Putting the "Idiot" in Idiot Savant

ITEM ONE: ON TMZ FRIDAY: Britney, Paris, Lindsay... and Crief?
Well boys and girls, the moment has arrived. Like Kato Kaelin and others before me, I'm about to make a total fool out of myself in front of the whole world.

On Friday August 8 at 5PM Eastern Time, (that's 2PM for those of you here in LA), I will appearing as a guest on a live webisode of something called "Idiot Savant Friday" on the popular celebrity rumor site TMZ. I answered an ad for people who think they are significantly proficient in sort of inane trivia, and took a phone quiz with 2 of their producers this week on the subject of sports. I went 50% on a few football questions, then answered 14 of 15 baseball questions, and they decided that I would be their guy this week. Last week, they some guy who successfully claimed he could sing the lyrics to any popular song from 1965 to 2000. Not only was he able to answer every challenge, he actually sang them. That's the act that I get to follow.

So for about 30 minutes tomorrow, I will stare down the barrel at people logging onto the TMZ website at their home page and answer sports trivia questions. I believe that for this episode they will limit questions to major league baseball and the Super Bowl, but I'm not 100% definite on that. What I do know is that I will be at the TMZ World Headquarters tomorrow afternoon to get a tour of the facilities before the show begins.

Having already been a former alternate for ESPN's Stump the Schwab sports trivia show, I am not nervous about answering the questions. I just hope I don't flake under the pressure of millions of Internet viewers watching me tomorrow. In any event, I will have a full report on how it went from the inside on Saturday morning for you.

I hope you all will tune in to check it out at this page: http://www.tmz.com - hopefully I won't need witness protection afterwards :)

ITEM TWO: J-E-T-S! Brett! Brett! Brett!
So, it turns out, I was half right. If you look at an earlier version of this blog, you'll see my post from a two weeks ago where I suggested the Jets trade for Brett Favre and then ship him to Minnesota. I had the first part correct, but not the second.

I think this is the best move for all concerned, except I wonder if the Packers won't be trying to acquire a veteran QB on waivers to back up Aaron Rodgers. In watching the talking heads discuss the Pack "post-Brett", none of them discussed the worst case scenario for them - a season ending injury to Rodgers before the season starts or during the first game. That would leave them with rookie Brian Brohm as their option. Yikes!

With the improvements the Jets had already made in the off-season, I already had them at 8-8 this year. Remember, they had a ton of injuries last season, a QB in Chad Pennington who's arm was so weak that he couldn't break a pane of glass with a throw, and still they almost beat New England in Foxboro late in the year, (of course, it was another New York team that finally, and thankfully did beat them). Adding Favre could get them, with a weaker schedule than most, to 10-6 and maybe a wild card birth. From a fantasy football standpoint, the happiest in the league right now is probably Thomas Jones, the Jets starting running back. Because Pennington could throw the ball down field last season, teams stacked 8 and 9 guys in the box to shut down the running game. Defenses won't be able to do that with #4 under center, which should open up a lot of running lanes for Jones.

BTW, ESPN was the only network covering the press conference tonight. CNN thought the Cafferty Files about weight gain were more important? Headline News thought more rehashing about the missing girl (with no new details in a 4-hour window before or after) was more important? FOX News thought O'Reilly misleading people about the energy situation was more important? MSNBC thought 5 people talking about "Shillary" wanting to speak at the convention was more important? I didn't think the main networks would interrupt programming, but isn't cable news supposed to cover news when it breaks? There wasn't any mention of it on the bottom of screen crawls either. Bad job of them.


See you on TMZ tomorrow! Hey, I'm going to meet Harvey Levin in person! Whoo-hoo!