Eagles kicker David Akers can probably knock an extra point through the uprights blindfolded.

As for the quality of his throwing arm, we'll find out Tuesday when Akers plays catch blindfolded with Voorhees Middle School students wearing simulation glasses to experience being visually impaired.

Akers says he took the gambit to stress the importance of respecting people with disabilities. Host will be student Rocco Fiorentino, 12, namesake of the Little Rock Foundation. (Rocco, blind since birth, has a side career as a jazz singer.) The Eagles Youth Partnership will have its Eagles Eye Mobile there.

"I have been involved with the Little Rock Foundation for many years, and I still learn something new all the time, which I am sure will happen on Tuesday when I am blindfolded and will be throwing some footballs around," Akers says.

Udderly happy

Lower Merion's boosted bovine was a party animal. Herb Spivak, owner of Hope's Cookies on Lancaster Avenue in Rosemont, said that on Thursday, two Temple students returned the 50-pound, 42-inch-tall fiberglass calf that was swiped earlier in the week from the sidewalk in front of the store. They noticed the black-and-white calf at a party in a house near Temple's North Philly campus, Spivak said. After seeing media reports, they returned to the house, found it in the basement, and called the shop. They shared a $500 reward Thursday. "Baby Moo" is back beside its larger "mother," beckoning motorists to stop for carbs. Spivak said he was installing better anchors and nighttime video cameras to keep his herd from wandering again.

Roll credits

The annual invitation-only party thrown by the Greater Philadelphia Film Office - tonight at Union Trust steak house - will turn into a rally to preserve the film-tax credit. Lawmakers hashing over the state budget have threatened to cut it from $75 million to $49 million. Local film office head Sharon Pinkenson says such a move would wipe out about 4,000 jobs.

Tribute to Swayze

Top dancers walk all over Center City's Randy Swartz. More precisely, they walk all over his work. His company, StageStep, provides flooring and staging. Today, Swartz will provide the flooring for dancers at the private memorial for Patrick Swayze at Sony Studios in Culver City, Calif. Swayze's wife, Lisa Niemi, called Swartz last week to do the favor for the guy he knew as "Buddy." Swartz knew Swayze for 35 years. While touring Upstate New York in the mid-1970s to introduce ballet to working-class people, Swartz needed a male dancer to partner with Michelle Lucci of the Pennsylvania Ballet, a Buffalo native. Swartz recalled that Patsy Swayze, who ran a dance school in Houston, had a boy who could dance. Swartz says he called her and hired him, sight unseen. Swayze also performed at the 25th anniversary of Dance Celebration, which Swartz helps run.

What's cooking

Chef-restaurateur Jose Garces (Amada, Tinto, Distrito, Village Whiskey, and, soon, Garces Trading Company) debuts tonight as one of 10 contestants cooking and scheming their way to fame on The Next Iron Chef (9 p.m., Food Network). If you listen to the buzz out there, the low-key Garces may win the whole shebang. He got off to a good start. According to a screener of tonight's premiere, the Chicago-born son of Ecuadoran parents impressed his peers in the first challenge, in which chefs worked with a familiar ingredient. His was queso fresco, a mild white cheese that he keeps in his home fridge all the time. For the evening's next challenge, contestants were ordered to cook an oddball ingredient (stinky tofu, sea cucumber, unlaid eggs, jellyfish, grasshoppers). Garces was assigned cock's comb - the fleshy thing atop roosters' and other male birds' heads. "I figured if you cooked it for a long period of time, it wouldn't be so bad," says Garces, who is planning to add selected Iron Chef dishes on some of his menus. (But not cock's comb.)

He'll host a $35-a-head viewing party tonight at Distrito, 40th and Chestnut Streets.

Of course, he won't say how he did: "I was satisfied with my performance. I feel like I left it all out there. That was the goal going in."

Briefly noted

Fitness week on the Main Line? Retired footballer Dan Marino ate at Fleming's in Radnor with NutriSystem boss Mike Hagan, while down Lancaster Avenue, Richard Simmons bunked at the Radnor Hotel.

A media blitz for the usually reserved Ed Snider, chief of Comcast-Spectacor: He'll discuss the Spectrum's closing, the start of the Flyers season, and the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow on Fox29's Good Day, and he'll join Howard Eskin's show on WIP (610) at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow. At 6 p.m. Wednesday, he'll be at the Barnes & Noble on Rittenhouse Square for an hour to sign the commemorative book God Bless the Spectrum.

Fox29 reporter Claudia Gomez had good reason to miss last weekend's Mid-Atlantic Emmys, where she won for general-assignment reporting: Son Matteo Daniel Powell arrived four days before, about three weeks early. Dad is Gomez's significant other, lawyer Jason Powell. And for the record, the name of Fox Good Day anchor Sheinelle Jones' son is Kayin (rhymes with Brian) Ojeh. He was born in late August to Jones and husband Uche Ojeh.

After Thursday's performance of his show 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal and producer Larry Magid huddled at the roof lounge at Continental Mid-town for a quiet dinner.

James L. Brooks and his untitled comedy worked on the Parkway Tuesday night. Star Reese Witherspoon shivered in a short black dress for a scene with Paul Rudd.

While husband Chase Utley was at work Thursday, Jennifer Utley was hosting a fund-raiser for Utley All-Star Animals at Boyds in Center City. Johari Smith, fiancée of Jimmy Rollins, also attended the event, which raised $3,625 plus a yet-uncounted cut of the night's store sales. Incidentally, Boyds has a plexiglass ceiling/floor between its second-floor men's shop and third-floor women's shop. Since photographer HughE Dillon noted this apparent transparency on his blog, "Philly Chit Chat," folks have been seeking upward peeks - only to be shooed along by store staff.

Contact columnist Michael Klein

at 215-854-5514 or mklein@phillynews.com. Read his blog at http://go.philly.com/insider. He's also on Twitter: @phillyinsider.