Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Late Night with Conan O'Brien first aired on September 13, 1993. I'm not sure when I first tuned in, but it must have been shortly after that, and it hooked me immediately. It appealed to me in ways David Letterman and Jay Leno did not. The dynamic between Andy Richter, Max Weinberg, and Conan, along with the strange skits that felt more like the odd, hallucinatory sketches from The Kids in the Hall than those of his late-night rivals, sucked me in. I raved about it to my friends who were much more interested in David Letterman. Leno was not cool to many of us because his jokes never felt like they were for us. Letterman was hipper because of his biting satire and relatability, while the newcomer Conan was tentative and unsure of himself as a host. His self-deprecating jabs and vulnerability gave him a different type of comedic edge that appealed to the underdog and the also-ran. I started taping my favorite skits and showing them to friends. I have hours of VHS tape of Conan...

It's fall again, so that means that the music around here slows down and gets decidedly folky, if not more rootsy. That's not to say there isn't plenty of metal and rock and roll on the playlist, but some of the slower songs get priority. Hayden's Everything I Long For is one of those singer-songwriter records that pulses anew on each listen. His simple guitar playing and everyman gruff vocals lend a veracity to his simple tales of love, loss, and boredom. While he has grown as a songwriter since its 1995 release date, the simple power of his unadorned vocals and aching lyrical approach make Everything one of his greatest artistic statements. His song craft has improved, but he has never bettered the album's timeless exploration of pain. Many people remember the single "Bad As They Seem," which put the Canadian singer on the map, an exploration of the narrator's hopeless unrequited love for the women he can't ever date -- a sixteen year old gir...