As we learned last week, Team Coco has decided to release its vast archive of old Late Night and Conan clips in phases instead of all at once, and phase one — featuring over 350 remote segments — dropped today. You could start by watching Conan O’Brien go apple-picking with Mr. T, try to sell his Taurus, play old-timey baseball, or shoot guns with Hunter S. Thompson, but we think the best way to dive in is by watching a 2005 segment that best exemplifies the bravery it takes to pull off truly dumb comedy.
In the above clip, Conan’s writers Andy Blitz, Jon Glaser, and Brian Stack, a.k.a. the Slipnutz, get a little annoyed when they perform their routine on the same Late Night episode that the band Slipknot performed on, so O’Brien decides to make it up to them … by, naturally, booking them a performance before a Slipknot show at an arena in New Jersey. Slipping on nuts while wearing nerdy vests and khakis on a silly late-night show is one thing, but slipping on nuts while wearing nerdy vests and khakis in front of an arena of extremely-not-feeling-it Slipknot fans giving you the middle finger is straight-up courage. Bonus points for Stack, nearly in tears, saying to the camera, “A lot of people go through their whole lives and never slip on a nut, and I feel sorry for them.â€