Gaming, Music, The Internet, Whatever….

What does this have to do with anything? Read on...

Well, I never thought I would get such a sudden writing urge as I did the other night. But digging through all that Conan related stuff was good fun. If it is Conan, then this just confirms his genius. If it isn’t then he genuinely does have some very, very clever and imaginative fans.

But, there are a few similarities between that are worth pointing out. Take the timing of arrival for each one. It always seems to occur less than a day after the related tweet. For example, Conan’s Monkey appeared one day after his first tweet. And he didn’t even reference the monkey in the tweet. The squirrel, yes but not the monkey. Which leads me to suggest that Conan has SOMETHING to do with all this. Maybe not ALL of them are his but at least some of them are.

Also, the speed of the new characters shows no dangers of slowing down. In the last 48 hours two new Conan related accounts have sprung up. In respect to Conan’s comment about his tour being half assed, @ConansAss (as in the farmyard creature) has now become another character added to the Team Conan repertoire. Also added is @ConansVan, which is in relation to Conan auditioning groupies. Only one tweet from the Van so far but I can appreciate where it is coming from.

Let the stank out!

Add in the fact that it is always one of the other accounts that is always the first one to mention the new account (the first time the van was mentioned was in a tweet by ConansDoctor) and that they are all following each other back, you can start to see the patterns emerging. However. There is one more link that suggests that there is something more to this than some dedicated fans. At the end of one of @ConansPeas tweets, he/she/they posts a link.

This is getting like Lost. Only more coherent.

Accessing that link takes you to the web-cam for (what it says is) a branch of BIG donut at Los Angeles Airport. Web-cam viewable by clicking here.

Checking it in Google Maps however (View Larger Map) shows you the Randy’s Donuts mentioned in Conan’s related tweet. So a web-cam positioned at the same branch that Conan himself mentioned and linked to by one of the accounts that was itself first mentioned in a tweet by Conan? Sorry but this has now become way too coincidental for it to be the work of some “clever, talented and hilarious fans”. Whatever Conan’s web manager may tell us, there is something going on here.

Not that I’m pretending that this is some super secret government scheme which I’m blowing wide open; more this is increasingly obvious that this is the work of someone with an over active imagination who probably has a lot of free time at the moment. Regardless of who is behind all this though, it is utter genius. If it is the work of some super creative fans, then Conan clearly needs to get them on his payroll as soon as September rolls around.

Whoever is behind this, I will try and keep up with it every step of the way. Cause I quite obviously have nothing else better to do with my time. Quite possibly, much like Conan.

ConansAss and ConansVan added to the Team Conan Twitter list at Twitter.com/andrewproom/team-conan

I blogged in January about the US late night wars concerning NBC, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. Well, blogged is stretching it; lazily and hurriedly posted a few YouTube videos is probably closer to the truth but still.  The upshot was that Conan was given a very large sum of money and asked to leave the network on condition that he was not to do another TV show till September i.e. the next TV season in the States. Alot of people wondered what he might do. If you were to guess “have a multiple personality breakdown via a Social Networking service” then you’d be a very rich person right about now.

His first tweet, some two weeks ago, has sort of gone down in Twitter history, attracting the most ReTweets (reposts, for those not in the Twittersphere) and attracting the most number of new followers in a 24 hour period. But what is most interesting is what that Tweet actually said

The start of something?

Now, like alot of people, I just thought that was a bit of nonsense. However, and what I’ve now found, is that every tweet like that seems to spawn a new character, in this case @ConansSquirrel.

No, this is the start of something

And from that you have a new character appearing almost every day. Take the monkey in the picture at the top of the page. Think it has it’s own Twitter page? Well it does (@conansmonkey). Along with @ConansSharpie, the same one used to connect all the dots on his arm, which apparently doesn’t reveal his PIN number but instead reveals the registration for Jay Leno’s 1966 Ford Galaxie.

And so it goes on...

And so it goes on and on. Conan’s Beard, his freckles, his 1992 Ford Taurus, his Bag of Frozen Peas, his Rare Card, his Prom Tux, his Moustache, his Raisinets, his Doctor, his Health Care (NBC issued, NBC revoked. says the bio, without a hint of bitterness), and his Melonoma spot all having their own little area of the TwitterSphere, along with Conan’s Superhero alterego @ConanOBarbarian (whose first tweet was aimed at someone in particular. Can’t think who…..)

I bet it wouldn't either.

and Conan’s Mexican (and therefore obviously cheaper) equivalent @ConandoOBrien, who seems to translate all his tweets into rather “loose Spanish”….

es malo translato, no?

That last tweet was a translation (if you can call it that) of his announcement to follow someone “at random” on Twitter. Which apart from being a story that has caught the public’s imagination has also obviously had the desired effect of distracting everyone from Conan’s growing cavalcade of characters. Which is a shame as reading through everything from the last three weeks, you start to realise just what a monumental mistake NBC made in firing Conan and replacing him with Mr Big Jaw. In fact, speaking of Mr Leno and reading through the genius stream of tweets I noticed one about @Conan’sATMcard finding another PIN. Well, I wont ruin it…

Don't need to add anything, do I?

Of course, none of the accounts are verified apart from O’Briens own (though how on Earth you go about verifying that a beard is ACTUALLY tweeting, I’ve no idea) but frankly the timings in the responses are so close together it seems impossible that they aren’t in some way related. Ok, perhaps they aren’t ALL being run by Conan himself but there is obviously something linking all of them to suggest that they aren’t in some way linked and that CoCo isn’t behind it all.

I don’t pretend that I am somehow “through the looking glass here people” or anything else, I just think it’s magnificent that even though he wont be back on TV screens for another half year, he’s still finding time to come up with this kind of stuff. I could never see Jay Leno doing this kind of thing. Not unless someone else had done it before, obviously.

I’ve put all 18 (current) accounts in a Twitter list here @andrewproom/team-conan so we can all bask in Conan’s warm tweeting warm glow. You can follow the list from the Twitter homepage or direct from within certain Twitter clients (such as TweetDeck). And I thoroughly recommend you do as the whole thing is befitting of man who wrote some of the greatest episodes of The Simpsons of all time.

Oh, and if you got the Simpsons references scattered around this post, then well done. You clearly need to get out more as much as I do.

The last week can pretty much be summed up in one word: snot. Managed to pick up a cold last weekend and let me tell you trying to fight a cold while trying to starve yourself of food is something not to be tried (new diet is on hold until the weekend now).

One thing that has been keeping me entertained through the phlegm and the coughing has been the whole Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno/NBC Clusterfuck. And after carefully evaluating every side of the story, I think the big winner is clearly David Letterman…

Yes, Dave, I get the impression you are enjoying all this QUITE a lot.