On Monday, like the rest of the world, Desipio will get back on its regular schedule. Until then, who knows when or what we’ll publish? You’ll just have to stop by every ten minutes and see if anything’s new. As of right now, Karry Ling is scheduled to do Friday’s Daily Dose. But the day after New Year’s? Will he be sober enough to pull it off?

But for today, we could do one of those cheesy, “let’s look back at 2003” things. Oh, screw that. Enough stupid things have happened in the past few days to fill a column, so let’s just do that.

It’s interesting to watch the news shows over the holidays, it’s kind of a fun little game, “Which anchors are Jewish?” Let’s just say that over on CNN Aaron Brown is counting the days to Rosh Hoshana.

George Stephanopolous was wearing a sign last week that said, “I’m not Jewish, I’m Greek! I get Christmas off, remember!?!”

The Gaylord Perry (or something) Music City Bowl is on right now and the announcers are Pam Ward and Chris Spielman. In a novel and brilliant move, the Music City Bowl sent publicity materials to Auburn and Wisconsin alumns that said, “ESPN is going to have Ward and Spielman broadcast the game, but if you buy a ticket and fly to Nashville, you won’t have to listen to them.”

Though really, does it get any worse than last night’s Silicon Valley Bowl? Not only did the game start at like midnight, but San Jose has had about 19 inches of rain in the last two days and the field was a mud pit, plus UCLA was in the game and they suck and ESPN sent the dynamic duo of Gary Bender and John Cooper. They’re the Tylenol PM of broadcasters.

A sign of progress though: Pam Ward doing the lead announcing of a bowl game means that we’re that much closer to having a woman do it.

Just how much of a clusterf@#$ was the Steve Spurrier era in Washington? It started with him giving a job to every mediocre ex-Gator he could stuff onto the payroll and it ended with him denying he’d resigned after his agent had issued his resignation news release in which Spurrier himself was quoted about his resignation. This was such a disaster, I’m amazed it didn’t all take place in Lake Forest.

Jerry Angelo and Ted Phillips will be in Foxboro, Massachusetts interviewing (or “romancing” — I wanted to be the 1297th lame writer to use that) Romeo Crennel today, and they’ll be in St. Louis tomorrow to talk with Lovie Smith.

a) How’d you like to be in on the romantic New Year’s Eve dinner in Boston tonight between Ted and Jerry?
b) How’d you like to be Romeo or Lovie and have to sit in a room with those two creepy guys for hours on end?
c) What’s the over/under on the number of minutes Romeo and Lovie can sit in a room with them before they stand up and say, “Screw this, I’m going to go take a shower and pretend this never happened”?

I don’t think I ever weighed in on the Cubs’ signing of Todd Walker. I didn’t even see it until late on Christmas Eve Eve, but I love Jim Hendry.

Twelve months ago would any of us have really thought that a player, even one as non-Hall of Famish as Todd Walker would take less money, and turn down a guaranteed starting job in Cleveland to come to the Cubs because he wanted to win a World Series? I’m giddy just thinking about it.

Where does Walker fit in? Well, sure he’s an absolute clank with the glove at second base, but he wasn’t that bad in Cincinnati and regressed in the “we don’t play no stinking defense” atmosphere of Boston last year (though he was an absolute disaster in Minnesota in his younger days.) But gives the Cubs a leadoff man who will take a walk, won’t strike out and bats lefthanded. At the very worst he platoons with our buddy Mark Grudzielanek. The Cubs will pay Grudzielanek, Walker and Ramon Martinez COMBINED in 2004 less than what they paid Grudzielanek by himself in 2003. Somewhere in the Tribune Tower an accountant just had to change his shorts.

There are still two big fish out there to reel in and sometime in the next couple of weeks Hendry will meet with Scott Boras and the names Pudge Rodriguez and Greg Maddux will be discussed. Since nobody’s comfortable with a Mike Barrett/Paul Bako platoon, you’d figure the Pudge discussion will be a serious one. As for Maddux? You can’t go wrong signing him, for sure. But let’s face it, he’s not that Greg Maddux anymore. He’s still a good major league starter and there aren’t exactly a whole pile of those, but he’s a five or six inning pitcher these days. I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and sign him, because his ability to get out of jams with a minimum of pitches is a skill that would be of maximum importance for Kerry Wood, Mark Prior and Carlos Zambrano to see on a weekly basis. I am saying that he deserves top starter money about as much as I do right now.

You would like to see the Tribune open the ledger and see the big black number the Cubs bring in and throw about $14 million at Pudge and Greg for 2004. Can you imagine the pandelerium this city would be thrown into if either (much less both) of them signed? I shudder to think.

Don’t you think Bruce Webber was strutting around the basketball complex in Champaign with his weird little chest stuck out, feeling pretty good about his team’s Braggin’ Rights win over Missouri and the easy pasting of UIC last night, and then heard that Belmont College upset Missouri in Columbia and then Bruce just hid in a corner and wept? I want to like Bruce, I really do. But he’s a strange little man. He didn’t do himself any favors with that strange “Bill Self is dead” thing two weeks ago.

The win over Mizzou is still a good one, because for all of their problems, Mizzou is damned good, and you know they didn’t want to lose a fourth straight Braggin’ Rights.

But Belmont?

As for Webber’s Self obsession, he’s going to have to get used to it. Bill had a lot of faults:
a) the hair system
b) his teams bad trend of advancing a round less every NCAA tournament
c) uh…OK, just those two

But he had a lot of great things about him:
a) he’s cool
b) he won a Big Ten title or tournament title every year at U of I
c) he was Mr. TV when he was at U of I and did wonders with that exposure
d) he can flat-out (I love the flat outs) coach

No matter who Illinois brought in they were going to suffer by comparison. Webber’s got the ability to win at Illinois for a long time, but he’s never going to be Bill Self, and he’s just going to have to get over it.

For Christmas one of the many gifts I got was EA Sports’ NCAA March Madness 2004. It’s a vast improvement over the terrible college basketball games that EA had been putting out, and it’s close to being a very good game. I’m enjoying it immensely. My NIU Huskies just won our first national title and the EA Sports All-Americans (McDonald’s All-Americans in real life) can’t wait to come hang out with me in DeKalb. Easily the funniest part of this game is that before big games you can hit a button and play an “Ask Coach” video clip. You’ll get a clip from a real coach like Gary Williams, Billy Donovan, Ben Braun or Kelvin Sampson telling you how to attack the man-to-man defense or getting you fired up before a Sweet Sixteen appearance. Some of the guys are really good at it. Everybody but one directs his talk right to the camera (Phil Martelli of St. Joe’s is especially good), except for one guy:

Bill Self. Bill is in full on “Afterschool Special” actor mode. He pretends that the room is full of players and he makes phony eye contact with them during his talks. It’s hilarious. EA doesn’t have the big games ones on their Web site, but they do have the ones about attacking different offenses and defenses. See for yourself. He’s quite the thespian.

Oh, by the way, the worst is John Thompson III, who has the charisma of his dad’s chew towel.

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David Huh says that the Bears are interviewing Lovie and Romeo because they’re on teams who have the bye week in the playoffs. Yeah, and they’re black.

Greg Olson says he might take a college job closer to West Fayette. I think IUPUI is hiring. Do they even have a football team?

UIC’s pretty good, but you wouldn’t have known that last night.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to write the same column he wrote when Wanny got canned. Don’t work too hard Jay, you might strain some fat.

ESPN reported a couple weeks ago that David Wells had signed a minor league deal with the Yankees. That might be news to the NY Post who says he signed with San Diego yesterday.

Pudge says he might wait until May 15 and re-sign with Florida. Sure. Whatever.

Moron the A-Rod deal and how it fell apart.

Isiah’s at it again. The Knicks had been starting Frank Williams at point guard and in the last five games he was averaging 12.4 points, five assists less than 2.5 turnovers and shooting 60 percent from the field. So, Isiah trades for a point guard. Not just a point guard, but a bad one, Moochie Norris who used to be Charlie Ward with a cool afro…now he’s just…Charlie Ward.

So long Genius.

Good news Bears fans! Mike Tice will be back.

Remember when New Year’s Eve was a party?

I didn’t think Michael Jackson could get weirder, but then I saw that 60 Minutes interview. I especially like the part where he claimed he went to use the bathroom in the jail and there was “doo doo feces” on the walls. Didn’t Doo Doo Feces used to be a backup singer for Michael?

Oh, lighten up.

Michael…still weird.

Teen lesbian pop starts, Tatu, are runnning for president of Russia. I’ll vote for them.

Chloe Sevigny was just going by the “if you want to get ahead you have to give some” rule.

The Onion with a first-person account of a real working girl.