LOS ANGELES (UNIVERSAL CITY) – I read the terrific Conan O’Brien profile piece in The New York Times yesterday by Lynn Hirschberg, subtitled Can Conan O’Brien’s Brand of Humor Work on ‘The Tonight Show’? My answer, like the legions of other Conan fans, is an emphatic “Yes!” The piece is titled Heeeeere’s… Conan!!! Coincidentally, I saw a Google search hit in my statistic logs the other day for nearly that exact term, for my own Heeeeere’s Conan piece. Someone was looking for it – maybe a researcher for the NYT? No matter, it wasn’t such an original thought in the first place. 17 years or so ago people were probably writing Heeeeere’s Jay articles.
All of this gibberish is just an excuse to show another potential Conan graphic, in this case a bumper frame that could be easily animated. Actually, I have animated it, or at least a version of it (I first made this graphic for E! and their True Hollywood Story Halloween Marathon promo, still frame from the animation at left.) It’s on my 2008 reel and can be viewed at my Movies! I Show Movies! page. You can also view an extended Behind the Music version at my Portfolio page over on FrankXray.com (scroll down to the movies section). In the article, Conan mentioned making use of some of the Universal Studios landmarks as characters in his new show. The iconic horror house from Psycho is on the Universal lot, and is part of the tour. The Bates Motel itself would be just off screen to the lower right in the photo illustration above. I look forward to seeing how Conan O’Brien, Andy Richter, Executive Producer Jeff Ross, Head Writer Mike Sweeney (shameless Google search terms as well as true feelings here) and the rest of the staff play off not only Universal Studios, but of Los Angeles in general. The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien debuts June 1.


nestled against the hills. If you’re on the Universal lot, sometimes it’s good to get out and see the world. Jailbreak! It’s also one of the closest places to get beer 



Once the type was just right, I gave it several treatments, including the ultimate winner shown at left (yes, that’s the original logo in the first paragraph). The Art Director/Set Decorator for the show, Bente, liked some of my presentation backgrounds and used them in her set. That’s me in the photo, standing next to a huge, pre-paint set piece at CBS.
Wow. Wait, let me think… I know! Maybe my connection with TPIR will work to my advantage in trying to get a job on Tonight. At least I know they’ve seen my work. I would describe how 

End-of-season specials happen in May, as well as “very special” episodes including the infamous “
When I was in junior high, I didn’t have this poster (at right), but I sat next to a guy in home room who did (it was fabulous and he wouldn’t let me forget it). This incident kick-started my hobby of scouring 


As a result of this and other similar misuses, I prepared the above chart in order to clear up things a bit. In the upper left we see poor George Hincapie,
The upper right is a
Continuing clockwise around the chart, we next come to a Recycler.
…cycler! Yes, he had to cycle that beer through his or his friends’ systems in order to collect enough cans to make the Mustang sculpture. I thought about using a shot of beer cans on an assembly line here, but I wanted to post a picture of a 


On the far left we have the Woody Allen cartoon character that appeared briefly in Annie Hall. He is much shorter than Mr. B.L.O.G., but is only slightly more neurotic.
He employs the same technique that most Americans use when communicating with foreigners: he slows his speech (and increases its volume), pronounces each consonant as hard as possible, and of course gesticulates. We find it works fine here on the island of America, so we’ll probably continue to use it. The Berlitz method. The character is no doubt based on Berlitz founder,
The
Lastly, I present Sherman from the 








