The Masturbating Bear has a long and storied late-night history. Perhaps the best symbol of the unique zaniness of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” the Masturbating Bear got shelved for being too edgy for an 11:30 p.m. audience when Conan moved to L.A. to take over “The Tonight Show.” The bear would later make subtle cameos during Conan’s brief tenure in Leno’s spot, but when Conan negotiated his bitter departure from the network, NBC claimed intellectual property rights to the bear, leading Conan to fill the void with characters like Self-Pleasuring Panda.

Last fall, in an interview with Rolling Stone, O’Brien claimed that he’d find a way to bring the bear on his show. “What I really wanna do,” he said at the time, “is be sued over the bear and then appear in court with the Masturbating Bear. ‘Your Honor, this bear can’t help himself!’”

Sure enough, last night the Masturbating Bear returned for Conan’s second of four shows filmed in New York City (video below). Conan presented him as the reformed NON-Masturbating Bear: a hard-working insurance salesman who commutes to Manhattan from the suburbs where he lives with his wife and children. But you can probably figure out how it ends: you can’t keep the Masturbating Bear from masturbating. I mean, it’s right there in his name.

So now I guess we wait to see if NBC is willing to sue over ursine onanism. I’d follow that sh*t like the O.J. trial.

Conan O’Brien’s old “Late Night” show on NBC was always at its best when he did remote segments, something that doesn’t work in L.A. because that city doesn’t have pedestrians for Conan to interact with. But with last night’s show in New York, he aired two different remotes I enjoyed (see below).

The first is a short segment in which Conan returns to Rockefeller Center in disguise as a “hipster pedophile Chargers fan” who he stands in the audience while “The Today Show” films. The second, longer segment has Conan filling in as a delivery guy for a Chinese restaurant, and it has some really great moments. Watch and mourn the loss of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” all over again. (R.I.P. 1993-2009)

To celebrate one year of shows with TBS, Conan O’Brien is returning to the city where he made his name in late night TV. O’Brien will tape this week’s shows in Manhattan’s Beacon Theater, and I’ll probably tune in because his energy and humor are better when he’s in New York. And part of it’s nostalgia, too — I prefer to think of Conan as the wacky New York-based “Late Night” host, not the guy who moved up to L.A. only to get his dreams shattered and land at TBS.

Anyway, if you’re a sucker for Conan the way that I am, you’ll likely enjoy the video below, a montage of his first year at TBS. It’s edited really well, and at four minutes long it’s way easier to sit through than a full year of “Conan.”

Awww, Paul Rudd and Anne Hathaway are just the best. They’re human golden retrievers. Rudd’s like the unassuming cool handsome friend you’ve never had, and Anne Hathaway is like the hot girl in drama club who never stops singing and performing and is actually kind of annoying but you still want to sleep with her.

Anyway, Rudd and Hathaway teamed up with Dennis Haysbert to do a little sketch on “Conan” where they auditioned for “Jersey Shore” (video below), and as much as I love human golden retrievers, I have to say that Haysbert steals the scene. Damn right the president from “24″ ain’t jumpin’ on a grenade for The Situation.

In order to promote “The X Factor,” Nicole Scherzinger put her huge fake tits on display and then called out Conan O’Brien for looking at them instead of her dead eyes (video below). You go, girl! Men are such pigs!

Lopez: "Come at me, mang!"

Here’s something I didn’t know: Erik Estrada and George Lopez have a long-standing feud that apparently stems from Lopez making fun of Estrada in his stand-up act. His awful, awful stand-up act. And now Estrada, who will soon be a contestant on Univision’s awesomely titled “¡Mira Quien Baila!” (Spanish-language “Dancing with the Stars”), has opened up about the cancellation of “Lopez Tonight.”

“His show was supposed to be cancelled after the first season, but Conan [O'Brien] wanted to keep it on,” Estrada said of TBS’s decision to give Lopez Tonight the ax. Estrada said there’s a reason Lopez Tonight was cancelled—karma. “There’s a lot of things people don’t know about this guy,” he said of Lopez. “For me to talk about this guy—I’m wasting my time. The law of God—the law of Karma, is on him right now. He is doomed.” [Latina.com]

Oh man, a Puerto Rican versus a Mexican. I plugged this information into my Racist Stereotype Jokebot 2000, and it overheated and caught fire. If only Erik Estrada had been nearby, he could have put it out with one of the eight Puerto Rican flags displayed on his car.

I actually kinda felt bad for George Lopez when I heard that TBS was canceling “Lopez Tonight.” Then I watched some of his final monologue, and I didn’t really feel so bad any more. There’s two minutes of applause followed by a joke about Obama’s racial heritage followed by four minutes of stuff I didn’t watch. Apparently he does a fair amount of swearing here, which, to be fair, is probably what I’d do if it were my last night on television, too. I wouldn’t want to rely on the standard 4-letter words, though. I’d just work phrases like “finger blast moist holes” and “five-gallon semen jug” into the monologue. I think that would be a lot more rewarding. More memorable, too. Once you’ve pictured five gallons of semen in your head, you’re not likely to forget it.

I’ve never particularly liked George Lopez, but he was gracious about moving from 11 p.m. to midnight when TBS took Conan O’Brien onboard just weeks after O’Brien left NBC because the Peacock tried to bump his time slot. So it’s kind of sad to hear that Lopez — who hoarsely performed every show sounding like he’d been out singing karaoke until 3 a.m. the night before — has been canceled by TBS:

“TBS has reached the difficult decision not to order a third season of Lopez Tonight. Thursday will be the final episode of the show. We are proud to have partnered with George Lopez, who is an immensely talented comedian and entertainer [sic?].” [statement via EW]

Even though Lopez’s numbers were down — he’d averaged 543K viewers at midnight, down from his average of 911K at 11:00 — I don’t think the cancellation makes a lot of sense. Minorities LOVE Lopez. I mean, I don’t actually know many minorities, but the ones I hear talking about Tyler Perry also like George Lopez. That has to count for something.

Whoa, hey! I’m trying to analyze TV news here! What’s this gallery of Selena Gomez on “Lopez Tonight” doing here? Is she even 18 yet? This is totally unprofessional! I want my readers to know that I had nothing to do with this. I’m barely even attracted to nubile Hispanic teenagers.

Images via Egotastic.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros performed on something called the “Conan Concert Series” recently, and apparently someone in the band tinkered around with a couple notes from Radiohead’s angst anthem “Creep” just before the late-night host took the stage. O’Brien used that as an opportunity to do his chimney-sweep rendition of the song, which he’d previously performed in warm-ups for his stage tour.

Anyway, I know that a lot of Warming Glow readers are over the Conan phenomenon and/or the Radiohead phenomenon, which means that they probably also have some sort of dismissive, cynical comment about Sharpe and the Zeros. For those wet blankets out there, I recommend you skip the video and go straight to these amusing GIFs from recent “Conan” episodes:

[video via BuzzFeed; Michelle Bachmann GIF via conangifs; JB Smoove GIF via oldblueeyes]

Late-night geek hero Conan O’Brien is embracing Comic-Con, unveiling the Museum of Conan Art (Coco MoCA) in San Diego. The exhibit showcases all the Conan-inspired fan art, which would be creepy and weird if it weren’t for cool things like the Team Coco poster and The Flaming C. The MoCA website is accepting submissions, and says:

Enter The Museum Of Conan Art — a museum FOR the people and BY the people. So whether you’re a painter, sketch artist, sculptor, or a Photoshop pixel-pusher, we want to see your Team Coco themed artwork. With a bit of luck, it might end up backstage in the “Conan” Green Room.

One such piece of art is a LEGO statue of The Flaming C (above, in the right window), which you can watch being constructed at the bottom of the page here.

Hmmmm… I wonder what Conan thinks about all this art?

LOOKS GOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!