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

This episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend is sponsored by L.

Summer S'mores With Conan and the Chill Chums a six-part series with Conan O'Brien, Sona Movsesian and Matt Corley. Let's get started well. Here we are Summer S'mores episode three at Sona's House.

Yeah, log it up.

Log it up, log it up. You have a nice yard, Sona.

Hey, 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.

You 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 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.

I have a tremendous stomachache.

Also, 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, and 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. And 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.

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, here's what's funny. I go back to visit, my parents still live there, my brother Neil is there.

AW, it's not a forest.

No, it's not a forest.

But that's a nice idea because otherwise you cut it.

Yeah, it was 1720.

I didn't know that they did that with the root.

A root ball, root ball. I didn't even know that existed, but I also, well, any tree that's transplanted has a root ball.

I suppose I do.

Wait, you know what a root ball is? You've heard root ball before?

You have to just be honest.

You heard the term root ball?

Matt, When she's this out of control and this wrong, you have to stand up to her. This out of control, I'm not wrong.

I've just never heard of the words root ball, I don't know what that is.

But okay, I'll just.

I'll 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.

You didn't know what it was, though.

I don't think I did, but then when?

You're the weird one who knew what a root ball was. Everybody here, did everyone here.

Yeah, a lot of people are saying, yes, stop, no, nobody knows. You invited your neighbors to come listen, and your neighbors just showed up and they all gave the thumbs up, Thank you for showing up.

Do you think he'd ever be like, I was wrong about the trees?

My father admit he was wrong. Yeah, no, oh, anyway.

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.

Do they still get Christmas trees?

Do i.

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 of years ago.

Oh no, no, no, no, we would never do fake, yeah.

I wouldn't either.

I would never do fake, you do fake.

Yeah, I do fake, that's gross.

That's blasphemy, that's a sin, oh.

That's weird, you guys have a fire hazard in your house and you have to go buy one from out lot somewhere. What do you mean?

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? 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.

Hold, nobody 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.

I think you lose because you don't get the fragrance. That's fake.

If you have a fake tree, you can fake the fragrance. No, you cannot. No, no, if you have a fake tree, you're just saying, I don't want to live life.

I hate that, I agree, but I agree, and this is like the S'mores thing. Yeah, when you're right, you're right.

I'm not right a lot, I mean, I'm in the upper 90s, but when I am right, which is 98 99 of the time, I am so right. It'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 it? Where did you buy the tree target?

Home Depot.

Oh, my god. Oh, that's a nice tradition.

It's not 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? What a waste of a tree. You know what makes me sad? The Armenians are the oldest Christians.

They are, we are, we're the oldest Christian nation. 301 a.d.

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.

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 smitten and smitten. And God chased Abel because Abel had a tree that was made from home. Depot. I don't care, out of rubber and steel, don't you remember?

Sorry, I didn't know that.

Wrong soft g oh.

I didn't know that the Bible mentioned Home Depot.

Where'd you get the hard G Home Depot?

I really do, too, and they're very pretty.

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Are there even that many hours?

Yes, there are, if you wait 196 hours, that's as many hours as there are.

This thing's got a ruler on it, which I assume is for measuring the fish you catch.

Yep, it has ruler marks on the lid to make it easy to measure your fish when you're fishing. Oh, hey, yep.

They're easy and comfortable.

Well, you know what's nice, a chair that's this comfortable, but then when you're done with it, you just pack it up, you take it with you. Unheard of, unheard of.

I know it's really nice and it's comfortable, these chairs are really comfortable.

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Christmas Tree Lane.

I know, but what I mean besides that, do you all?

Well, the lighting of Christmas Tree Lane is really fun.

Does it happen at a certain moment?

Yeah, it happens. 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 and it's so cool.

But there are hours it's like closed at certain points, you know?

It's on all the time.

Hey, 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 L.A. and then it was like, insane.

I love it, I love it when it's cold.

And it snowed here at one point.

That's great, that would make me happy. I love snow, I don't need it.

I don't need it, you have to shovel, you want to shovel snow.

No one shovels snow in L.A. You wait 10 minutes and it goes away.

Yeah, but when you, like, lived in snow, did you have to shovel it? was 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.

People shovel their snow now. I mean, I'm just saying, I didn't know, 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? do you do you? Are you alive?

What I do, I'm in my, 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?

I was going to say, you're turning into Mr. Burns.

You are becoming it. 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.

And you go to the garage.

See, this is where I criticize, Sona she. This is where you criticize me. Hold on, listen, you.

Who have been some in the past?

Well, Chad, Michael Murray.

You had his name teed up.

It wasn't teed up. The guy I come down every year and he's putting 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.

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 never googled them, why do you have their poster up in your office? I 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 Sona, Sona, get me that poster, thinking you never would.

What do you mean? You don't know why you had that. That sounds very much like you.

But then the thing that really always killed me was people would come in and go, what the?

Where did you get it, Sona?

She just went to the Warner Brothers.

Yeah, because it's a Warner Brothers show. And if you just say, Hey, Conan wants a poster of one Tree Hill, they're like, Okay, and then they just send it to you. But I also realized he said that about every poster we walked by, and I didn't realize he was joking.

Oh, he was joking. And there are posters of shows that you've forgotten about from a long time ago, like Kleppler's way, you know, you're like Kleppler's way. There's a bunch of people looking real intense, standing around.

So I got him a One Tree Hill poster.

Yeah, and it was in my office. I don't even, and you know what, but I still have it because everything goes into storage.

Theirs is like, basically a closet, yeah, that's what I heard is that it's like all of their clothes and bags and stuff. 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.

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, yeah, 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.

That's nice, it's nice that you kept that stuff.

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.

It is really nice here, it's quiet.

I should come up here more often, you should.

No, you won't.

And you know what, your kids were happy to see me.

My kids really love you a lot.

They said, Uncle Coco, Uncle Coco.

I know they actually really like you and they were excited that you were coming over today, yeah.

Did you tell them I was coming? I did, yeah, they showed me their bedroom.

Yeah, they did, they were really excited to show. We already talked about it.

They have a monkey in there, a stuffed monkey. I said, What's its name? and they said, monkey. That kind of bummed me out a bit.

Yeah, they don't have names.

I said, What's the name of the monkey? and they said, Monkey, Charlie has a fox, and I just got sad.

And it's called Fox. He's got a raccoon.

And it's called raccoon.

My daughter does that too, but she doubles it. You go like, what's this alligator called? alley, alley, or monkey, monkey or something?

Well, sometimes my boys will go Armenian, so Mikey has bears and he calls them Archukhs. So they're bilingual. It's not a big deal, my kids, they're bilingual.

It's almost, you know, English is sort of stressed. That's the important thing.

It's the important thing.

Well, just make sure that it's stressed.

Were you recording when? He said, That's the important thing?

No, I'm just saying.

Oh, you're just saying.

Geography, you know, listen, what is it?

The birds really don't like you.

Crows Yeah.

Yeah, those crows, crows well.

Did that anger you with the birds? Does that make you upset that they're loud while you're trying to talk?

It doesn't anger me, and this is true, and my brother Neal's the same way. When a bird in a distance crows or caws, we think it's really funny. I don't know why.

I think they're just trying to mate with each other.

Oh well, yeah, trying to get it done.

Get it done.

Get her done all right. Well, I think that's a really good note to go out on, he said, untruthfully. The important thing we learned here is that. Chad Michael Murray puts up the lights on the Christmas tree that William Morris endeavor places in my home.

God bless us everyone.

God bless us everyone from Altadena, this is Pasadena saying goodnight.

Summer S'Mores with Conan O'Brien, Sona Movsesian and Matt Gorley produced by M.e. Matt Gorley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs. Nick Liao and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.