Wow, first post. No pressure. H…hello? Is this thing on?

Actually, I do feel a bit of pressure. I know there’s nothing groundbreaking about yet another nerd getting on-line and starting up yet another blog. (Yes! Some pasty computer guy you don’t care about blogging about his boring daily life! Finally!) But, in my case, it’s complicated a little by my having been in the public eye, off and on, for the last couple years. To a nation of stoned college students and doting grandmothers (or whoever it is that watches Jeopardy!) my name has–totally undeservedly, I hasten to add–become shorthand for a whole concept: improbable human braininess, if not omniscience. Even now that I’m not doing anything famous anymore, my name shows up all the time in a certain kind of lazy newspaper writing, often with the words “Even” or “Another” prepended. “Even Ken Jennings might not know the answer to this poser…” “These days, you don’t have to be another Ken Jennings to be an expert on…” (I look forward to the obituaries. “Even Jeopardy!’s Ken Jennings couldn’t cheat death today, it turned out…”)

In other words, America seems to have had the idea, at least for six months back in 2004, that being successful on a quiz show is clearly the same thing as intelligence. Why wouldn’t that Ken guy be curing cancer or inventing a hybrid car that runs on cheap, plentiful buttermilk? After all, he was pretty good on Jeopardy! It does me no good to protest that trivia acumen isn’t the same as intelligence, and sometimes isn’t even related. People typically take this for false, charming, Mormon modesty.

This is all by way of warning you that this site will not be some on-line brain trust, taking aim at the great social issues of our day. That smart young man from Jeopardy! will not be casting a shrewd eye on the problems of modern society, or even poking fun at the little foibles of modern life. “Confessions of a Trivial Mind” is, as its name implies, a blog about one thing: trivia.

But this doesn’t mean that I plan on posting an annoying list of “Did You Know?”-style factoids every morning. Trivia is a big topic–even an important one. My upcoming book, Brainiac, is practically a manifesto on the subject, a defense of trivia and all trivial minds everywhere. And that’s because I think trivia doesn’t have to be trivial. Sure, sometimes it’s going to be about esoterica like movie cameos or baseball records or Aquaman’s gallery of super-villains. But it doesn’t have to be! You can know weird stuff or ask trivia questions about just about anything: advances in modern medicine, or the Civil War, or the life of Mozart. Or it can be Aquaman vs. the Black Manta and Ocean Master. Whatever turns you on. That’s the beauty of trivia: it makes knowledge seem fun and sexy, even when it’s not. No matter what the topic.

So my hope is that trivia, as a subject, frees me up to write on just about anything I want. The random contents of my crowded head, delivered daily. Which is, you know, totally different from all those other blogs out there. So I hope you visit from time to time and take a look.