Come Monday at 8, Woz's chances have increased
When it comes to "Dancing with the Stars," Steve Wozniak has already proved his legs are limber, not timber. They may not be the longest limbs in the competition, but they have not disintegrated like a C-list ego.
In the limp-up to Monday night's big event (ABC, 8 o'clock, as if you didn't know), Nancy O'Dell, who smiles a lot on some entertainment show or other, has bowed out with a knee that couldn't pasa the doble. And Jewel, a singer who used to live in a car or a truck or a truck stop or something like that, fractured, well, a couple of tibias.
This means the show has had to scramble like a new social networking site trying to get funding in order to find last-minute replacements.
Because I know so many of you live, breathe, and obsessively google "Dancing with the Stars," I can tell you that one replacement is former Playboy model and number one girlfriend of Hugh Hefner, Holly Madison.
The other is the woman whom America has been hugging so close to its bosom that I'm amazed she has managed to draw breath since last week. Yes, it's Melissa SomethingOrOther, the sad, sad girl who was dumped on television last week by the Bachelor with the most untrustworthy face since the car dealer who sold you a Pontiac with no engine.
For those of you who missed it because you were having open heart surgery, the Bachelor first proposed to her, then changed his mind a few weeks later and snogged some other store assistant or Avon saleslady or whatever.
The Woz (surely he now always deserves a "The" before his moniker) has been training hard, getting used to wearing heels every day as opposed to only occasionally and testing the patience of Karina Smirnoff. She is his partner, a professional with a harder derriere than a corpse well into rigor mortis.
Karina and the Woz will be performing the cha-cha to that memorable tune to which you yourself may have, on occasion, tripped the heavy fantastic, "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive.
By surviving the training where others have fallen to the floor, the Woz's chances have unquestionably increased. By at least 0.2 percent.
The early favorite is, so very surprisingly, Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson. And the Woz's first target (after staying upright) will be to do better than Mark Cuban.
I know so many of you will be wishing him luck, watching the show with a very twitchy posture, while not gaming the voting system using your consummate, brilliant, underused and deeply underestimated hacking prowess.
I only mention it because Mark Cuban apparently calculated that if the Woz gets zero marks from the judges and everyone else gets a perfect 300, he only needs to get 6 percent more of the viewers' vote to win anyway.
But please don't let that influence you at all. At all. This is a serious show. And I know you will treat it seriously.
I will be posting action updates live--well, live PST version--tonight. Bet you can hardly wait.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Please follow the link on Karina's name in the post and you will discover things you never dreamed were real.
As for Dancing with the Stars, well, it's a little TV show that's cheap to make and highly profitable. Oh, and it's a show in which people's whose names you almost forgot, twirl around with professionals who have infinite patience. (and would like to be famous too...)
Chris