Conan O'Brien, at right, about to get a beatdown

Doctors at University Hospital in Newark were scrambling to treat Conan O’Brien after the Tonight Show host was stabbed, shot and beaten, but were unsure whether a bus ticket to Topeka would be enough to save him.

“Medicine has come a long way…in other cities,” emergency room physician Max Rapapport said at a news conference. “Unfortunately for Mr. O’Brien, our options are limited here. We thought about giving him a bus ticket to Pittsburgh, but in the end, it was clear a trip to Topeka was warranted.”

O’Brien ran into problems after cracking a joke about the city to a group of residents on Irvine Turner Boulevard. They promptly attacked him.

“Is that all you’ve got?” O’Brien quipped after someone in the crowd on the street knifed him in the back. “My 3-year-old son gives me worse when I try to put him down for a nap.”

Witnesses said a 3-year-old boy then pulled out a Glock .40mm and shot O’Brien several times. Stray bullets also killed two bystanders.

“Okay, that stung a little, but still,” the comedian countered. “And who nicknames a place Brick City? Oooh, I’d like to live in aluminum siding city!”

“That’s when someone threw a brick that hit Conan upside the head,” one resident said. “After he went down on the sidewalk, everyone lined up single-file to kick him in the ribs. It was very orderly.”

Through an NBC spokesman in Hollywood, Tonight Show sidekick Andy Richter said, “Newark is a great city. Don’t forget to watch tomorrow night as I host what will be a great show! my show. Finally!”

Bob's Silencer-Mart doing a brisk business

Bob Kraus isn’t crazy about the government with all its power and rules and secretly implanting chips in people’s brains. But the owner of Bob’s Silencer-Mart in Greenbrook is thankful police in Newark and other New Jersey cities have been installing costly gunshot detection systems.

“I tell you, business hasn’t been this good since the mob wars of the 1970s,” Kraus said recently between ringing up sales at his store on Route 22. “So even though I don’t like those socialists snooping on citizens like they are, my sales are up 200 percent. And that means Daddy’s finally gonna be able to expand his survival bunker.

“My wife will be happy to hear there might now be room for her. Or my ham radio equipment. We’ll see.”

The Newark gunshot detection system, a network of sensors installed on buildings throughout the city, must be calibrated initially to exclude certain sounds that resemble gunshots, police said.

“For example, right now the system will still alert on Officer Power’s bodily functions,” Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy said in explaining the process. “In time, we’re confident we won’t be dispatching the SWAT team every time he has tacos for lunch.”

At Silencer-Mart, Kraus has been running a buy 2, get 1 free unadvertised special on his products. Sales have been brisk on silencers for .22 caliber pistols, 9mm pistols, .45 caliber handguns, MP5 rifles and AR-15 assault rifle, he said.

“I accept all major credit cards, but most of my customers insist on paying cash,” he said. “That’s fine even though it’s fiat money. I convert it all to gold anyway for when our society finally collapses, which according to my calculations should be sometime in May.”

Customers shopping at Silencer-Mart said they were merely trying to help the environment by cutting down on noise pollution.

“I’ve got a baby at home. I can’t be shooting loud guns off every time someone won’t be quiet outside or takes my parking space or looks at me, you know, funny,” Al Jackson of Newark said while pushing a cart loaded with about two dozen silencers. “This stuff is a win-win. The cops get to say their gun shot incidents went down because of some new fangled system. My baby gets to sleep. And I get to fire my guns as much as I damn well please.”

The platform where it almost happened

During a ceremony at City Hall, Newark Mayor Cory Booker recognized a security guard whose quick-thinking and decisive action prevented an inebriated amateur from talking to a very attractive woman at the PATH.

Tyrell Procter was on duty at Penn Station in Newark at about 1:15 a.m. last Saturday when he said he noticed Matthew Saltzmann stumbling as he wandered up and down the platform while waiting for the next PATH train to arrive. Saltzmann kept glancing at another waiting rider, a tall blonde with striking blue eyes who was reading Jane Austen, Procter said.

“I’ve seen that move a thousand times before, the I-hope-to-catch-her-attention-by-repeatedly-walking-in-front-of-her move,” Procter said at the event to honor him. “But nobody is ever dumb enough to actually try to talk to the woman! Come on, that’s suicide.”

Apparently not for Saltzmann, a 22-year-old Jersey City resident who is studying to become a podiatrist and who recently was dumped by his first real girlfriend. Police said Saltzmann attended a Devil’s hockey game at the Prudential Center and then spent several hours drinking Miller Lite at the Trax Bar in the train station before heading up to the platform.

“He was a little wobbly and I thought he was just going to keep doing his walk-bys until the train came,” Procter said. “But then, after like the 17^th time, he stopped right in front of her and lifted his finger up like he was going to say something. I was like, ‘Oh crap!’ and just reacted.”

The mayor branded Procter a hero and said the security guard, who the previous night had been vomited on by a drunken stock broker, acted with obvious disregard for his own safety. Procter is only about 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 145 pounds, while Saltzmann stands at least 6-1 and is 100 pounds heavier.

“Mr. Procter could have stood by and watched. That would have the most prudent, and perhaps entertaining, thing to do,” Booker said. “But he did what few of us would have. He stepped in when the danger to Mr. Saltzmann’s fragile ego was highest.”

Said Procter’s wife: “I found out what happened on the PATH station from my husband. He called me at 2 a.m. to say, ‘Something just happened to me. I saved a man who tried to talk with a woman who was out of his league.’ I was not surprised. That’s the type of man he is.”

Booker also presented Procter with a key to the city, which Procter used later that night to get into the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and have a party with his friends.