Loco over ‘coco’

Cuckoo for “Coco.”

That was definitely one way to describe the sold-out audience of almost 2,500 at the Hult Center on Monday night.

Conan O’Brien, the lanky, red-headed (and now red-bearded) comedian, kicked off his 32-city national “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour” in Eugene, of all places, less than three months after snubbing NBC and giving up his lifelong dream of hosting “The Tonight Show.” O’Brien’s appearance on the Eugene stage, in front of national media critics, came just hours after it was announced that he had signed a five-year deal with Atlanta-based cable channel TBS that will put him back on late-night TV beginning in November.

“This adds a little spin to it,” said New York Times television critic Bill Carter, who was at the head of the line to get into the Hult Center more than an hour before the 8 p.m. show, in response to O’Brien kicking off his much-anticipated and much-hyped tour on the same day he got a new TV deal.

Many speculated that the tour was about giving O’Brien momentum to land a TV deal with Fox.

“You may have heard — I got a new job,” O’Brien told a frenzied and raucous Hult Center crowd just after taking the stage. “Tomorrow I start as the new assistant manager at the Eugene Banana Republic. I’ll be in the corduroy section.”

After almost 17 years on NBC, starting with “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” in 1993, O’Brien told the crowd that he missed doing TV five nights a week. Missed it badly.

“Oh, man, that feels so good,” O’Brien said after fans greeted him with a wild, standing ovation. “Oh, my god … Thank you, Eugene … Portland … Seattle … Chicago?”

Apparently, someone in the front row blurted out that he was from Chicago.

“What the hell?” O’Brien said. “What did you come here for? I’m going to Chicago (on the tour)!”

After months of poor ratings after his move from the 12:35 a.m. “Late Night” slot to “The Tonight Show,” O’Brien’s popularity soared in January when he snubbed NBC’s attempt to bump him to a 12:05 a.m. time slot, instead opting to leave the job he had dreamed of while growing up in a Boston suburb and watching his hero, the late Johnny Carson. The network said it was bringing the comic that O’Brien had replaced, Jay Leno, back to his 11:35 p.m. slot to try to reignite the network’s late-night ratings.

Younger viewers rallied to O’Brien’s side, especially online, creating the Facebook page “I’m With Coco” and following him on the social networking site Twitter, where he has 827,000 “followers.” O’Brien earned his now-famous nickname “Coco” after a “Tonight Show” skit last June,

O’Brien negotiated a $32.5 million buyout with NBC that prohibited him from appearing on another network until September.

As expected, O’Brien poked fun at NBC and the somewhat ugly “late-night” war with Leno during his Eugene show, attended mostly by fans in their 20s, 30s and 40s. During one pre-recorded video bit, O’Brien appeared as a wild-eyed, bald and bearded “generic network executive,” creepily stroking a white cat, and pretending to speak to himself in a sadistic, evil-sounding voice.

“Do you miss television?” O’Brien-as-the-executive said. “Well, television doesn’t miss you! We’re the No. 1, uh …. we’re the No. 4 … we’re one of the top 17 networks! And we have a lot of new shows, like, ‘I’m a celebrity/I eat bark.’”

The show included O’Brien’s longtime sidekick and announcer, Andy Richter, and the band that was with him on both late-night NBC shows.

“Hey, Eugene! Congratulations on your ability to grow molds and various mosses,” Richter said upon first taking the stage with O’Brien. “I’ve never seen moss like I’ve seen in this town.”

O’Brien arrived in Eugene on Sunday and stayed at the Hilton Eugene. A posting on his Twitter page — along with a photo taken from his room — Sunday afternoon said: “I’m in Eugene, OR and my room faces the theater where I debut tomorrow. The mob outside is in a frenzy.”

O’Brien, of course, was kidding … about the “frenzy” part, anyway. No one was outside. Not until Eugene’s Robb Crabaugh, who saw O’Brien’s “tweet,” appeared with a large, quickly made sign that said “Frenzy” with an arrow pointing at himself. O’Brien even came down and met him, Crabaugh said, standing in the Hult Center lobby before Monday’s 8 p.m. show.

There were reported O’Brien sightings all over Eugene earlier in the day. Mandy Beemer, a KDUK disc jockey, even went to the Hilton in the morning to try to find him. She did, although she had to order breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant and scope out O’Brien and “his people.” When three teenage boys who were listening to her live reports appeared at her table, all four got the nerve to approach O’Brien and be photographed with him before watching him ride a bicycle away on Sixth Avenue.

“He was totally dressed like Lance Armstrong,” Beemer said.

Suzanne Bentz of Beaverton paid $2,000 online last month to get four $500 tickets for her two teenage sons and one of their friends, who all got their hair painted orange, like O’Brien’s, by a KFLY DJ in front of the Hult Center before the show. They also got to attend the sound check before the show and meet O’Brien and watch him strum his guitar.

“It was the thrill of a lifetime,” Bentz said. “I’ve just been a fan of his forever.”