Take a couple days off and look what happens?

The Bulls hire a new coach.

The Bulls trade Jalen Rose, Donyell Marshall and Lonny Baxter for squat…nay…expensive squat.

The last pretty girl gets booted off Survivor.

Notre Dame beats Stanford by 50!

I have tossed myself on the Bruce Weber sandwich cart…er bandwagon.

Oh, and the Bears have playoff dreams that might not be patently ridiculous.

Who knew?

So, let’s take them in order.

On Friday, the Bulls called a press conference and introduced Phil Collins…damn, I did that again…Scott Skiles as the new head coach. He scored big points when he admitted to writing in George Mitterwald’s name on an All-Star ballot.

Scott also scored points when he announced to the team that they’d have double practices over the weekend and Eddy Curry thought he was kidding. Not only that, but the Bulls players called the league office to see if it was “legal” to have two-a-days during the season. Oh, suck it up you lazy humps.

Skiles looks at the Bulls and sees what we see. A team with an athletic center, a freakishly athletic 7’1 pogo stick, and Jamal Crawford and sees a team that ought to be great defensively. He’ll soon be as frustrated as we are. Alas…

On Saturday, the Bulls finally ended the Jalen Rose hostage crisis and sent him north of the border in a trade so devoid of talent that Donyell Marshall may have been the most valuable player that changed hands. The Bulls also threw in Lonny Baxter and got Chris Jeffries, who is best known as not being Jared Jeffries, or Haywood Jeffires, or Gregg Jeffries.

It always bothered me that Haywood couldn’t spell his own last name. Jeffires? Isn’t that Jef-fires?

Anyway…

The Bulls also received Antonio Davis who was a stud three years ago and Jerome Williams who is basically a shorter version of Scott Williams. We’re supposed to love Jerome because he plays hard. I’d love him more if he’d get this teeth fixed and learn how to make a jumper.

Basically, this trade was John Paxson’s way of improving the Bulls by getting rid of Jalen Rose and by bringing in a real power forward to help out Eddy Curry. The Bulls think that by cutting Antonio’s minutes down to 30 or so, they’ll get more production out of him than Toronto got. When teams start telling you they’ll limit your time so you can be more productive, it means only one thing…

It’s time for you to go pick out your pudding spoon.

You’re old now, Antonio. It’s official.

The Jalen Rose trade cost the Bulls a pudgy, overrated “All-Star” in Brad Miller and a psycho in Ron Artest. We miss Artest, which makes it a bad deal. Nobody in this trade is going to make us forget Ron, either, so credit John Paxson for shuffling the deck, but he didn’t exactly deal us a full house.

How about that poker analogy? I think I hurt myself…

—
Wednesday night’s Survivor was notable for two reasons. First, it will always be remembered as the night that Grandma Fair Play died…or did she? In what may have been the most enjoyable twist of any Survivor to date, Johnny Fair Play and his fat, dweed friend, managed to rig a reward challenge by pretending Johnny’s grandmother had died.

It was time for the reward challenge where each castaway had one family member or friend come visit on the island. We got to see Lillian’s frighteningly bulbous husband, Tijuana’s “friend” and some more non-descript pals. But Johnny Fair Play got a visit from a friend. After they exchanged hugs and awkward high fives, Johnny FP asked his pal, “How’s grandma?” His friend replied, “She’s dead, dude.”

That sent Johnny into a tearful remorse. It sent me into disbelief. If Johnny FP’s grandmother was so frail that she’d drop dead at any moment, would she really have been a candidate to fly to Panama to live in the jungle for 24 hours? Nah.

Part of the reward challenge involved dooming your opponent’s family or friend to walk the plank. Since the other castaways felt sorry for Johnny FP, he won easily. Oooh, dirty pool.

Later on, we learned that indeed, it was a ruse. Johnny FP’s grandmother was at home drinking Busch beer out of the can with her feet up on an old tire she turned into an end table. Or something.

The night had kicked off with the tribe accusing poor, drug addled Christa of throwing the fish into the woods. Huh? Apparently, after they came back from de-Ruperting the tribe, somebody tossed the fish bucket into the trees. Everyone blamed Christa. It turned out to be Sandra who did it. Wouldn’t that seem obvious? Sandra is the hot head. Who’s more likely to do something like that? Sandra claimed in her CBS confession that she tripped and the fish just flew through the air. Sure. Whatever.

So Christa was sure she was next to get the boot. She began to weep and said she just wanted to go home and see “my man.” I’m always leery of a woman who refers to her boyfriend or husband as her man. Besides, we met Christa’s “man” the next day at the reward challenge and he’s…kind of a younger Jim Fassell. So, he’s a dork.

The immunity challenge was a word game. Seriously. They had to use three words and see how many other words they could spell using those words. Jeff “Anal” Probst made a boo boo when he declared Burton the winner only to realize after he’d given immunity to Burton that Burton had spelled the word liasion incorrectly. Burton spelled it “liason”. Oops!

Anal had to take immunity back and toss it up for grabs again. Whatever’s left of Darrah ended up winning. However, it should be noted that our Hillbilly Princess was at an advantage when the ammended challenge consisted of a reace to see who could make the most four letter words in the shortest amount of time. Darrah looks like somebody who’d know lots of four letter words.

So now she had immunity, which meant that Christa, Burton, Johnny FP and Sandra seemed the most likely targets. Sandra convinced Tijuana to vote with the other ladies to boot Burton.

At Tribal Council, Tijana got the axe. Oooh, ruthless.

So long, Tijuana. Now you’re just a Mexican border town full of weed and venerial disease again.

—

On Saturday night, a most peculiar thing happened. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Written off for dead weeks ago, traveled out to Palo Alto, California and hammered the sissified Stanford Cardinal. They won 57-7 and could have won 80-7 if they’d really wanted to. What this proves, is what we knew all along. This is not a good Notre Dame team, but it’s not a terrible one, either. Give them a typical pattycake college football schedule like Nebraska had and this 5-6 team would have gone 9-3. Ty Willingham didn’t forget how to coach. The Irish will be back in 2004 and poised to begin a stretch of “real” Notre Dame football. You might not like it. But we will.

—

Also on Saturday I had an epiphany. Really. I watched the Illinois-Temple game and I’m a believer in Bruce Weber’s style of basketball. Nobody does that to Temple. Nobody! If Temple is good at one thing it’s slowing you down and making the game ugly. Especially in their home town. At one point in the first half, Illinois lead 27-7. They would not look back.

It was our first real look at the “motion” offense and you have to like what you see. It’s possible, that the Illini are actually better suited to play this style than the style of the man who recruited them. Everybody on the Illini can run, and nobody in the Big Ten has three guards the ilk of Dee Brown, Deron Williams and Luther Head. Throw in the athletic Roger Powell and the blazing big man speed of James Augustine (who has hair this year) and the Illini can flat move up and down the court. They also get after it on defense, just like they did for Bill Self.

We’ll learn more about them tomorrow night when they take on North Carolina. But even if the players haven’t bought in yet, I have.

—
And then there was yesterday. A day when the miraculous occurred on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. The Bears, for a fleeting moment (maybe a week–perhaps two), gave themselves some realistic playoff hopes. From the sublime (the great play of Justin Gage) to the ridiculous (130+ yards for the woefully medicore Brock Forsey), the Bears had it all going against the mighty Arizona Cardinals.

Kordell Stewart threw for nearly 300 yards. Dez White made catches (gasp!). The Bears scored a touchdown in the first quarter for the first time all year. Ouch.

Brian Urlacher missed two tackles early, and then missed nothing but a terrible pitch on a fake field goal, the rest of the way.

Jerry Azumah continued to improve before our very eyes. So did Michael Haynes and Alex Brown.

Suddenly, the Bears are playing the best football in the NFC North. Sure, that’s not much, but it’s something. And on Sunday, the Bears head north to take on the Green Bay Packers (boo!) and a win puts them in a second place tie.

Who knew?

The best part is that the Bears may finally be playing well enough to free themselves and us, from the shackles of the awful crew of Curt Menefee and Tim Green. Sunday’s game in Green Bay might just be a chance for us to hang with Brian Baldinger for three hours.

Though, I’m guessing handsome Sam Rosen and insightful Bill Maas will get the call. Woof.

Don’t you think that somewhere on Sunday, Jerry Angelo took a moment to shake his fist at the sky and scream at God in heaven for tormenting him again? Two years ago he wanted to fire Dick Jauron and the Bears went 13-3. This year he wants to fire him and the Bears have gone from 1-5 to 5-7 and look like they might just go 9-7 to spite Jerry. Hee hee.

Like I said all along, if Jauron dumps John Shoop in the offseason, he can be my coach any time. But if he insists on keeping the beedy eyed offensive coordinator, he’s got to go.

—
Marty Booker knows what a playoff football team looks like and he thinks the Bears might be one. Hey, let him believe it. What’s it going to hurt?

For the first time since his college days, a team can’t afford to be without Aaron Gibson.

Justin Gage is good.

I don’t like Greg Blache at all. But his defense has been pretty good for more than a month now.

What’d I tell you about the Vikings?

Groucho doesn’t like Eddy or Tyson, does he?
My prediction on the Scott Skiles regime. It’ll make a man out of Eddy. You watch.

The Bulls will be playing shorthanded tonight. They will after they get the Raptors guys, too. Oh, I kill me.

The Greeks gave us many things. Written language. Great philosophers. Pioneers of science. Anal sex. Scott Skiles…

Slowly, the Illini are starting to believe in the man with the sandwiches…er, plan.

Tonight at the Bradley Center, Notre Dame v. Marquette. Always a good time.

The Cubs and Yankees are both after LaTroy Hawkins. The Yankees have settled for Tom Gordon, so maybe LaTroy is on LaWay.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to take a hose to a blanket and throw it on the Bears.

Is it too much to hope that Rick Telander gets fired for making a big deal out of the fact that Brock Forsey is white? He’s also relatively untalented, so those 130 yards are a complete condemnation of the Cardinals defense.

Suddenly the Notre Dame-Syracuse game is a big one. For a very strange reason.

Bill Callahan says the Raiders are the dumbest team in America. He’ll get some argument from the Vikings.

Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback.

Roy Disney’s not a big Michael Eisner fan.

Looks some of NYC’s “Bravest” are trading up for hotter wives.

Dan Rather’s thinking about finally hanging it up at CBS and we have the scoop on who the new, younger, hipper CBS Evening News anchor will be.

This just in, Howard Dean is creepy.

A Springfield man really likes the name Bubba.

“Hello, yeah, I’d like to report an injured manatee. Huh? Um…a dress shirt and dress pants, why? I found the manatee on…well yes, I do enjoy that, but really this isn’t the time or place for…touching my what?”

Ozzy Osbourne reports he was buggered repeatedly as a young boy.

America’s finest news source with an abstinet teen.