Weekly Poll Winner: Conan O'Brien

Thanks voters, I knew I could count on you. For what, I'm not sure, but thanks anyways.

Conan O'Brien, former host of NBC's Late Night With Conan O'Brien, which premiered in 1993, and as of June 1, 2009, he is now host of The Tonight Show.

Although he comes off as pretty goofy, Conan is actually real, real smart. According to The Boston Globe, he graduated valedictorian of his high school, and then attended Harvard University.

While there, he wrote for, and served as president of the university's humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon.

His gig on the Late Show enjoyed moderate success for the first few years, before his recurring characters and shtick were slowly ingrained and cemented into pop culture.

Some of Conan's memorable contributions:

- his celebrity interviews, on the screen that drops down, with the cut-out mouths
- the horny manatee
- the masturbating bear
- the Walker, Texas Ranger lever (which may be partially responsible for the Chuck Norris phenomenon over the past five or so years)
- Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog

... and who could forget when he brought life to jar barf?



What I always found funny about Conan was how his jokes were usually pretty corny, but he told them in such a way that you knew that he knew they were.

He could stand there in his opening bit and tell a really stupid joke, that only got a few chuckles from the crowd, and he would acknowledge it. He is not your average stand-up comedian. With his sketches, props and characters, he was so much more.

His youth gave him the energy to come out every night and do that dance and jump that always got the crowd going. And, since he often didn't get the best guests (because what A-list celebrity wants to be a guest on a show that airs from 12:35 to 2 am?), his sketches were what drew people in, turned them into fans, and drew them back.

It was almost like a hybrid of a standard late-show, combined with a sketch comedy show. It wasn't conventional, but it worked.

(You can grab more Conan clips if you search for Conan on Hulu--NBC loves giving their stuff to Hulu)