The auburn-haired
sweetheart of late-night television was born in Brookline, Massachusetts
on April 18, 1963. He was valedictorian of his high school class and
attended Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude,
proving once and for all that major television executives wouldn’t know
smart comedy if it slapped them in the face.
While at Harvard,
Conan served as the president of the Harvard Lampoon, the
college’s premier humor magazine, and after graduation wrote for several
different comedy ventures before being hired to work for Saturday Night
Live. O’Brien spent four years at Saturday Night Live, and in 1991
transitioned to write for The Simpsons. Conan’s work on the show
is often credited with moving the series toward its now-iconic use of
surreal and strange visual humor and plot twists, and Conan is credited
as a writer on some of the show’s most well-regarded episodes.
In 1993, former
employer Lorne Michaels invited Conan to audition for a new late-night
comedy show to replace David Letterman’s outgoing program. Thus, Late
Night with Conan O’Brien was born. The show wasn’t popular for its
first three years, but was nominated for the best writing Emmy in every
year from 1996 onwards. In his appearance on the 10th
anniversary episode of Late Night, Mr. T presented Conan with an
audacious gold chain displaying a giant “7.” When Conan protested that
that his show had actually been airing for ten years, Mr. T replied “I
know that, fool, but you’ve only been funny for seven!”
Conan’s show was
consistently bizarre and hilarious, spawning such minor cultural
touchstones as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Pale Force, and
hornymanatee.com. In 2009, as Jay Leno announced that he would be moving
out of late night and into prime time, Conan was slated to take over as
host of NBC’s nighttime juggernaut The Tonight Show. Seven
months later, in a widely criticized move, NBC decided to push Leno’s
flagging primetime show back into The Tonight Show’s traditional
10:30 slot, moving The Tonight Show into the late-night
timeframe. Conan, unhappy with the new arrangement, decided to look for
another station. Fans of O’Brien united under the moniker “Team Coco” to
show an outpouring of support for the ousted comedian.
Eventually, the jesting
ginger found a new home with Conan on TBS, and continues to make
night-time a little stranger. Team Coco has not laid dormant, however,
and in January of 2010 an ambitious youtube artist uploaded a video
showcasing love of orange – in both snack foods and late-night
entertainers. User EclecticAsylumArt made a huge portrait of Conan
entirely out of Cheetos. To that end, we acknowledge both Conan O’Brien
and the weird fanaticism he inspires with a recipe for very, very
Conan-colored Cheetos Chicken. We suggest pairing it with the DVD of
Late Night with Conan O'Brien: 10th Anniversary Special
(2003)