I hate that I agree, but I agree. And this is like the s'mores thing. Yeah. When you're right, you're right. Yeah. It's just a fake. I'm not right a lot, but I mean, like, I'm in the upper 90s, but when I am right, which is 98, 99 % of the time, I am so right.

9:37It's crazy. It's off the charts right. and you have to have a real tree. You don't have to have a real tree. That's part of the spirit of Christmas. So where did you buy this thing? Also, what happens to your tree after? Where did you buy the tree? Target. Home Depot. Oh, my God. That's a nice tradition. I saw a tradition. You buy it once. That's the good thing about it. You buy it one time and then you have... I grew up with a fake tree. We're fake tree people. Oh, that explains a lot. What is what? You guys have a tree in your house. It dies and then you just toss it. You know what's interesting?

10:06What a waste of a tree. You know what makes me sad? The Armenians are the oldest Christians. They are. We're the oldest Christian nation. They are the oldest Christian nation. You guys should be representing real trees. You shouldn't be going to Home Depot and getting something that, by the way, I'm going to check it out. I bet you what you got is a bicycle rack and you think it's a tree. You're putting lights on a bicycle rack. How do you know it's a tree? Because it's a tree. I don't know. It's a tripod with a couple of things coming off of it. I'm not going to confuse a tree with a bike rack.

10:34It's a hat rack. Here's my question. You brought up Christianity. Where in the Bible does it say you have to get a real tree for Christmas? Page one. Does Christmas even exist in the Bible? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Of course it does. It talks about, oh, Santa Claus? New Testament says, yes, and ye shall get the tree. The tree shall be of the earth, of God made. The tree shall smell of fragrant green. I'm going to tell your mom that you're making shit up for the Bible. You shall be smiting and smitten. And God chased Abel because Abel had a tree that was made from Home Depot.

11:05I don't care. Out of rubber and steel. Don't you remember? Have you ever read the Bible? No. Okay. All right. I love someone who's shouting about, show me in the Bible where it says. Oh, you proved me wrong. Sorry, I didn't know that. Wrong soft G. I didn't know that the Bible mentioned Home Depot. Where'd you get the hard G? Home Depot? The important thing is that we're all here together and it's not Christmas.

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14:39hey it must be beautiful here at christmas in altadena huh it is are there any special traditions here in altadena christmas time christmas tree lane i know but what i mean besides that the lighting of christmas tree lane is really fun does it happen at a certain moment Yeah, it happened. We went this past year. You go and there's like a lot of like food trucks and little things. You know what's weird though? And then it just, at a certain time, it just lights up. But there are hours. It's like closed at certain points, you know? Like they don't light it up. It's not going to be on all the time.

15:07Hey, I have a question. Do you ever get snow up here? Yes. You're at a higher elevation. I bet you get some snow. Do you remember when it was cold as balls? I don't remember when it was cold as balls. No, no. I remember when it was very cold. Do you remember when it was so cold in LA? and then it was like insane. I love it. And it snowed here at one point. That's great. That would make me happy. I love snow. I don't need it. You have to shovel. You want to shovel snow? No one shovels snow in LA. You wait 10 minutes and it goes away. Yeah, but when you like lived in snow, did you have to shovel it?

15:38Was that a chore for you? Yes, I had to go shovel out the driveway. We had, our house-neighbored the Murphy brothers. The Murphy brothers were Irish guys from Ireland. Oh my God. So we would shovel out our driveway while they shoveled out. So you have the Stroms and the Murphy boys. Yeah, Strom's Jewish family, Murphy brothers on the other side were these Irish brothers. They would be shoveling out their driveway and my mother would send me, Neil, Luke, whoever down to shovel out our driveway. And that's where I learned what a real Irish accent is. Because I thought that the Irish accent was Lucky Charms, elf.

16:13Yeah. You know, oh, because you'll be Gora. Oh, that's what I thought from cartoons an Irish accent was. And these were real guys from the countryside in Ireland. And I go, oh, hello, Mr. Murphy. How are you? I tell you, you annoy us. Where do you annoy us? I tell you, it's my noise. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Oh, you annoy us. I'm like, what the fuck is that? That's a bunch of, that's like a pirate whose jaw's broken. And that's how, and then you go to Ireland, it's like, if you go out to the countryside, that's how they sound. That's an Irish accent. Anyway, sure, I did my time. I grew up in a different era than you, Sona.

16:47I'm 110 years old. But people shovel their snow now. I mean, I'm just saying, I can't see you out there like doing manual labor like that. You had to back then. Okay, I didn't know that. It's just something I can't picture. Back then, you had to do things. You just had to. Do you ever get out in your yard now and kind of pull weeds or, you know, prune hedges or anything like that? Do you do any kind of manual? Are you alive? What I do, I'm in a room. When I say a room, it's more of a hyperbaric chamber. Okay. Let me paint the picture for you. Okay. In the morning, the timer goes off and my chamber opens.

17:26All the steams and gases come out. I climb out my pale, flaccid body. A robe is applied by several attendants. Oh, God. Then I go to a big, I sit in a chair and I have my morning gel. I just have a little gel that I can have out of a pack. And then I sit and I look at a screen and I see hundreds of workers working on the compound. Oh. And I suspiciously watch them about their tasks. Okay. And every now and then I point with my gnarled old finger to one area that I think needs more tending. And people are dispatched to tell the workers in that Sector 7G what to do. I was going to say, you're turning into Mr.

18:04Burns. You are becoming him. When you guys get a Christmas tree, do you go out as a family and get it? Or does some, you have somebody for that? We go to Home Depot. Well, first of all, not you. Go to the garage. See, this is where I criticize Sona. This is where you criticize me? Hold on, listen. That's all you do. You went to Home Depot once. Every year, every year at Christmastime, come hell or high water, I call my agency, William Morris Endeavor, and I say, it's tree time. Rick Rosen calls the literary department, the literary department, calls the film department. The film department calls someone who works way, way, way down in the bowels there, and they go out and they get a tree.

18:46Okay. And they bring it to my house. Oh, man. And they also have to bring a B-list actor too. Like who? Who have been some in the past? Well, Chad Michael Murray.

18:58You had his name teed up. It wasn't teed up. The guy, I come down every year and he's pointing the lights on. It's because you're obsessed with One Tree Hill a little bit. I'm always like, good job, CMM. And he's always like, no problem, Mr. O 'Brien. And I say, hey, it's Dr. O 'Brien. And then I say, hey, weren't you married to one of the cast members on One Tree Hill for like a brief time? And he goes, who, Sophia Bush? And I go, yeah, but it was brief, right? And he goes, yeah, kind of brief. And then he says, how come you know so much about this when you're kind of an old guy, Conan? And I say, well, I'm a bit of a perv.

19:31And Chad Michael Murray says, yeah, but I mean, were you even watching One Tree Hill? And I said, yeah, I had a One Tree Hill poster that I had Sona get for me. It was in my office. I know all about One Tree Hill, Sophia Bush, and your marriage to her. Now, hey, why don't you put a star on top of the tree, Chad Michael Murray? Let's go, buddy boy. You know, we're losing daylight here. You knew they were married just from having the poster in your office. Don't act like you didn't Google them all the time. The whole cast. I didn't. I never Googled them. Why did you have their poster up in there?

20:03I just knew stuff. For some reason, we were somewhere on the Warner Brothers lot, and I saw a One Tree Hill poster. And I remember saying to you, Sona, Sona, get me that poster, thinking you never would. the next day that poster framed was in my office and people would always come in and there was like there's a picture of me with johnny carson there's a picture of me with david letterman there's you know a picture of me with adam sandler then there would be this but bigger than any other photo oh actually the biggest photo in the in the office was one of lincoln on his deathbed don't ask not a photo obviously but a drawing a painting i don't know why i had that being attended by like 30 people historically inaccurate was very small room but anyway and then next to that was you don't know why you had that that sounds very much like you but then the thing really always killed me was people would come in and go what the and there's a big picture of the cast of one tree hill where did you get it sona she just went to the yeah because it's a warner brother show and if you just say hey conan wants a poster of one tree hill they're like uh okay and then they just send it to you but he i also realized he said that about every poster we walked by and I didn't realize he was joking so I actually did get him a poster of One Tree Hill but then he would just do that bit he'd be like I want that poster give me that poster because when you walk around at Warner Brothers and there are posters of shows that you've forgotten about from a long time ago like Klepler's Way you know you're like Klepler's Way there's a bunch of people looking real intense standing around and they've got padded shoulders because it's 1986 and um those things always fascinating to me because they would keep them up on the wall you know i mean it would make sense to me like okay yeah you keep the fresh prince of bel-air up or you keep this up or you keep that up but klepler's way yeah what are you talking about i don't know so i got him at one tree hill poster yeah and it was in uh it was in my office i don't even and you know what i bet i still have it because everything goes into storage yeah somewhere when i go and i hope it's not for a long time but judging by the tone of my voice it'll be sooner rather than later uh when they go through my storage, it's going to be nuts.

22:06It is crazy. Because the stuff that's in there, there's a whole remote of me going through my storage unit. Oh, this was funny because we went, I went with my wife to the storage unit one day and I don't remember if you were with us or not, Sona, but we went to the storage unit and we were like somewhere in the valley. And then we were just looking at the storage unit and then someone said, see that storage building over there? that's the kardashian storage building and i was like damn that's the i mean mine is all things like you know a a statue of rutherford b hayes that i purchased it's been put into storage it's made out of tobacco you know and then but there's can you imagine what's in their storage facility basically a closet yeah that's what i heard is that it's like all of their clothes and bags and stuff.

22:56Right. It's just... Previous husbands are in there. The basketball player. I bet he's in there. He's just standing in a unit. Just waiting to be let go. Oh, no. He just... Yeah. What's that? Humphreys. What's his name? Humphreys. Chris Humphreys. Chris Humphreys. Yeah, she was married to a basketball player and then they just put him in storage. They weren't even legally divorced. They just put him into storage. Hey, he's there with their clothes and stuff. Imagine having so many clothes you need a storage facility. That's basically just another closet. See, our storage facility is not that big and there's no clothes, but it is crazy things fans have sent me over the year.

23:34Yeah. Like fans that find out that I like to noodle around on the guitar. One of them took a bathroom scale and used it as the base and made a guitar. Yeah. And I think they're in Switzerland or something. They made the craziest guitar out of a bathroom scale. Wow. Plays like shit, but accurately measured my weight. it was then it was then i knew i had to drop 15 pounds and i never did that's nice it's nice that you kept that stuff i keep i keep everything i've got it all i've got it all well hard not to get nostalgic here up in altadena it brings back so many memories of when i got here for the first time about an hour ago beautiful absolutely beautiful it is really nice here i should come up here more often you should no you know what your kids were happy to see me my kids really love you a lot.