At the Team Conan Rally with the Nokia N97

Monday January 18, 2009 was Martin Luther King day. This was the day chosen to hold a Team Conan rally at Universal Studios.

I headed down in an orange jumpsuit I got two years ago from Comic Con that was a promotional item from the Harold and Kumar sequel.



I hopped on the Metro and arrived at the Universal City Metro stop to find a large crowd had already formed.



The rain was pouring and at times the wind nearly knocked me over. It didn't take long for me to get soaked. This still didn't stop me or any of the other 300 or so fans from rallying for Conan. We cheered every time a car honked their horn and some people gave interviews with the media.



For the first hour or so, people were huddled on the northeast and northwest corners of the intersection on Lankershim Blvd and Universal Hollywood Dr. Around 1:30PM everyone got on the northeast corner. A popemobile drove by and everyone cheered. I watched from the other side of the street when a few minutes later, the popemobile came back with La Bamba in it!



Then all the sudden I found the Masturbating Bear was next to me!



It wasn't long before Conan himself showed up to greet his fans. They initially mobbed him until he broke free from the crowd and led every one down the street to his studio. I crossed the street to follow the crowd and ran into Chris Gore from G4TV. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit like me.



Everyone gathered at the entrance to the studio and Conan's interns provided pizza for everyone. Around 2:45, a large I'm with COCO banner was unfurled from the roof of the studio. Conan, Max, Pierre Bernard and Andy waved to the crowd from the roof.



By this time, the rally organizer asked everyone to go back to the metro station for something involving funny or die. It turned out to be a fight between Asian Jay Leno and Asian Conan O'Brien. After getting sucker punched, Asian Conan delivered a sweet roundhouse kick and knocked Asian Jay's whig off.



I wanted to tweet more from the rally, but my hands were too cold and my N97 was getting soaked. While the touchscreen marched forward, the keyboard buttons stopped working. I took out the battery and hopped back on the metro.

When I came home, I found water under the touchscreen and lots of other places. I placed it in some rice and left it overnight. On Tuesday night, I pulled it out and worked fine. The N97 is quite an amazing piece of hardware.