Manatee lust prevails
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Conan O’Brien has gotten an impressive amount of mileage out of a blubbery, slow-moving aquatic herbivore.
The “Late Night” host has presented a recurring character dubbed “the Horny Manatee,” who accidentally stumbled into Web stardom last week.
On the NBC program, the Horny Manatee mostly stretches out on the stage, arousing a member of the band – or on one show, “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton. Lipton last week read “Ode to a Manatee” before dancing with, as he said, “that sultry seductress.”
On the Dec. 4 show, the manatee appeared in a skit about college mascots as the “FSU Webcam Manatee.” As it ended, O’Brien ad libbed a reference to “HornyManatee.com” – and thus a Web site was born.
The next evening, O’Brien informed his audience that after the previous night’s show, he was contacted by NBC Standards and told the network would have to buy the rights to the then-fictional site. NBC purchased rights to the domain for $159 for 10 years.
The quickly formed site includes “Manatee on Manatee” action, as well as pictures of a “Manateen” and a “Voyeur Manatee.” It’s all a spoof of Internet pornography, and O’Brien claims it has received more than 3 million hits.
He has encouraged fans to submit Horny Manatee creations to conan@hornymanatee.com – and has been flooded with responses of graphic novels, paintings and photos of people in manatee costumes.
It’s only the latest instance of a late show using the Internet to attract and interact with viewers. Clips from CBS’ “The Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” have been rising up the charts on YouTube, and NBC’s “Last Call With Carson Daly” runs a “It’s Your Show” site, www.iystv.com.
Late night shows are no longer confined to the wee hours of the night, nor is online manatee erotica so hard to find anymore.
