First lady Michelle Obama cajoled Jay Leno into nibbling on apples, sweet potato fries and a pizza made with eggplant, green peppers and zucchini on the “Tonight Show,” breaking his long-held aversion for all-things-healthy in his diet.

Leno once told a magazine he hadn’t eaten a vegetable since 1969, and he insisted he tasted his last apple in 1984. That didn’t dissuade the first lady, who’s promoting her “Let’s Move!” campaign to get kids excited about fitness and healthy eating habits.

Earlier, Obama poked at him in a Twitter post, hinting she’d “get Jay to eat some veggies” on the NBC show.

He did.

“That does smell very good. I assume this is sausage-pepperoni,” the comedian quipped as he eyed the pizza made with a whole-wheat crust.

She convinced Leno to dip an apple in honey made from beehives in the White House garden: “It will help it go down easier,” she assured him.

“White House honey? That sounds bad,” Leno told her. “You know, with a different president that could mean a whole different thing, ‘a little White House honey.’”

The first lady is on a two-day swing through California where she’ll promote her initiative while attending two events to help Democrats raise money for the upcoming elections.

She told Leno she’s not doing anything special to prepare for what’s expected to be a tough re-election campaign for her husband, President Barack Obama.

“You know, there’s really no way to mentally prepare for it. You take each day as it comes,” she said.

Republican Mitt Romney has been ridiculing the White House and might face the president in November, but the first lady graded the former Massachusetts governor’s singing voice with something like a sly endorsement. Romney surprised supporters in Florida with an on-pitch version of “America the Beautiful” on Monday, and Leno asked the first lady for her opinion.

“It’s beautiful,” she said after a pregnant pause, with a laugh and raised eyebrows. “And it is America’s song, and it’s a song that’s meant to be sung by every American,” the first lady said in a taped appearance for the NBC show.

Leno told her, “That is right, regardless of political affiliation.”

But she swooned over her husband’s singing — Obama took a brief turn as a soul singer earlier this month at a New York fundraiser, crooning a bar from an Al Green classic. She says he does a little Marvin Gay, too.

“He does have a beautiful voice, and he sings to me all the time,” she told Leno.

A Muslim militant has urged American followers to assassinate talk show host David Letterman, saying his tongue deserved to be cut out, a U.S. intelligence monitoring group said on Wednesday.

The SITE intelligence group said the death threat was posted on an online website used by militants after the writer became upset by a joke Letterman made about the death of a leading member of al Qaeda killed in an air strike in Pakistan.

The militant called on Muslims in the United States to “cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever,” the threat against Letterman said, according to a translation by SITE. The popular late-night television host is not Jewish.

The FBI said it was taking the threat seriously.

The writer was angered by watching Letterman on his show drawing his finger across his neck while talking about the June death of senior al Qaeda figure Ilyas Kashmiri.

The message was posted on the website Shumukh al-Islam. SITE analyst Adam Raisman told Entertainment Weekly the website was “a clearing house for al Qaeda material” and drew supporters of the group headed by the late Osama bin Laden.

Executives at broadcaster CBS and a spokesman for Letterman declined on Wednesday to comment on the threat.

Tim Flannelly, an FBI spokesman in New York, said the agency was looking into the matter.

“The FBI takes all threats seriously and we will run it down like we do all threats,” Flannelly said.

A Muslim group in 2010 threatened the makers of “South Park” after the animated satirical show depicted the Prophet Mohammad in a bear suit. Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam as offensive.

A 21-year old man from Virginia was sentenced in February to 25 years in prison for publishing the home addresses of the “South Park” creators and urging readers to pay them a visit, as well as trying to help a Somali militant group.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Peter Cooney)

Martorano, who is known for his South Philly style and his heavily muscled physique as much as his cooking, will be promoting his new book, Yo Cuz! My Life, My Food, My Way, along with his Internet-based cooking show, Yo Cuz: The Italian-American Cook.

But another late-night host who briefly wore the “Tonight Show” crown, Conan O’Brien, got a warm Emmy reception for his first season as a cable guy.

“Conan,” which premiered last November on TBS, scored four Emmy Award nominations. These include outstanding variety, music or comedy series, as well as a best writing nod, and a nomination for outstanding lighting.

Team Coco even snagged an Emmy nomination for outstanding commercial — the epic American Express promo that found Conan journeying to India in preparation for his new show (an ad that has since been viewed 2.5 million times on YouTube).

But Leno’s Emmy neglect isn’t quite as embarrassing as last year. Then, both versions of NBC’s late-night institution — Conan’s and Jay’s — would have qualified for Emmys. “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” was nominated for best series and best writing. “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” came up dry. It won in 1995.

Hip-hop band the Roots have given Jimmy Fallon a boost as the house band on his late-night TV show. And he’s returning the favor.

Fallon will host the group’s seventh annual “Roots Jam Session” on Feb. 12 in Hollywood. The musical event, which features live performances from artists of various genres, is on the eve of the 53rd annual Grammy Awards, and the Roots is up for six awards, including best rap album for “How I Got Over.” The other five nominations come from the Philadelphia-based band’s collaborative album with John Legend, the critically acclaimed “Wake Up!”

Past “Jam Session” hosts include Legend, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Dave Chappelle. Performers have yet to be announced.

O’Brien told reporters Wednesday that he and Letterman have “always been good. I said he didn’t owe me a phone call, but I appreciated it.”

O’Brien wouldn’t be so receptive to a call from Jay Leno, who preceded and replaced him as “Tonight” show host.

He says the reason is no mystery, noting, “We all know the story.”

O’Brien’s new TBS show, called “Conan,” began in November. He says the past year’s upheaval has left him more willing to take chances onstage.

But he acknowledged some sadness at no longer being part of NBC.

He says, “That company meant a lot to me.”

At the end of the monologue on NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” the New York-based host showed viewers a photo of the present he had sent to Ferguson — a “beautiful, top-notch Christmas sweater” (in Fallon’s words) accented with both his face and Ferguson’s against a Christmas ornament.

“He’s over at CBS in L.A. and I know how cold it gets at night there,” Fallon explained.

What had Ferguson given in return? Under his desk, Fallon found a large gift box containing two kittens named Regis and Kelly.

At almost the same moment on CBS’ “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” its host was eagerly unwrapping the box that contained the sweater from Fallon.

“Oh, I know you’re like, ‘Craig, you’re crazy, he’s your direct competitor, you can’t say how great Jimmy is,’” cracked Ferguson, “but everybody knows it: Jimmy is awesome. … Everybody knows Jimmy Fallon is the best knitter in show business.”

Before launching into another of his one-man dialogues, Ferguson alerted viewers to the gift he had sent to Fallon.

“He should get it tonight. ‘You mean on his show, which is in direct competition with yours, Craig?’ Yes. ‘Craig, you’re confusing us, what should we do?’ I don’t know. I’m not your parents!”

The transcontinental, cross-network gift swap was the latest comic stunt bonding these rivals in the 12:35 a.m. (Eastern) hour.

In the past, they engaged in a food fight with spaghetti and waved at each other with giant novelty Mickey Mouse hands.

“I can’t think of someone I’d rather be against this time of night,” said Ferguson on Thursday with a naughty look. “I love being against you after midnight, Jimmy!”

So there’s peace and goodwill among these men.

But Ferguson added, “For all those media hacks that like to poke the hornet’s nest and say there’s a late-night war — go right ahead!”

Conan O'Brien, right, and Andy Richter perform during the debut of his new TBS show "Conan" on Monday, Nov. 8, 2010. (AP photo)

NEW YORK (AP) — Conan O’Brien relaunched his TV career on Monday night with a stylishly back-to-basics hour that radiated hard-won lessons from his brief stay hosting “The Tonight Show.”

With his new TBS show titled simply “Conan,” O’Brien seemed appealingly stoked yet comfortable in his new home at 11 p.m. ET and on basic cable, originating from a sleek, cozy set with a full moon poised on a seaside backdrop.

If there were very few surprises on the premiere, well, how could there have been after the incessant online hype and all the press attention showered on his much-anticipated return? Besides, O’Brien was back with his longtime sidekick Andy Richter and most of his trusty house band members, now led by Jimmy Vivino (and renamed The Basic Cable Band).

Even O’Brien’s post-”Tonight Show” beard seems familiar by now.

But what’s important is, the show lived up to its promises. As promised, it was looser, quirkier, more like “Late Night,” where O’Brien thrived for nearly 16 years, than the mainstream “Tonight Show,” where he didn’t.

“Conan” opened with a funny look back at O’Brien’s tumultuous year after he refused NBC’s bid to move “Tonight” to 12:05 a.m.

He was mowed down by machine-gun-toting NBC hit men at a security booth, a la Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather.” He applied for a job in advertising and was turned down by Don Draper (“Mad Men” star Jon Hamm), who brusquely reminded him, “It’s 1965 — and you’re 2 years old.” From behind the counter at a Burger King, he reminisced to an impatient customer about his talk-show past.

Likewise, his monologue mined laughs from recent history, which found him leaving “Tonight” in January after just eight months, with Jay Leno reclaiming the host chair.

O’Brien welcomed viewers to his “second annual first show” and explained why he named the new show “Conan”: “So I’d be harder to replace.”

He acknowledged that “it’s not easy doing a late-night show on a channel without a lot of money and that viewers have trouble finding. So that’s why I left NBC.”

He boasted that his new show is already scoring “in TBS’ key demographic: people who can’t afford HBO.”

And he insisted, “I’ve dreamed of being a talk-show host on basic cable ever since I was 46.” He’s now 47.

O’Brien rocked out, singing and playing guitar alongside his musical guest, Jack White.

Before that, his first couch guest was Seth Rogen, who had a lot to say about marijuana and could have used some to calm down.

Then O’Brien greeted “Glee” star Lea Michele, who made a slightly more engaging appearance.

He asked her about GQ magazine’s racy layout of “Glee” cast members. Then, for “Glee” fans who were offended by the high-school-themed photos, the ever-self-deprecating O’Brien offered a way to make the steamy photo of Michele seem less hot: Insert a vintage image of him from high school beside her in the shot.

But as they chatted, a thud interrupted them from backstage.

“Basic cable,” O’Brien explained with a shrug. “There’s a Meineke muffler shop right behind us.”

The audience applauded.

“He’s making the best of it,” O’Brien said of himself.

Conan was back, with the rest of Team Coco. How he will fare in the long term — and how long he relies on basic-cable jokes — remains to be seen.

Anyway, American Express decided to spend a little money for a new ad running concurrently with the premiere — giving the tall redheaded host $1 million and shooting it in India.

The good news is that it’s pretty darn funny:

(Link courtesy the Wall Street Journal, via Fark.)

O’Brien says he wanted an intimate atmosphere for his late-night TBS show, which launches 11 p.m. EST Monday. At NBC’s “Tonight Show,” he was given a large studio that held more than 300 people. For “Conan,” O’Brien is holding court in a smaller, 250-seat house and will stand about a dozen feet away from the audience during his opening monologue.

“I really want to be able to walk over and touch people, which probably I’m going to get in trouble for. I’m finding out through my lawyers that not everybody likes that,” O’Brien joked.

It was his post-”Tonight” comedy and music tour that pointed him toward a smaller set, one that evokes the atmosphere of theater spaces in which he played nationally, O’Brien said. The audience seats are on a sharper rake, or slant, than usual to add to the studio’s theater ambiance.

“I really like the feeling of a theater and I liked the sense that the show had a ‘this is happening right now feel,’” O’Brien said. “Sometimes in television you can get separated from the audience, there can be a distance, kind of a ‘you all just sit back and be quiet while I do my thing.’”

Otherwise, the Warner Bros. studio is decorated talk-show traditional, with a desk for O’Brien and sofa for his guests. The set is clean and simple, with the dominant feature a nighttime seascape depicting the California coast under the glow of a full moon.

In a flip-flop from “Tonight,” the “Conan” show house band will be to O’Brien’s right, with guest musicians performing to his left.

The studio, with adjoining dressing rooms for O’Brien, sidekick Andy Richter and the show’s guests, was built in three months, Drew Shane, a spokesman for the show, said. That’s in contrast to the lengthy and costly construction for O’Brien’s “Tonight” studio that he used for a mere seven months.

He left the show rather than move his time slot back a half hour to allow Jay Leno to return to late-night after Leno’s prime-time comedy venture flopped.

Stage 15 has a long history, starting with “Golddiggers of 1935.” It’s also where the 1976 “A Star Is Born” with Barbra Streisand was shot, as well as “All the President’s Men” and “Ocean’s Eleven.”

For “Conan,” the Monday debut guests will be Seth Rogen, Lea Michele and Jack White.

They performed a medley of rap hits on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” Wednesday night, and the clip is becoming a viral hit.

Fallon and Timberlake started off with Sugarhill Gang’s classic “Rapper’s Delight” and then performed jams from artists including the Beastie Boys, the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and Eminem.

Fallon, 36, said he’s surprised by the success of the skit.

“We never know what’s going to viral or get picked up, and this one’s beyond what we thought it would do,” he said Thursday in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

(See the clip after the jump.)

Though the clip looks all fun, he said, he took the time to get it right before taking the stage.

“You know I really needed to practice. You know I can’t rap,” said Fallon, who also performed songs by Missy Elliott, Tupac, Kanye West and Snoop Dogg. “I was in my apartment till 2 in the morning the night before doing (the) Soulja Boy (dance) and my wife was like, ‘You’re crazy!’”

Though Fallon needed to rehearse, he said, Timberlake was obviously a natural: “(He) knew all of his parts, all his rhythm was amazing, so much better than mine. Mine was so bad, my gosh, (I thought), ‘I’m going to screw this up,’” Fallon said.

The performance was backed by the house band for the NBC show, the Grammy-winning hip-hop group The Roots. Fallon said that much of the success goes to the rap band and that the skit was a homage to today’s generation.

“The thing that makes our show kind of different is that we embrace hip-hop. … We’re that generation where hip-hop is what we grew on,” Fallon said.

He also said that office morale is at a high: “Everyone’s so smiley and running around the office like very confident today, because everyone sees the blogs and gets the e-mails. It just puts everyone in a great mood.”

Jay Leno's numbers are worse in many respects than Conan O'Brien's at this time last year. (Leno photo Olivier Douliery/Getty Images; O'Brien photo Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Jay Leno is finding out right now that no one’s really doing too well in late night anymore.

The Tonight Show With Jay Leno is currently doing worse among adults 18-49 than his ousted predecessor, Conan O’Brien, did last year at this time.

In fact, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Leno’s summer ratings are the worst for The Tonight Show on record.

That said, Leno is still doing better than his top rival, CBS’ Late Show With David Letterman, by 22 percent, the Reporter wrote.

City Department of Correction records show Robert “Joe” Halderman was released Thursday. He served four months of his six-month sentence and got time off for good behavior.

The former CBS News producer admitted he demanded $2 million in hush money last fall to keep from revealing personal information about Letterman. The case spurred the “Late Show” host to reveal on-air that he’d had sex with women on his staff.

Halderman’s lawyer says his client is glad to put jail behind him and is looking for work. Meanwhile, he has to complete 1,000 hours of community service.

Conan O’Brien took the simple approach Wednesday in announcing the name of his new talk show on TBS.

“Conan” will kick off Nov. 8.

He posted a YouTube video announcing the show’s name to his fans. He scrawled the name on a white sheet of paper using a black marking pen.

O’Brien has finished a comedy concert tour. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his short-lived stint as NBC “Tonight” show host that ended amid much drama in January, but lost to Jon Stewart and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

King said he will do occasional specials for CNN. He marked his 25th anniversary on the air this month and takes pride in a Guinness Book of World Records citation for hosting the longest-running show on the same network in the same time slot.

The longtime radio host was a pioneer in cable television. From the first show where he interviewed then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, King’s desk was considered a valued spot for anyone interested in talking to the nation. King’s interview style was plain-spoken and critics would suggest occasionally ill-prepared, but he was good at making his guests feel comfortable.

“He lured so many people to this new frontier of cable back before anybody understood what it was all about,” said CNN U.S. President Jon Klein, who called King a “living, breathing Hall of Famer who is still doing the work.”

King said he felt no pressure from CNN to leave. He said he began thinking about stepping down as his 25th anniversary week ended earlier this month, on the airplane home after interviewing basketball star LeBron James. During that week, he also spoke to Bill Gates, President Barack Obama and Lady Gaga – an apt example of the mix that he always sought on his show.

“I said, `I can’t top this,’” King said in an interview Tuesday.

“I’m tired of the nightly grind,” he said. “I do want to do other things but I want to stay at CNN in some way … There’s a case of great mixed emotions.”

King told his staff during a conference call Tuesday that he called “one of the saddest 10 minutes of my life.”

CNN is in the midst of remaking its prime-time lineup and last week announced that former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and conservative columnist Kathleen Parker would co-host an 8 p.m. EDT show on politics and current events.

The network will now begin concentrating on potential successors. Klein said he wanted to continue with provocative newsmaker interviews in the time slot.

“Nobody else does it,” he said. “It’s an important tool in the arsenal and we want to keep it going.”

CBS News anchor Katie Couric has long been considered a potential successor, given her interviewing skills. That talk has cooled lately with suggestions that Couric may be reluctant to take responsibility for another network with ratings troubles; Klein would not discuss specific candidates. Recent published reports have suggested that “America’s Got Talent” judge Piers Morgan could be a candidate. King said if it were up to him, Ryan Seacrest would be the best choice to fill his shoes.

As cable news audiences gravitated toward politically pointed shows and newsmakers found many more outlets for interviews in recent years, King slipped behind Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in the ratings. During his interview with Lady Gaga, the 76-year-old broadcast veteran had people wondering if he was really connecting with a pop star a half century his junior.

King got some sympathy from comic Bill Maher, invited as a guest on “Larry King Live” on Tuesday specifically to be there on the night of the announcement.

“I heard people say Larry didn’t understand Lady Gaga,” Maher said. “Who understands Lady Gaga?”

King estimated he’s conducted some 50,000 interviews during a 53-year broadcasting career. He said he always tried to ask short questions and to never come in with an agenda. “I left my ego at the door,” he said.

“I never learned a thing while I was talking,” he said. “That would be my motto.”

He dismissed a series of stories this spring questioning his future and speculating about possible successors.

“You can’t worry about things you can’t control,” he said. “I can’t control if a newspaper is going to speculate about something or if a blog is going to speculate … If I let it get me, I’ll go nuts. So what I try to do, and I’m not being morbid, I just try to do the best show I can. If it works, it works.”

King said he was able to see the baseball all-star games of his sons this weekend. If it was during the week, he’d miss them.

“I’m never going to see these again,” he said. “They’re not going to repeat themselves. They’re 11 and 10. They’re not going to be 11 and 10 again.”

Besides work with CNN, King said he’d also be interested in working in comedy.

“I think I speak for a lot of people in America that I will miss you terribly at this hour,” Maher said on the show.

Seth Rogen visits Jimmy Kimmel Live on the show Kimmel filmed on his laptop.

The picture was fuzzy. The sound was tinny. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was less like a broadcast than a webcast.

No wonder.

“We’re having a technical problem tonight, so I decided to do the whole show from my computer,” Kimmel explained at the top of the hour in his office, one hand holding his laptop as he aimed its built-in webcam at himself.

Who needs expensive TV cameras, a fancy control room or high-tech recording gadgetry?

Not Kimmel, when faced with a power outage right before show time. For Tuesday’s edition, the resourceful TV host turned his chat show into iChat.

Walking on stage toting his laptop with him, he pivoted the webcam to display his cheering studio audience.

(See video from the show after the jump.)

“Can’t we just plug into whatever that beacon is, right there?” he asked, pointing to the bright studio lights.

Alas, no. The lights worked fine, but the outage had shut down the control room, broadcast transmission center and tape operations area at Kimmel’s Hollywood studio. Things had gone on the fritz Monday shortly before the ABC late-night show was scheduled to begin taping.

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” he said more than once, appearing genuinely perplexed.

But it did, in a goofy, amateur-hour, show-must-go-on sort of way.

Even so, the unconventional production technique caused a day’s delay. A repeat episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” aired Monday. (The show airs weeknights at 12:05 a.m. EDT.)

Kimmel chatted up members of the audience in a bald effort to kill time.

“You see, we don’t need celebrities to do this show,” he joked.

But he had celebrities. Guests included film star Seth Rogen, comedian John Henson and country artist Dierks Bentley.

“Are we still on? Yeah, this is still working,” Kimmel said, apparently checking himself on his laptop screen in mid-interview with Rogen.

“Yeah, it’s working,” Rogen said. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

The audience cheered distortedly.

Postproduction was kept to a minimum. A clip from “The Green Hornet,” the film Rogen was plugging, was added later, with the studio audience deprived of so much as a glimpse.

“Not only will these people not be able to see it,” Kimmel cracked, “but they’re not allowed to come to the movie.”

Kimmel interviewed Henson, a co-host of the game show “Wipeout,” in his dressing room.

Back in the studio, Bentley and his band managed to fit into the webcam frame to perform a song.

“I promise nothing terrible like this will ever, ever happen again,” Kimmel told viewers as he signed off.

Of course, Kimmel isn’t the only late-night host to be plagued by (and to overcome) a technical glitch recently.

Last October, “Late Late Show” host Craig Ferguson had to finish taping his program by flashlight after high winds knocked out power at CBS Television City in Los Angeles. Studio lights began dimming and then suddenly went black as Ferguson was interviewing actress Alicia Silverstone, leaving both in the dark until the flashlight was switched on.

Show publicist Chelsea Hettrick says the lights went out Monday night about an hour before ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was set to begin taping at its Hollywood studio. She says the outage shut down the control room, broadcast transmission center and tape operations area.

Hettrick says as guests and a studio audience waited, Kimmel grabbed his laptop and recorded the entire show with his computer’s webcam.

Hettrick says guests Seth Rogen, John Henson and country artist Dierks Bentley were very accommodating in “going with what happened.”

There’s no word on what caused the outage.

The show will be broadcast on ABC Wednesday at 12:05 a.m. EDT/PDT.

Lisa Loeb plays for kids and their parents at Genius Jones in Boca Raton. (Taylor Jones / Palm Beach Post)

Photos: Lisa Loeb at Genius Jones, Boca Raton

Four-year-old Simone Spanbroek may not know the exact identity of the nice lady in the glasses and the khaki shorts who tuned her little purple guitar Friday afternoon. But her mother sure does.

“I love, love, love her!,” gushed Suzanne Spanbroek, of Boca Raton, as her daughter adorably showed off the bright instrument that singer Lisa Loeb had just handled at Genius Jones, a quirky children’s store in Boca’s Mizner Park shopping area. “I have since the early ’90s.”

Like many of the parents crowded between the pink Wonder Woman T-shirts, bright plastic kids chairs and the Michelle Obama action figures, Spanbroek fell in love with Loeb’s soft-spoken acoustic songbook, including “Stay (I Missed You)” from the “Reaiity Bites” soundtrack and “I Do,” while in college. And now that the singer and new mother is in town promoting the world premiere of her family musical “Camp Kappawanna” in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, her fans are introducing their kids to her.

“That’s one of the reasons I was insistent that she come,” Spanbroek said of Simone, as she cradled 4-month-old daughter Sara under her arm. “She was like ‘It’s hot! I don’t wanna!’ But we came.”

Simone and the other kids — as well as their adult escorts — seemed to be thrilled with the decision to come to hear Loeb, who charmed with fun songs from the play and from “Camp Lisa,” her 2008 album about her own experience in summer camps across her native Texas, including the whimsical, touching “Best Friend” and the delightfully tounge-twisty “Going Away.” Loeb says that the album includes original songs, traditional camp songs, and “counselor songs” that the older staff sang “that we thought they wrote, like ‘Love Is A Rose,’ which is really by Neil Young.”

While Loeb said that she had no real aim to write  what is traditionally considered children’s songs, she believes that the songs on “Camp Lisa” and from “Camp Kappawanna” will be hits with both parents and kids.

“Camp played a big part in my musical development, because that’s where I started playing the guitar in front of other people, and because of the musical variety of the songs there,” said Loeb, 42, who, with husband Roey Hershkovitz, the musical director of “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” welcomed daughter Lyla Rose last fall.

“I would love to enjoy the same music that my daughter enjoys. I can only speak from six and a half months of experience, but I know that a lot of  music (for children) is repetitive, and you want to enjoy it if you have to hear it 7,000 times. There are books I like, like ‘The Color Kittens,’ that we read almost everything night,” she continued. “And then there’s this toy monkey that plays a song that nobody can tell what it is every time the baby touches it, that is going to drive us insane.”

Like every good musician (and every good parent), Loeb is gifted with the ability to improvise – She took a request from a young fan of the song “Little Red Caboose” from her “Catch The Moon” album, and shared the spotlight with 7-year-old Max Diaz of Sunrise as they sang and pantomimed the “Peanut Butter and Jelly Song,” complete with sandwich eating motions.

“First you take the grapes and you squish ‘em, you squish ‘em,” Loeb and Max sang.

“No you don’t!” yelled a small, adorable heckler, perhaps offended  by the gleeful messiness of the song. But Loeb and Max sang on. His father, Rob Diaz, who brought along wife Liz and older son Shane, 11, said he was thrilled to be able to follow along the same life stages as Loeb, one of his favorites from college – “I’m a big fan,” he said. “I started liking her in college, and now we all have kids and are doing the same stuff.”

Lisa Loeb’s “Camp Kappawanna,” written with Stephanie Norman and Marco Ramirez, is currently part of City Theatre’s summer season, at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami through June 27 and at the University School at Nova Southeastern University from July 1-3. For more information, go to Citytheatre.com.

In this image from video, made available by British newspaper News Of The World on Sunday May 23, 2010, shows Britain's Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson apparently offering to sell access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew in return for 500,000 pounds

Ferguson tells Winfrey that she’d seen snippets of the video in airports but had not “faced the devil in the face” by watching it in its entirety. But she says she could tell she’d been drinking and was “in the gutter at that moment.”

Ferguson has apologized for her lapse of judgment and has said she had financial problems.

And so it ends.

Today, those who were huge Lost fans are likely talking with their friends, catching up on the Internet to reactions, possibly trying to get through the day with six hours of sleep, less if you happened to stay up and watch the Jimmy Kimmel Live special like I did. (That’s right, kids, I am writing this on around five hours sleep. So if I slip off into a tangent on Mr. Ed, nod, smile and pat me on the head, OK?)

Anyway, reaction to the finale was — surprise! — mixed. As Alan Sepinwall of HitFix noted in his blog, if you thought the show was about character, like excutive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse did, chances are you liked it. If you were more focused on the mysteries and answering the questions, you probably hated it.

My opinion? I found it OK — not quite up to those high expectations, but certainly not a terrible final episode. The fight scene between Locke and Jack on the cliff might go down as one of the very best television scenes ever broadcast, at least as far as action goes. However, the last 10 minutes came off as a cheap finish — kind of dashed-off.

Now, the biggest problem I had with the show, personally, was the sheer amount of commercials ABC decided to show. Every eight minutes or so, we had an interruption, which absolutely killed the flow of the story. God help you if you TiVo’d this because your thumb will be sore when you’re done.

EW reported that Lost showed 45 minutes of commercials. That literally rivals Super Bowls.

In terms of ratings, the show actually didn’t break its own record, though it was the highest-rated episode in two years.

As for the show itself, let’s run down a few critical reactions:

• Orlando’s TV Guy, Hal Boedeker, called the finale a “stunner”.

• New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog calls out J.J. Abrams and Lindelof for flatly denying the purgatory angle.

• Los Angeles Times writer Mary McNamara savaged the finale, saying that it’d have been better off ending as a crazy dream Terry O’Quinn had.

• New York Times writer Mike Hale also slapped it around, although he did say it ended better than Life On Mars. (He’s referring to ABC’s Americanization, not the BBC version, and he’s right. That was one of the worst cop-out endings ever.)

• Gawker’s Defamer blog wasn’t kind either, saying we learned nothing from 2 1/2 hours.

• The Onion A/V Club’s Noel Murray had a similar verdict to mine, calling it strong but docking it for the final scene.

• Finally, EW’s Jeff “Doc” Jensen takes his first run at the series finale, though we can expect a full-blown, 14-web-page extravaganza in the coming days from him. (For me, “Doc” is the ultimate recapper for this show, delving way, WAY down deep into the rabbit hole. I wonder what he’ll do with his life now.)

Conan O'Brien talks with Steve Kroft of '60 Minutes' during the interview being broadcast Sunday. (CBS / AP)

In his first post-”Tonight” show interview, Conan O’Brien said that if he had been in Jay Leno’s shoes, he would not have taken back the show less than a year after publicly handing it off to someone else.

“That’s me, you know,” O’Brien told Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” in an interview to be broadcast Sunday, excerpts of which were released Thursday by CBS. “Everyone’s got their own way … of doing things.”

O’Brien, in the midst of a sold-out concert tour, said he decided to leave NBC because “this relationship is going to be toxic and maybe we just need to go our separate ways.”

It was the comic’s first interview about the late-night television drama that played out this winter.

He has since been hired by TBS, where he will launch a talk show in November.

In a transition laid out five years earlier, Leno left “Tonight” last year and O’Brien took over. NBC worried about losing Leno to a competitor so the network gave him a prime-time show five nights a week.

That failed on two fronts: affiliates objected to Leno’s low ratings and threatened to pull the show, and O’Brien’s poor “Tonight” show ratings enabled CBS’ David Letterman to surge ahead to first place.

NBC tried to please both comics by offering Leno a half-hour show at 11:35 p.m. and letting O’Brien keep the “Tonight” show name and begin a half hour later. O’Brien said no and Leno, who never wanted to leave “Tonight” in the first place, slipped back into his old home.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” O’Brien said.

Asked by Kroft what he would have done, O’Brien said, “Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that’s just me.”

O’Brien said he didn’t see the point in giving everything to a relationship with NBC that seemed to have no future.

“I’m not sure these people even really want me here,” he said.

During the few weeks between his public decision and actual exit, O’Brien became something of a folk hero. An Internet “Team Coco” tribe rose up to support him, and O’Brien’s ratings soared for shows with pointed jabs about his bosses.

NBC and a Leno spokesman had no comment about O’Brien’s statements.

His buyout by NBC forbade O’Brien from giving interviews that could be printed or telecast before May 1; the “60 Minutes” telecast will be May 2.

CBS’ release of the interview excerpts may be a technical violation of that deal, but “I don’t think we’re going to do anything about it at this point,” said Marc Graboff, chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios.

Days after starting it in Phoenix — with former sidekick Andy Richter, Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock and the awesome indie band Spoon — O’Brien was joined on stage by another celebrity guest.

During O’Brien’s cover of Five For Fighting’s Superman (It’s Not Easy) at his Los Angeles stop, the red-headed comic was joined by Jim Carrey, complete with Superman outfit.