Honestly, we’re all a little confused here. Not just because Karry is holed up on the roof of the Desipio Tower lobbing empty bottles of Cold Duck at us. It’s August and both Chicago baseball teams are within spitting distance of a playoff spot.

Normally, we’d already be obsessing about the Bears, and so, on a day when The Franchise cranks it back up for the Cubs and the Sox are in danger of plummeting even further behind the Royals (the Royals? Yikes.) let’s shift gears and take some whacks at our beloved Bears, shall we?

The first preseason game is Saturday night in Champaign against the Indianapolis Colts. When last we saw the Colts they were giving up 145 points to the Jets in the playoffs. When last we saw the Bears they were being led by the comedic stylings of Henry Burris in that ignominious Sunday night debacle against the Bucs. Given that the Bears loss helped kick the Packers back to having to play on wild card weekend, it was of course, a wild success in our eyes.

And so here are your 2003 Bears. A year older. A year more confused. Still led by the continually constipated Dick Jauron. And still just good enough to get our hopes up, and flawed enough to make us realize that we’re dopes for getting our hopes up.

As I see it there are six key Bears this year.

Kordell “Lupus” Stewart: Never has so much been expected of someone by so little. Do you think Kordell will be a star? Neither do I. But Jerry Angelo does. John Shoop, too. Physically, Kordell might be the strongest quarterback ever. This would be great if the tie-breaker was a power lifting exhibition. But last I checked, it wasn’t. Best known in Pittsburgh for throwing interceptions and crying on the sidelines in a game, Stewart gets a fresh start in Chicago.

In Pittsburgh he had a red assed head coach who makes a knee jerk reactionary look like a deep thinker. In Chicago, he’s got a very patient head coach. He’s also got an offensive coordinator who once got stuck in a parking lot because he kept walking nine yards in any direction when ten would have gotten him to the sidewalk.

Stewart’s backup is the perpetually concussed Chris Chandler. Most backup quarterbacks stand on the sidelines with a baseball cap on and a clipboard. Chandler wears a floppy hunting cap and eats pudding.

So Kordell doesn’t have to worry about being yanked if he’s ineffective. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t see a few Rex Grossman jerseys in the stands. Of course, those might just be the leftover Cade McNown ones.

Anthony “A-Train” Thomas— I don’t even like calling him the A-Train because Brent Musberger gave him that nickname. But I still like the idea of mounting a huge train whistle on the scoreboard and blowing it every time he rumbles for a first down. Last year that whistle would have blown like six times. That’s bad.

Anthony’s season got off on the wrong foot when a well-meaning McDonald’s bobble head promotion featured a visage of him that looked much like those racist lawn jockeys you see in people’s yards in Alabama. McDonald’s recalled the doll because of “lead paint”. Sure, whatever. I still have two of them. In fact, I lick them from time to time. And I’m fine. I mean really, look how I turned out. There’s obviously nothing wrong with the…hey, Chandler! You got any more pudding?!

Where was I? Oh, yeah. The Bears are screwed at running back behind him. I like Adrian Peterson, but Dick Jauron doesn’t seem to, and the third stringer is Brock Forsey a very productive running back out of Boise State. Brock ran for thousands of yards on that weird blue turf up there. But the Bears haven’t had a good white running back since Red Grange and that’s not going to stop now.

Brian Knight— He’s going to hear a lot of crap about how important it is that he replace Rosevelt Colvin as the pass rushing specialist on the Bears. I’ve got news for you, being the pass rushing specialist on a team that couldn’t rush the quarterback like the 2002 Bears is about as exclusive as having the best toupee at the barber shop. For all his rep, Colvin couldn’t tackle anybody but the quarterback and he only did that twice in the last eight games of his Bears career.

Dez White— He’s the chic pick of the national media to have a breakout season. You and I know this is hilarious. Dez is a great kid and he’s got blazing speed. He also came with his hands attached backwards. No sale.

John Shoop— The entire coaching staff’s future is in his beady little eyes…er hands. There are some who think that he does know offense, but was saddled by having immobile quarterbacks, banged up offensive lines and one good reciever. Most of those people are on mescaline. My six year old nephew uses a more imaginitive offense on Madden 2003 than Shoop uses with the Bears. You cannot deny that the thing his offense is most famous for is the six yard pass on third and eight. When that’s your legacy, your next job usually involves an incentive plan for getting people to SuperSize their meals.

Jerry Angelo— He thinks that if the team bombs this year that he gets to finally fire Dick Jauron and bring in pipe-dream candidate Nick Saban to save the day. Here’s the deal, Jer. If Jauron flops, and he might, he gets fired. And likely, so do you. And then we get to see the return of C. Montgomery Burns himself, Mike McCaskey.

I’m going to need to padlock the oven or my head will be in it again.

These Bears will be entertaining to say the least. The defensive coordinator is insane, the kicker gives off that serial-killer-in-training vibe. The stadium looks like something you’d pick up on sale at Ikea. And given the weird world of the NFL, the Bears have a shot.

At what, I have no idea.

Rosey’s a little to fond of the bold type face today. Hey, if the Tribune can’t afford a pinch hitter for the Cubs, they damn sure can’t afford an editor for Rosenbloom.

This is no way to win a pennant.

John Mullin calls the NL Central a horse race. It looks more like a dog show to me.

The Meat Tray and The Franchise were just two ships passing in the night. Let’s hope Prior doesn’t run into him.

Aaron Gibson is big.

Terrance Metcalf is what Rick Pitino would call multi-versatile. Beats the hell out of mono-versatile.

Kenny Battle is the new IIT head men’s basketball coach. I think I speak for basketball fans everywhere when I say, “IIT has a basketball team?”

Mariotti put down the doughnut to slum it at a Sox game last night.

Desmond Clark hopes to become the best Bears tight end since Tim Wrightman.

Or maybe Jay Saldi.

Cap Boso?

Keith “Norman Bigfish” Jennings?

Oh, forget it.

Speaking of Norman Bigfish.

Mark Cuban is a big fan of Kobe’s alleged sexual assault. How…nice?

Lamar Odom heard there’s a lot of good weed in Miami.

I don’t care. I still don’t like Roy Williams.

John Donovan mocks the NL Central.

Granny’s a bad-ass bank robber.

So it was wrong to post pictures of his ex-wife having sex with other men? Who knew?

A JAG star died of an OD. I’ve got news for you, the only JAG star is Catherine Bell.

An Iowa house full of feces? What’s news about that?

Sounds like a new Sheryl Crow song.

The world’s greatest newspaper says that a Greek man found the missing arms of the Venus de Milo. Well, it’s about damn time. Now if he could just find the rest of David’s pecker.