By JACQUES STEINBERG December 12, 2006
The skit, as scripted for the Dec. 4 installment of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," was about absurdist college sports mascots that the host and his writers would like to see someday.
Among them were "the Boise State Conjoined Vikings," who had been born locked at the horns, as well as something Mr. O'Brien called "the Webcam manatee" - said to be the mascot of "F.S.U." -- which was basically someone in a manatee costume rubbing himself or herself provocatively in front of a camera (to the tune of the 1991 hit "I Touch Myself"). Meanwhile a voyeur with a lascivious expression watched via computer.
Who knew that life would soon imitate art.
At the end of the skit, in a line Mr. O'Brien insists was ad-libbed, he mentioned that the voyeur (actually Mark Pender, a member of the show's band) was watching
In a pre-emptive strike inspired as much by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as by the laws of comedy, NBC bought the license to