ESPN's Corporate Blog Finds Rock Bottom Somewhere In This Idiot's Office

If you're at all like me, you've avoided ESPN's in-house blog, Front Row, in much the same way you avert your eyes whenever a cat starts licking its own asshole. But this? This is just too much.

This is our old friend Lynn Hoppes, ESPN's senior Jonas Brothers correspondent and author of the sort of prose you'd typically find taped up in a 13-year-old girl's locker and covered in glitter. In the video above, Hoppes is giving a guided tour of his "own little man cave," showing off the various swag that media people receive all the time but usually have the good sense to give to their nephews for Christmas. In the course of the interview, the following names are breathlessly dropped: Brock Lesnar ("Brock and I have known each other for several years"), the Jonas Brothers ("I know Nick Jonas pretty well"), Hugh Jackman, Chris Jericho ("who was in Dancing With the Stars, which I cover"), Phillip Soven ("Sent me his wakeboard. We're friends. I've wakeboarded with him before."), Larry the Cable Guy ("We had a radio show years ago. He sent me a hat."), Shane Mosley ("Shane Mosley sent me a shirt. Actually, gave me a shirt."), Kenny Chesney, and Nelly ("I've known him for several years"). The video is three minutes of concentrated B-list name-dropping.

Now, Front Row itself isn't a terrible idea; it's at least a nod in the direction of transparency. I'm sure it comes from the same well-meaning but ultimately misguided impulse that gave us ESPN's new ombudsman, the Poynter Institute for Self-Serious Hand-Wringing and Otherwise Wasting Everyone's Damn Time. But there are certain corners of ESPN that I think we'd all rather pretend don't exist, and one of those is the place where they let Lynn Hoppes play with his fingerpaints.

Office Space: Lynn Hoppes [ESPN Front Row]