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Lapp of Luxury

The Winter Olympics may be history, but we're not finished yammering about cold places or Scandinavians, not by a long shot.

Late night TV fans may have noticed that during NBC's coverage of the Games, The Conan O'Brien show was off the air. Conan returns tomorrow night, but he was quite busy while he was away. He went all the way to Finland.

Conan's resemblance to the current Finnish President Tarja Halonen (which he pointed out extensively during her recent reelection campaign) made him even more popular on Finnish TV, where he is broadcast three days after he's shown in the US. He ran some mock ads in support of Tarja on the show, which gave her a bump in her own ratings. When Conan visited the country a few weeks ago, 2,000 people came to the airport--which was named after him for the day--to greet him. It's the most enthusiastic we've ever seen the Finns about anything.

Jaunted will be covering where Conan went on his trip after segments are broadcast. It's a formidable assignment, but no more than Canadian hockey fans or learning all about Johnny Weir's new beaver and python skin coats. We hope Conan stayed away from the reindeer steak, though. Poor Rudolph!

[Image via 3Djavu/Flickr]

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