O Brien

Jimmy Pardo, the official warm up guy for Conan O'Brien, may be the funniest man averse to jokes. He doesn't write them; he rarely tells them. And that translates as hilarious to audiences. Call him the crowd whisperer. Instead of using crafted material to liven up the crowd before Conan tapings, Pardo simply shows up and riffs, loosely, with the audience — that's his thing. His stand-up routine at clubs is just as unstructured, akin to "one-man improv," he says, and is drawing comparisons to Don Rickles and Robin Williams.

Jim O'Brien's future as the Indiana Pacers' coach was in question heading into a four-game trip, and team President Larry Bird didn't get the answers he wanted. Bird fired O'Brien on Sunday after the team squandered a promising start to the season by losing seven of its last eight games. Bird had discussed the team's options with owner Herb Simon , saying he wanted to see how the team performed on a Western swing against the Clippers, Golden State, Portland and Denver.

A dapper Cam Newton strolled briskly down the red carpet in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., smiling and acknowledging fans. He paused to sign a few autographs, then rushed off to begin collecting postseason hardware. The Auburn star won the Davey O'Brien Award as the nation's top quarterback Thursday night, when he also walked away with the Maxwell Award as the best all-around player in the country. His next stop will be New York, where he is the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy on Saturday.

Stopping short of appointing someone to take financial control of the city of Bell, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Wednesday asked city officials and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown to give him a list of potential monitors who could step in and lead the scandal-battered city. The request sets the stage for a potential legal fight over control of the city ? one that is without clear precedent in the state. Although courts have placed school districts into receivership, experts have said they cannot remember a California city having an overseer imposed upon it. Judge Robert O'Brien told Bell's attorneys and state prosecutors to each give him a list of three names by Tuesday, but he did not tip his hand as to whether he would take the extreme step of asking a monitor to essentially take over the small city southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

Former U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien stayed at pricey hotels while traveling on business and then sought to justify reimbursement by telling his secretary to falsely state that more affordable rooms were not available, an audit made public this week alleges. O'Brien was one of five U.S. attorneys whose travel expenses were singled out in the report by the Department of Justice's inspector general. The report found that some of O'Brien's claims for reimbursement were "inappropriate and egregious violations" of the travel policies that govern federal prosecutors.

As their new 11 p.m. TBS talk show gets ready to roll Monday, Conan O'Brien and his staff have started to learn how the other half lives. After 17 years at NBC, they're adjusting to cable-sized portions. "We have a lower budget for the show," Jeffrey Ross, executive producer of "Conan," said in an interview. "So unfortunately we couldn't bring everybody with us" from "The Tonight Show," where O'Brien was unceremoniously dumped and Jay Leno reinstalled as host earlier this year.

The nation's top-ranked high school cross-country runner might not be running at all if not for a chance meeting a few years ago with the man who would become his coach. Ammar Moussa was something of a troublemaker in middle school, smart but enough of a handful that his parents were considering sparing the local high school and jumping him into an accelerated academic program. Everything changed the day he entered the mile in a youth track meet. A novice wearing soccer shorts and tennis shoes, he started off in a sprint and barely finished.

Filmmaker Judd Apatow and author Dave Eggers seem an unlikely pairing ? one is an A-list, broad comedy writer-director-producer prone to fart jokes and penis cameos ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and "Pineapple Express" are among Apatow's hugely successful credits); the other is a somewhat headier literary hipster who has penned an acclaimed memoir, several novels and just enough screenplays to earn some Hollywood cred (Eggers wrote "Where the Wild Things Are" and co-wrote, with his wife, Vendela Vida, "Away We Go")

NBC Universal will build a new West Coast newsroom and production center in Conan O'Brien's former studio on the Universal lot, the entertainment company said Thursday. The 60,000-square-foot facility will move the Los Angeles bureau of NBC News and local affiliate KNBC from Burbank to Universal City. The company didn't disclose how much the new studios will cost, but such facilities typically require tens of millions of dollars to build. "This is a significant investment in our West Coast news operations," NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker said.

Robert Schimmel, a critically acclaimed comedian who made audiences squirm and then laugh with X-rated explorations of sexuality and vulnerability usually drawn from his own life, has died. He was 60. Schimmel died Friday at a Phoenix hospice from injuries sustained in an Aug. 26 car accident, said his brother, Jeff Schimmel. He had suffered serious head and internal injuries whose treatment was complicated by liver disease. The Scottsdale resident was waiting for a liver transplant at the time of his death, his brother said.