Maybe you’ve seen the trailer or vaguely get the premise of Hot Tub Time Machine (it’s below, just in case). Four guys get into a hot tub and are sent back in time to a universe that still only knows Michael Jackson for his music and . It’s Bill and Ted with a more outlandish concept and less Keanu Reeves. I’ve seen that trailer way too many times because, or at least I believe, that I’m the targeted demo of a 25-34 male who watches sports and Comedy Central too much. It should be my sense of humor, but I was doubting it.

As someone who is one of the many influenced by BIll Simmons, an everyman fan who has been a writer at ESPN.com for more than a decade, I will be among the first to admit he isn’t the pure commoner he once embodied. His reach in sports journalism now includes the NY Times bestseller list, the 30 for 30 sports documentary series he produces and his star-studded podcast, The BS Report. His self-carved empire exists somewhere in the middle of “Booyah” and the screaming heads of Pardon The Interruption. And yet, he still is able to “keep it real.”

This was almost guaranteed to happen from the minute House Minority Leader John Boehner launched into his No You Can’t tirade to end Sunday’s final hearings before the vote on the health care bill that was signed into law yesterday (The bill, now forever known, as the Big F’n Deal.)

Earlier this afternoon, Tiger Woods gave his first interviews since the accident last November with two sources, ESPN and The Golf Channel. The terms were surprisingly open: five minutes straight with no questions off limits, but mandated to be held for broadcast until 7:30 p.m. EDT. It’s been a busy 10 days in Tiger news since he signed former George W. Bush Press Sec Ari Fleischer on board to run rebuild Woods’s image.

The understatement for the first quarter of 2010 is that CBS Sports has had an ok start to 2010. First, its broadcast of Super Bowl XLV became the most watched television program in history, to be followed by its annual domination of March and the NCAA Men’s hoops tournament. But there’s another spring event in the CBS Sports catalog that is going to be a bigger spectacle: this April’s Masters, and this year’s event has the tease of Tiger Woods return as its big draw.

It’s a scoop related to pop culture and primetime television, so the source should be no surprise. Michael Ausiello is reporting that Arianna Huffington will be the next guest to join the ensemble cast of How I Met Your Mother for an episode later this spring. Ausiello also tragically noted that she won’t be the titular Mother that Josh Radnor’s Ted has been boring his kids with for years (although it would new a great TV moment if she ends up as the next conquest of Neil Patrick Harris’s Barney).

Earlier this week, the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, the body’s official gatekeeper, levied a warning to staffers to avoid such sites as Matt Drudge’s DrudgeReport.com and several other online destinations, such as WhitePages.com. The rationale? Apparently the Senate Help Desk has been dealing with a large number of viruses, and these sites were possible sources of computer problems. Drudge thinks that timing is…convenient.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann let his sense of humor see the light of day on last night’s Daily Show Chatroulette satire, and now he’s already got another notch in the belt of being more down to earth than evidence sometimes suggests.

The target this time is ESPN’s Bill Simmons – a.k.a. The Sports Guy – and his far-reaching Tiger-Woods’s-Comeback-is-Like-Muhammed-Ali’s column that went up on Wednesday on ESPN.com. Update: Simmons responds!

NBC was smart to put the nailbiting, whirlwind Canada-USA men’s hockey game on MSNBC last night. It was good for the network, good for the cable channel — and good for hockey fans.

Whereas Beijing was just before the tipping point of the Twitter era, this Olympics falls smack in the middle of it, with both connectivity and media producers at an all time high. NBC really has upped its game this time when it comes to pushing online video, and a lot of that is due to the evolution of Microsoft’s Silverlight product.

Seven years ago, NBC certainly didn’t anticipate (a) being the fourth place network, (b) the scattering of audiences across myriad cable and Internet channels and (c) the decreasing, perceived valued of television advertising. As valid as those reasons are, NBC still can’t pin everything on the media and economic climate.

The ripples of NBC’s decision to replace Conan O’Brien with Jay Leno — because let’s face it, that’s what it was — aren’t just being felt on the TV schedule. Displays in 30 Rockefeller Plaza will be taken down. The NBC website will have to be scrubbed. And the NBC store will have to figure out just what merchandise featuring the former 17-year late-night staple they can still get away with selling.

I’m no Carnac the Magnificent, but I think it’s safe to say that digital video will be around for some time. And it’s clear that social video sites are not only cutting into the culture of television, but also redefining how TV is watched for the digital generation. In the realm of late-night television, there [...]