Tuesday roundup

Three very winnable games for our Bulls this work week: at MJ's Bobcats tonight, followed by home contests against the Warriors and Bucks. Deng is a maybe for tonight, too. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Really, I just want to see how much I can bash Deng until Stompy speaks up for him. Can we really consider Luol Deng one of the world's most charitable athletes when he's stealing $72 million from Jerry Reinsdorf!?! I kid, Bob, I kid. But yeah, here's hoping the Bulls can roll over some of Saturday's momentum.

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I don't think I could churn out 1,500 more words right now if I wanted to: not a whole lot going on in Chicago sports at the moment. So I quickly want to touch on a few things I've been meaning to get to.

- My main man Steve Rhodes has been entrenched in a war of words with the Trib's Eric Zorn that even tops the epic Rickhaus-Jack Cobra feud. The topic is the future of journalism (which I realize probably isn't interesting to anyone but me), with Zorn arguing that newspapers should make Internet users pay to read. Needless to say, Rhodes isn't having any of it. I'm not really sure where I side in the whole debate, but did want to point out one newspaper reporter that was been doing stellar blog work recently.

The stuff the Sun-Times' Brad Biggs has been writing on his Bears blog lately has been as good as anything you'll find on Chicago sports on the Web. It is becoming a must-read every day for me. Papers obviously have space constrictions, so it's nice to see Biggs going all out on his blog, especially since I doubt he gets paid extra for it. His Jay Cutler post was particularly spot on, and his mailbag was solid, too. If I'm going to give kudos to SSS when they step up their game, I may as well give great mainstream media writing a shoutout, too. 

- This video has been making the rounds on my friends' facebook pages for about a month now, so it's about time we posted it here. From HJE:

I hate HireJimEssian because they're just so good. I'm jealous; I wish this site could be 25 percent as hilarious as they are. I suppose we have a little bit of history together though, since their epic takedown of the Sox prompted me to write this.

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I'm callin' it after Monday: the find of the week by the music blogs is video of this nearly hour long Deerhunter concert. I suppose if you're a big Deerhunter fan the highlight would be the four new jams they apparently unveiled, but I was more excited to see them play "Nothing Ever Happened" (one of my favorite tunes of last year; starts up at around the 23 minute mark) and "Cover Me Slowly"/"Agoraphobia" (39:30ish). At least check out the end of NEH, if for no other reason than to see Brandon Cox - indie rock's most handsome leading man, naturally - melt faces.

- Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention there is a new Wilco album coming this summer, too.

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One more day til that epic White Sox top ten list! I'm sure you can't wait.

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UPDATE

Sorry, one more thing that I keep forgetting to mention (seemingly every day for the last two weeks now): more has to be made of this Jose Contreras comeback. No one thought there was a chance in hell he'd be back before August, and I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if he missed all of 2009. Now it appears he could be in the opening day rotation. It's absolutely incredible and it'd be a HUGE boost to the Sox. I do not take all caps lightly, kids. This is a big deal.

PECOTA's projection of just 74 wins for the Sox was based largely on the fact that they'd have AAA pitchers fill out the last two spots in the rotation. If Contreras can healthy, you know he can eat innings with league average production. Again...that'd be gigantic.

Jose threw for the first time yesterday, here's what he had to say:

''It's incredible how I felt,'' Contreras said through interpreter Lou Hernandez. ''I've never really thrown a bullpen like that, six months of not having thrown on a mound. I felt strong. Velocity, location was good, the slider felt good. I've never thrown as well as I did just now.''

Sounds a little too good to be true. That's my only concern.