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Late Night with Conan O'Brien

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Late Night with Conan O'Brien
File:Tv nbc Late Night with Conan O'Brien logo.png
StarringConan O'Brien
Andy Richter (1993-2000)
Country of originUnited States
No. of episodes2,182 (as of January 27 2006)
Production
Running time59 minutes per episode
Original release
NetworkNBC
Release1993 –
2009 (planned)

Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late night television talk show on NBC featuring varied comedic material and celebrity interviews. From the show's inception until May 2000, Conan O'Brien served as host with Andy Richter as his comedy sidekick. O'Brien is currently scheduled to leave Late Night in 2009 to take over The Tonight Show. There is great concern and speculation as to who will take over for Conan when he leaves in 2009.

Late Night has followed The Tonight Show on the NBC network since 1982. The Tonight Show has always had more viewers than Late Night. However, for most of its history, Late Night has had a stronger hold on the much-sought-after 25-to-35 age bracket than The Tonight Show, which tends to attract older viewers; however, under Jay Leno, The Tonight Show has come to have the biggest audience of any network late night talk show, including male viewers in the 25-49 age bracket.

On September 13 1993, O'Brien replaced David Letterman, long time host of the Late Night with David Letterman, when Letterman left NBC to host the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. Since Letterman's new program was similar to his NBC show, most sources consider O'Brien's program to be a new and separate entity, and only nominally (i.e., in name only) a continuation of Letterman's Late Night.

O'Brien's comic style was influenced greatly by the absurdist farce of Monty Python and the physical comedy and wild vocalizing of Robin Williams. Like his Late Night predecessor, David Letterman, O'Brien's humor also has a streak of biting sarcasm. O'Brien often playfully chides his audience for an underwhelming or overly enthusiastic response to his jokes.

The show's first three years under O'Brien were generally considered mediocre, but by 1996 he had found his comic voice and the show quickly returned to the cult status it had enjoyed under Letterman's tenure. During the 10th anniversary show in 2003, Mr. T observed that fact by handing Conan a chain with a large gold "7" on it:

Conan: But Mr. T, we've been on the air for ten years!
Mr. T: I know that, foo', but you only been funny for seven!

O'Brien began his stint at Late Night after serving as a writer for The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live. The show is a production of O'Brien's company, Conaco and Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video.

Conan poking fun at the show's new HDTV widescreen format.

O'Brien's show also launched the career of Robert Smigel's Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.

Joel Godard, a longtime announcer for NBC shows (including the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the annual Macy's Day Parade), has been the show's announcer and an occasional comedy contributor since O'Brien started hosting the show. Drummer Max Weinberg of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band fame leads the "Max Weinberg Seven"; in a parody of late-night chit-chat, the show gets plenty of comic mileage out of the perceived lack of chemistry between O'Brien and Weinberg.

Late Night began broadcasting in 1080i ATSC on April 26 2005, with a downscaled letterboxed NTSC simulcast. Conan celebrated the conversion to the widescreen HDTV format with jokes throughout the week.

On December 6, 2005 Late Night with Conan O'Brien segments began selling on the iTunes Music Store. Most segments were priced at $1.99, as were most episodes of other shows, with "special" best-of's and other longer segments priced at $9.99.

Famous sketches

File:Latenightabstract.jpg
One of the many bumpers shown right after the commercials on Late Night
  • Actual Items - Seemingly a parody of Jay Leno's Headlines segment on The Tonight Show (since it predates Leno's bit) in which Leno finds humorous mistakes in various newspapers. Conan's bit takes regular newspaper ads and stories and adds blatantly fake text, repeatedly insisting "these are real" and "you can't make this stuff up" while showing them. This was the first sketch on the first show in September of 1993.
  • Assassination - Conan invites a guest who supposedly is privy to an upcoming, well-kept secret, who suffers a simulated death before he can reveal what he knows. For example, shortly before the final episode of Seinfeld, an actor appearing on the show began talking about what the final episode would be about; a few words in, an assassin shoots him in the chest. On another occasion, Conan introduced a man who claimed to be a high-ranking executive with Coca-Cola, who was going to discuss the soda's secret ingredients. As the interview started, the "executive" fell dead after getting hit by shuriken, and a group of ninjas with the Coca-Cola logo on their backs were shown running away from the stage. These sketches haven't appeared on the show for several years.
  • Audience Interview - In this bit introduced in mid-2005, Conan says that because he's always interviewing famous celebrities, who endorse their latest movie/album/etc., he rarely gets an opportunity to talk to the audience, which he says he'd like to do. So, for a change of pace, he says he's going to go into the audience, pick out a random member, and ask them some basic question. However, the gag is that the audience member he "randomly" picks is always some random celebrity, who faithfully reveals him/herself when Conan asks what their name is, who always sits on the first seat immediately right of the aisle of the back row in the far righthand section. They also happen to still endorse some product, or even a standard "latest work" as well.
  • Awful Ballgame Chanter - Conan intros the bit by telling sports fans when at event to help the team they should try to start short & simple chants that everyone can say, and not be like this guy. Show writer Andy Blitz is then shown in the audience, and claps like a "Let's Go Yank-ees" chant, but tells a very long-winded story in the style of a chant that lasts several minutes, occasionally asking the audience to chant along when they have no idea what's coming next.
  • Car Chases - Conan explains that television shows' ratings go up when they cut to a car chase in action. He tells the audience that Late Night will begin doing this, however there are no car chases in Manhattan due to traffic congestion. So Late Night stages their own car chases using model houses and toy cars to replicate a car chase. The toy cars are pulled by thin cord as a camera gets a shot that looks like it might be from a helicopter.
The Michael Jackson Coverage - A special version of the Car Chases skit when Michael Jackson was found not guilty of child molestation on June 13 2005. Conan spoofed on him with coverage of him leaving his Neverland Ranch. Jackson was always the last car of the motorcade. He would often tow away a boy scout camp, a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant or even a playground. Sometimes, he would trade his motorcade car for an ice cream truck and stop at a school full of kids. Sometimes, even Jackson's family would be made fun of, like Tito's "Never Work Ranch." Other celebrities would also cameo, like Billy Joel, who recently crashed his car. This time, "Uptown Girl" was playing with his silver car. It then crashed into a building and caught on fire and blew up. The last skit was often shown at the credits.
  • Celebrity Secrets - Features celebrities of different genres (musicians, actors, etc.) in a jail cell, smoking a cigarette and downing hard liquor, usually telling some humorous "secret" that we did not know about them previously. For example, one featured Michael Caine saying "I was convinced that the 'MC' in MC Hammer's name stood for Michael Caine. When I found out it didn't I destroyed his career."
  • Celebrity Survey - This is where Conan supposedly sent out surveys to celebrities and he reads off their replies. Usually the first two read off are normal and expected. Then the 3rd is funny and often relates to some sort of scandal or movie the celebrity is known for. For example, to the question: "I like to think of my viewers as people who..." Brian Williams wrote "want to be informed," Meredith Viera wrote "want to be my friend," and Tony Danza wrote "have broken both arms and can't change the channel."
  • Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland - The premise of the skit began Late Night received many angry letters from viewers in Ukraine after mocking that nation in another recurring skit, New Euro Coins, where the joke was an image on a Ukrainian Euro Coin depicting a man in Eastern European dress with four arms, waving, with the caption on the coin saying "Over 17 years after the Chernobyl Accident". [1] Unaware that his show was even airing in Ukraine, O'Brien reads fast-paced insults of each of the nations of the world in alphabetical order [2] to determine where else the show is being aired without his knowledge. O'Brien insults 5 countries (with a bell ringing between each one) each time the bit airs. A sample insult: "Georgia: It's where Europe and Asia get together to dump their trash." There is even a website cataloging each one of these jokes in alphabetical order: [3] Announcer Joel Godard then requests more angry letters from insulted viewers around the world.
    An announcer on the Finnish entertainment channel SubTV, which airs the show couple of days after it is aired in USA, asked people to defend Finland before Conan got to insult it, and the viewers in Finland began sending mail before the bit had even gotten to the letter F. Starting with only one post-card that was shown on the show it was quickly followed by overwhelming amount of post-cards that apparently forced Conan to give Finland a formal apology, going as far as having the flag of Finland shown in the background during his speech and slandering the Finns' "hated" neighbor Sweden with a board with the words "Sweden Sucks!" printed over the flag of Sweden. It would seem that this chain of events led to elevated ratings in Finland and subsequently also sparked a special relationship with the viewers in Finland. This later led to Conan realizing that he bears a resemblance to two-term president Tarja Halonen, which eventually led to a short visit to Finland in mid-February 2006.
  • Conan on the Aisle - Conan reviews movies currently in cinemas and comments on the good qualities, then he shows an edited scene. An example: When Conan was reviewing Jurassic Park III, he mentioned that the movie had scenes that were disgusting and weird. An edited scene then appeared where the main characters ran and were surprised by a dinosaur which opened its mouth to roar. Edited by Late Night into the dinosaur's mouth was the parents' lost child, who says hello to the parents.
  • Conan's Legs - Conan explains how the show is trying to reach out and collect more viewers by taking a page out of the Today Show handbook. He explains that many Americans tune in to the Today Show just to see Katie Couric's legs. He then calls over two stagehands and instructs them to remove the front of his desk, revealing his feminine legs. He continues by doing a few camera tricks such as, moving his legs, bouncing a ball, and even shaving them. In actuality, a green screen is present and somebody offstage is being recorded live as Conan is onstage.
  • Conan Sings a Lullaby - Conan explains that many viewers are new parents trying to get their baby to sleep and he will help them, so he begins with a nice lullaby, then takes advantage of a baby's lack of understanding of language and mentions things adults would find horrible in a soothing way while shocking images appear on screen after soothing ones. The show's musical guests occasionally take part in this skit as well. The final skit of the first episode featured Conan singing a lullaby (with no jokes in the lyrics, but planted audience members crying instead) and was joined by the late Tony Randall, one of the guests on the show.
  • Desk Drive - Originally done with sidekick Andy, Conan now invites an audience member to ride his desk around outside with him. He actually is in front of a green screen and he holds a steering wheel. The greenscreen displays scenes of the road and the out doors. Usually they get into humorous situations on the road. For example as they went through a rural area animals "humped" or attempted to mate with him.
  • Frankenstein Wastes A Minute of Our Time - This sketch is performed before any celebrities are introduced. Frankenstein's monster (played by crew member Brian Stack) appears by one of the doors leading from the main set, acting excited about something, and inviting the cameraman (and the audience, vicariously) to come with him to take a look. He makes a long trek around the backstage area, stopping along the way to wave the cameraman to keep following. Invariably, what he finds is extremely mundane like a spatula, although it is usually near something that is considerably more interesting, and Conan acts like that is the item that is being shown. Once Frankenstein found Tom Hanks during the sketch, and moved Hanks out of the way to show off a light switch. (Hanks then immediately reentered the frame to join in pointing out the lightswitch with great enthusiasm.) Since NBC owns Universal, the Frankenstein monster looking like the one from the movies and sharing the same logo in the sketch title as Universal's monster is no coincidence; neither is the sketch also appearing shortly after the buy-out.
  • Guest Autographs - Conan shows the audience some autographs supposedly from guests on his show (although the fictitious autographs are often from celebrities which have never appeared on the program). The messages left by the celebrity often mock a movie or scandal the celebrity is currently involved in, or may mock O'Brien in some way.
  • Hannigan the Traveling Salesman - Played by Brian Stack, a 1950's era door-to-door salesman interrupts the show, often mocking Conan ("Hello, little girl, is your daddy home?") and tries to sell dangerous knockoffs of famous products (like "Hailey's Birish Cream" which contains paint thinner), lame jokes from "Joke-Co" and obscure sexual fetish activities.
  • The Hole In The Floor - A hole on the floor in front of Conan's desk that is actually a special effect projected into the scene. Conan throws objects through it and generally hassles the office worker below.
  • Holiday Pictures - Conan, Max, and announcer Joel Godard have recently had a party and he displays the ridiculous and fictional events of this party celebrating a recent holiday. Invariably, these events typically include heavy drinking and rather gory violence/homicide on the part of one or all of the cast.
  • If They Mated - Conan's signature bit features pictures of two famous celebrities (who are usually dating) are shown; the pictures are then combined into a grotesque new picture of what their offspring would look like if they mated. The segment became so successful that it later spawned a book.
  • In the Year 2000 - The sketch is typically performed after a celebrity guest has been introduced, as the guest participates in the sketch, although during Andy Richter's tenure as Conan's sidekick, he would participate. Its introduction is as follows:
    Conan: "... It's time, once again, to look into the future."
    Andy/Guest: "The future, Conan?"
    Conan: "That's right, [Andy/Guest's name]. Let's look to the future, all the way to the year 2000."
    During an "In the Year 2000" sketch, O'Brien and either Andy or the celebrity, as well as band member Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg, each wear a futuristic-looking collar and hold a lit flashlight to their face. Between La Bamba's otherworldy wails of "In the year 2000...", O'Brien and Richter/the celebrity guest trade jokes, some based on current events, in the form of humorous predictions. The sketch was invented prior to the actual year 2000, but the show's writers decided to keep the year the same, in a sort of ironic twist. A compilation book of "In The Year 2000" predictions from the show was released in 1999. Quite commonly, the second-to-last prediction involved Conan mocking his guest, while the last prediction involved the guest mocking Conan in return.
  • Kids' Drawings - Children have recently visited the Late Night studio for school. They all drew pictures of their field trip. However they are odd and fictional. They most often center around supposed guests on the show, although other themes are common (such as band leader Max Weinberg's various sexual indiscretions).
  • Krunk - During the first two seasons of the show, beginning in early 1994, O'Brien encouraged guests to insert the word krunk, a fictional expletive with multiple uses invented by the show's writers that "the censors don't quite know what to do with yet," into their conversations. On April 30, 2004, American Idol judge Randy Jackson used "krunked" during the show, but by then O'Brien had no idea what Jackson was talking about. Krunk is not the same as crunk, a slang term used by Lil' Jon and various other hip hop artists as a synonym for the condition one experiences when under the influence of both marijuanna and alcohol.
  • Mark Pender sings - Portly, bald band member Mark Pender sings the same tune (with different lyrics based on current events) while the lyrics are displayed on the screen. He starts off somewhat slow and mellow but ends up going into the audience getting more excited and holding a scream for several seconds, right after proclaiming his love/hate of the subject matter. Conan has to interrupt him to end the bit. He's sung about many subjects including Bennifer & the 2003 New York blackout.
  • Mick Ferguson, The Guy Who's Awfully Proud of his Bullet Proof Legs - long-time staff writer Brian McCann, in a mock-Vaudeville dance, sings "Oh I got bulletproof legs, I got bullet proof legs, oh ya can't hurt me cuz I have bullet proof legs! Oh they cost me a fortune but ya don't...." Invariably, a shadowy figure pulls out a gun and shoots him in the chest, which apparently isn't bulletproof. In the second incarnation of it the same man is standing on the screen and Mick emplores Conan to get rid of him because he shot him before. Conan has a security guy come out and check the figure over stating that he doesn't have a weapon. Relieved Mick begins his song and dance again, only to have the Security guy pull out a gun and shoot him in the chest. Another incident has the security guard and a search dog guarding Mick. After Conan calms Mick's fears of the security guard by vouching for him, the search dog pulls a gun and shoots Mick in the chest. The camera then switches to Conan who looks in to it and says "We're gonna get to the bottom of this."
  • New Characters - Conan tells us that it is time for new additions to be added to Late Night's current characters, such as 'The Masturbating Bear' or the Fed-ex Pope. New additions are often more ridiculous than ones before, such as the Nudist Who Has No Skeleton or the Screeching Raccoon with a Jet Pack.
    • A related gag also exists where Conan promises that he will not waste the audience's time with zany, random jokes, only to introduce a completely zany, random character. Notable characters from this bit include Castro Rabbit DJ, the Cactus Chef Playing "We Didn't Start the Fire" on the Flute and the Oscillating Air Purifier that Looks Like Slash.
  • New College Mascots - New fictional college mascots are introduced and often make fun of the college or its surrounding area.
  • New Reality-TV Formats
  • New Stamps/State Quarters/Euros - Conan says he has 'connections' and has been given designs for new commemorative stamps, state quarters, or Euros that insult the state or country.
  • Old Radio Show Ghost of Artie Kendall - Brian Stack portrays the ghost of an old singer from when the Late Night studio was used for radio. Conan is talking and hears a disembodied voice singing, and a ghost appears next to his desk. The ghost is convinced by Conan and the audience to hear his "silly old songs". He always sings 3 songs, set to the same tune, that have outrageous lyrics. While the subject of the first varies, the 2nd set is always about women (ie "Women shouldn't be allowed to talk/We should seal their lips with strong adhesive caulk") and after Conan's reaction to it, the ghost sings a derogatory song about the Irish. ("Irish people's brains are made of corn/And they all get drunk before they're even born")
  • Patterns - Conan shows a series of images and viewers have to figure out the progressive pattern that links them. For instance, "Squirrel, handy man, poorly guarded insane asylum, Tom Green: That's right, these are more and more likely to be missing a nut."
  • Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage - A comedy bit in which Late Night staffer Pierre Bernard, Jr. sits in a recliner and relates a story that has recently angered him personally. This tale is always a long, drawn-out personal tale delivered in a soft-spoken tone that usually involves some sort of comic-book, sci-fi-related, or similarly esoteric medium. The most famous one involved a complaint about the TV show Stargate SG-1, which led to the him getting a small cameo on the show.
  • Pleasing the Affiliates - Conan attempts to please local affiliates by responding to their fictional requests for positive mention.
  • Preparation H Raymond- In this sketch, a large eared man, named Raymond, parades down the aisles, passing out preparation H to Conan's audience. While he possesses a common theme song, chorused by the phrase "Raymond's here to help", Raymond's dialogue content is often related to current events (such as the recent "roid" usage by pro baseball atheletes), but is often seen as a random assortment of ideas; all begninning and culminating with the distribution of preparation H.
  • SAT Analogy - Conan helps students with their standardized exams by providing satirised SAT analogies based on current events. Although, the newest SAT format has dropped analogies, Conan has said that the segment will continue to be aired.
  • Satellite TV - Conan shares the extra channels that the large satellite dish fictionally picks up. Some channels are named things like 'Looks Like A Gentile - Sounds Like A Jew' - this particular channel displayed clips of people that looked like a gentile speaking with a stereotypical Jewish voice. Others include a pornography channel featuring "Max on Max" action, in which Max Weinberg made love to a duplicate Max Weinberg; and the 'Men Without Hats' channel that featured people in everyday situations singing about it to the Men Without Hats tune "Safety Dance" (One involved a man in an office singing "You can file if you want to/You can leave your friends behind/Because your friends don't file/And if they don't file then they're no friends of mine.")
Clive Clemmons Inappropriate Response Channel - supposedly a new cable TV channel, short skits ending with wildly inappropriate comments are punctuated by heavy-metal guitarist Clemmons playing a blistering solo and screaming the word "Inappropriate".
  • Staring Contest - a famous skit held while Andy Richter still served as O'Brien's sidekick. An homage to the game show Make Me Laugh, Richter (unlike O'Brien) would be subjected to a series of purely physical-comedy skits taking place behind O'Brien, usually insulting and disgusting, which would eventually force Richter to look away. On the last episode Richter served as sidekick, the show subjected O'Brien to the skits instead; this was the only time Richter ever won the staring contest.
  • Small Talk Moment - Conan and Max make small talk about something, for instance reality television or college basketball. The result is usually that both Max and Conan end up talking a lot about a single event speaking in rapid succession, going into extreme detail or citing obscure people and events. Once they are done they stare at one another in dull fashion as the camera goes back and forth on them. A recent occurrence of this bit ended with Conan and Max discussing a recent television movie based on the series "Mork and Mindy."
    • A variation of this sketch- called The Canadian Small Talk Moment- ran when O'Brien took his show to Toronto for a week in February. The topics were items in Canadian news at the time and Canadian culture at large, referencing types such as Don Cherry and Pierre Pettigrew.
  • The Walker, Texas Ranger Lever - It sprung from NBC's purchase of entertainment company Universal in early 2004, thus forming the media conglomerate NBC Universal. Conan introduced this lever, which allowed him to play a video clip from the television show Walker, Texas Ranger at any time he wanted to, without paying a dime in royalties. The clips from the Chuck Norris series were sometimes taken out of context, other times not. Each clip was often extremely funny, such as Norris karate-kicking through the windshield of a moving car, and Conan would comment on each clip's absurdity after it aired. In late summer 2004, the bit seemed to have been retired as Chuck Norris walked in and fired a prop gun at Conan. A pre-taped bit also showed Norris "beating" Conan up with martial arts. On March 8, 2005, the lever returned to the show. Notably, the premise of the bit was technically incorrect, since Walker was owned by CBS, Sony Pictures Television, and a few other companies; Walker just ran on NBC Universal-owned USA Network at the time.
One of the last and most popular clips to be shown was one where a young Haley Joel Osment uttered the sentence, "Walker told me I have AIDS." However, it wasn't even used with the lever; it was used as a segment of a "Spring Cleaning" sketch, which was a compilation of short video sketches that weren't used on the show before. Conan didn't want to show the "I have AIDS" clip because he was afraid the audience wouldn't take it very humorously. It turned out to be one of the most well-known scenes Conan used.
The airing of these clips subsequently led to Chuck Norris becoming the focus of an ever-growing trend in which people invent satirical random "Chuck Norris Facts." The "facts" tend to involve absurdly exaggerated claims of Norris' toughness, attitude, virility, and masculinity.
  • What in the World? - Conan is shown an extremely magnified portion of a picture. He throws out a wild guess as to what he is looking at, at which point the picture zooms out. Then Conan tries again, although it's not yet evident what the picture is of. It zooms out again, and the picture is now recognizable and seemingly mundane, for instance a celebrity or other normal situation. The final time it zooms out, something unexpected or outrageous that had previously been out of frame is revealed, thus producing comedy. The opening audio cue for this bit is an annoying sounding man saying "What in the world?" which Conan often asks not to have repeated.

Annual sketches

  • Central Time Zone New Year's Countdown - Aired each New Year's Eve, Late Night is the only show to do a countdown to midnight for the Central Time Zone of the USA. After the monologue, Conan does a fictional list of people who have died that year, starting with a celebrity who has faded into obscurity who one may believe has died, to many outlandish and random celebrities who are obviously alive. Each year the Late Night staff creates a skit when the New Year starts. In 2003, the skit was announcer Joel Godard lying down on a table while an Asian man wearing a Speedo lands on top of him at the stroke of midnight. In 2005, giant papier-mâché busts of Chicagoans Jim Belushi and Oprah Winfrey inched slowly towards each other and "French kissed" at the stroke of midnight. The 2004 and 2005 celebrations also had O'Brien joined by a group of costumed revellers representing various Midwestern locales including:
  • Sweeps Ahoy - Airing during or just after each "sweeps week", they air skits and doctored footage of previous Late Nights on publicity stunts they did to increase their ratings.
  • World's Fastest Menorah and Other Holiday Icons - Usually shown for a period of 3-4 days after the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, Conan always mentions that so many people come to New York just to see the tree, usually adding things like "It's just a tree! Big deal!" He then says something like, "Rockfeller Center might have their Christmas Tree, but we here at Late Night have the World's Fastest Menorah!" This summons the menorah, which sits on a platform, flying by the camera lever, pulled by a string by a stagehand. Of course, the platform is not visible in the camera's field of vision. The menorah is accompanied by a quick excerpt of a Jewish song. As the week progresses, Conan introduces other holiday icons, which include a bungee-jumping Baby Jesus (with "Hallelujah"), a rocket-powered fruitcake (accompanied by ZZ Top's "La Grange"), and a Kwanzaa kinara in a pimped out ride.
  • New Characters - Rather than introducing new characters throughout the year, the Late Show introduces possible new characters within the first few episodes of the New Year, although very few characters last. In 2006, the very popular "Evil Puppy" was selected as the crowd's favorite character.

Monologue digressions

  • Awkward Throws to Max Weinberg - Conan usually begins his monologue by saying "We've got a good show tonight, isn't that right Max?" to which Max replies in an intentionally nonchalant tone "Yeah" then usually shrugs.
  • "Donald Trump Impression" - Conan's impression of Donald Trump has him tugging on his hair, sucking his cheeks in, and using Trump's catchphrase "You're fired!" as the Max Weinberg Seven plays the intro to "For the Love of Money" by the O'Jays. This bit is usually performed any time that Trump is mentioned, whether in the monologue or in interviews or comedy sketches. Conan has performed this bit with Donald Trump himself present in the studio on more than one occasion.
  • Eating a Tear - Conan sometimes will say something that will cause him to shed, and then eat, a tear. This is pantomimed by running a finger from his eye down his cheek to his mouth.
  • "I'm-a Gonna Go To Hell When I Die" - a rousing gospel-styled song, started on November 12, 2004, that has no lyrics other than its title and is always accompanied by a rhythmic clapping beat. The audience will usually start clapping along, causing Conan to exclaim "Don't clap along to that, that's terrible!" Occasionally, Conan has recycled the tune with a new title/lyric, notably "I Had a Bad Childhood and You Have to Pay." Often sung by Conan after the audience finds one of his jokes distasteful. Another variation, sung in a different tune, is "I'll Be Beaten to Death When I Leave Tonight."
  • Inappropriate Closeups of Conan's Hair - Conan leaves the screen, crouches down just enough and walks past the camera so that only his red pompadour is visible.
  • "The Late Night Cat" - Conan jumps out of the frame and disappears (with a whooshing sound, as in Miscellaneous Pantomiming below) for a few seconds before reappearing extremely close to the camera, out of focus, and hissing at it in a feline manner (replete with "claws" extended). This usually occurs when the studio audience dislikes a joke told in the monologue.
  • Making Fun of Awkward Screams by Audience If an audience member screams something at Conan he makes a joke such as: "Thank you, sir" (when it is a woman, joking that men are excited by him) or "It's nice of my dad for coming."
  • Making fun of La Bamba - Conan refers to band member Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg when there is a homosexual or otherwise unsavory reference in the monologue.
  • Miscellaneous Pantomiming - Conan will duck in and out of frame, while making a whooshing sound.
  • "Nerd Impression" - Whenever nerds are mentioned in Conan's monologue (such in the context of "Star Wars nerds"), he alters his voice to sound like a "nerd" criticizing Conan for that joke. This usually involves pushing his "glasses" to his face, wagging his finger, having his teeth hang out of his mouth, waving an invisible lightsaber, or using sci-fi related quotes, and pushing the buttons on an invisible calculator.
  • "The String Dance" - Conan mimes attaching strings to his hips and pulls them, shaking his hips back and forth until he "cuts" one of the strings, dropping the attached hip.
  • Unusual Audience Reactions - Conan is always amused by, and makes fun of, the unusual reactions of his audience to some of his monologue jokes. The most common reaction is a horrified/angry "booing" melding into "polite laughter and applause," in Conan's words. Another audience reaction is a delayed laughter to the punchline, sometimes sparking Conan's "Delayed reaction always creeps me out" song, in the style of "I'm-a Gonna Go To Hell When I Die."
  • Anna Nicole Smith Impression - Conan enjoys making fun of the former Guess? Jeans model and Playboy Playmate, imitating her nonsensical mutterings, drug-influenced wandering, and outbursts. He will wander back and forth in front of the camera, muttering and finally jumps out with the "cat hiss", also seen in the Late Night Cat digression.

Trivia

File:Ilta Sanomat front page Conan and Tarja.gif
A promotional poster for the Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, featuring Conan and Tarja Halonen
  • On October 11, 2005, Conan pointed out that he resembles the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, after meeting a Finnish man in the audience before the show. Since then he has done many comedy bits about that fact, including one that promoted Halonen for second term. Halonen's appearance in American popular culture received publicity in Finland. About a week and a half after the initial show, Conan showed actual Finnish newspaper articles which commented on the resemblance, one calling them "like two berries" (kuin kaksi marjaa, a metaphor similar to "two peas in a pod" in English). After the initial publicity received by O'Brien's sketch, Tarja Halonen's re-election campaign started advertising on the Finnish broadcast of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. On February 9, 2006, O'Brien announced that he would be visiting Finland the week of February 12 while the show is pre-empted for the Winter Olympics. [4] The footage of O'Brian's visit will air on the March 10, 2006 episode.[5]
  • On November 19, 2005, Conan showed a Finnish newspaper article that talked about the Turku city council proposing to give Conan a summer cottage. The article said "Conan O'Brienille" and Conan said that apparently that's what he's called in Finland, but which actually means "to Conan O'Brien" (-lle is the suffix of the allative case in Finnish). Turku also recently sent a package intended to entice Late Night to visit their city, and included a video ostensibly filmed at nightclub "Giggling Marlin", featuring the town's city council, Aleksi Randell, asking Conan to visit Turku, and throngs of people dressed up as Conan, dancing to Rave music. Conan aired this video on Late Night on January 11, 2006
  • The first musical act to ever perform on the show was British band Radiohead.
  • The first guest ever was John Goodman, who then received a "First Guest" medal.

See also

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