Conan and his manatees

Published Dec 12 2006, 03:31 PM by Ryan Stewart

Recently, Conan O'Brien did a bit on his show in which he introduced a character called "Webcam Manatee." Basically all it was was someone in a manatee costume standing in front of a computer and rubbing themselves in time to "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls, followed by a cut to Max Weinberg Seven trumpeter Mark Pender watching it on a laptop. That's the joke. O'Brien, who's got a genuine gift for wringing every last possible laugh out of a bit, then said, presumably ad-libbing, "Pender's watching www.hornymanatee.com."

But here's the thing: according to what O'Brien has said on his show every night since this happened, per FCC regulations, whenever someone mentions a Web URL on the air that doesn't exist, NBC has to purchase it. So for $159, NBC purchased www.hornymanatee.com, and O'Brien's people actually built a site with photos ("Man on Manatee," "Voyeur Manatee," "Mature Manatee") and a place for people to submit their own manatee fan art (and stories, too, we're guessing). As of this writing, there are 51 pictures on there. Conan brought out James Lipton to read a poem. All told, since last week, the site has reportedly gotten over 3 million hits.