Thursday, May 24, 2001 taping
Story written May 25, 2001 by Mario
I hugged Conan O’Brien yesterday.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. It was a "real man-hug" as Conan put it...
Anyway, it was a strange string of events that happened that ended in me giving Conan a bear hug in front of a studio audience.
I was on vacation in New York, my last full day there with my girlfriend, when we decided to head down to Rockefeller Plaza and stand in line for stand-by tickets. We were stand-by ticket holders 16 and 17 and just barely got in that afternoon. My girlfriend was seated in the very last seat, which left me to either stand in the back or take an open seat all the way in the 3rd row aisle. I moved up of course. So Conan came out before taping to meet the audience and started shaking a few people's hands, and as he got to the 3rd row, I offered my hand up and he left me hanging and looked at me funny. He said, "I sense some sort of strange, sexual tension between you and me. You want a real man-hug, don't you?" So I played along, stood up and on the count of 3, he gave me an embarrassingly long hug.
Then he made me hug this other dude.
It was so surreal since we didn't even think we were going to get into the show...