It is so important to maintain contact with your loved ones during times of isolation, and last night Conan O’Brien modeled that wisdom by checking in on his “surrogate son,†comedian Chris Gethard (you can really see the resemblance). A consummate New Yorker, Gethard lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, “about two blocks from Elmhurst Hospital,†which means his neighborhood has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus pandemic. So Gethard tells O’Brien that he, his wife, and their 1-year-old son moved in with his mother-in-law and her dog “in a very, very small house in upstate New York.†Although it’s far from the city, the house is not without its dangers. Gethard explains that now that his son can walk, he’s getting into all kinds of peril: “There’s like a lazy-Susan cabinet, and he knows how to open it and climb inside and then shift to the back of the lazy Susan where I can’t remove him.â€
When he’s not trying to dig his baby out from behind a rotating condiment shelf, Gethard is taking commissions on Cameo to film videos for fans — but mostly for one fan, named Randy, in Gainesville, Florida. Randy contracted the coronavirus, recovered from the coronavirus, and got engaged to his girlfriend, Jessica, all in the span of the past two months, which prompted about a dozen Cameo greetings. Gethard charges $35 a pop because “this is very egotistical, but I found another comedian who I think is good, but I was at 25 and they were at 35 and I was like, They’re not $10 better … They’re great! They’re someone I like, but they ain’t $10 better than me. I’m much more experienced.†O’Brien is mostly hung up on the callowness of charging a fee to send get-well messages to a sick fan, but hey, as Gethard puts it to O’Brien, “Your show is still on the air. Mine got canceled.†Even though Gethard quips that “I’m a guy exploiting pain on Cameo,†we can see right through his charade, especially when he asks viewers to donate to a GoFundMe providing meals for hospital staff at Elmhurst.