Thought we’d save this one for after-work hours, since 97 percent of the audience won’t care. But because Jerry O’Connell and Jimmy Kimmel were so hilarious on Stern this morning (O’Connell opined that Rachel Bilson was one of the hottest women in Hollywood; after his wife, Rebecca Romijn, of course), we thought this was as good a time as any to tell it. So a couple months ago, O’Connell made a spoof of the Tom Cruise scientology tape. A bunch of folks sent in the link because it was funny, but one person sent in a link to it saying, “Jerry would be happy – he’s a fan and reader of the site.” Because we’re paranoid fools, we brushed it off as some Bill Simmons fan just looking to clown us. Still, we were intrigued, and decided to google the emailer’s name.

The guy checked out. So we emailed him back, and a few emails later, believing the guy was legit, we gave him our number. The plan was, since Jerry’s a huge sports fan and attends plenty of sporting events, we’d conduct an interview with him for the blog. Naturally, the call never came that day, or the next, or the next. Still sort of feeling like someone was playing a joke on us – the ego on us! As if we’re that worthy of even being the butt of an elaborate joke! – we didn’t bother email the guy back, and brushed the whole thing off.

One morning, weeks later, the phone rings. The area code was 310, but at first glance we thought it was 301 and in Maryland, so we picked up. The caller identified himself as Jerry O’Connell. (Isn’t he big enough to call from a blocked number?) He was speaking kind of slowly, and based on the time of the call, we wondered if an actor would really be up at 8 a.m. But then he talked about the writer’s strike and it sort of made sense.

The call caught us off guard, we weren’t 100 percent sure if it was really O’Connell, and the blog was still anonymous at the time, so we were pretty sheepish on the phone. We were faced with two options – tell him we’ll call him back so we can come up with some questions, or just try to pull some questions out of our ass and then run it as an interview with Jerry O’Connell … without knowing that it was 100 percent O’Connell. (Aside: We actually spoke to him once on the phone at the Kentucky Derby during our celebrity magazine days – too long of a story to get into – so we were fairly positive it was him.) But then it hit us – this guy’s a millionaire married to a woman who was on the cover of the SI swimsuit issue. Does he really have the time to bother sitting through an interview with an anonymous blogger? Of course not. So we bailed on it. You’ll just have to settle for a Stern special – you can read it all here – where the best stuff is covered.