Hire Jim Essian

We podcasted this week. Well, Dolan and I did. Because we thought Warren was gone. I also vanished from the podcast for two stretches, so you just get Dolan for a while. If that doesn't have you slathering at the mouth to watch this week's episode, I don't know what will.

The Muskbox is back just in time for. Well, for whatever. To celebrate Anthony Rizzo's new (excellent) contract? Nah. To celebrate the return of the podcast? Nope. I'll just let Carrie explain what we're celebrating in this week's Muskbox.

Cancer fucking sucks. Everyone has been touched by it at some point. It's a horrible disease, and I wish more people were willing to fund cancer research than boner pills. But they're not, so cancer continues to kill people we love. I've never had it, and I don't want to trivialize the contributions of the people who help cancer survivors through their ordeals, but I'd be really fucking pissed if I were Anthony Rizzo's cancer doctors and read his mom getting all the credit for him beating cancer by walking 3.2 miles. The media is weird.

Over the weekend, I took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Canada to visit Niagara Falls. Along the way, we spent a night in Toronto to visit the Rogers Centre and go up high in a giant needle. I was lucky(?) enough to see two beloved former Cubs play for the Blue Jays. Henry Blanco started for the Jays, and Mark DeRosa had a late-inning at-bat. Presumably because the game was already out of hand and the hot bartenders at Jack Astor's Front Street were busy serving Canadian beer to rowdy Jays fans.

In less (fewer?) than four hours, I'll be on the road for the Country that Always Sleeps. Thanks for the tips yesterday. I will take them and use them in the brief time I have in Toronto. I have to call Verizon and see if it's going to cost me 69 (tee-hee!) cents a minute to live tweet from Saturday's game. I love you all, but you're not worth $.69/min.

I've crossed a fair number of ballparks off my list in my quest to see all 30 MLB stadiums. Eleven, I guess. But I always sort of figured the Rogers Centre would be a bitch to make an excuse to go see. Well, I'm going this weekend. Saturday, to be exact. R.A. Dickey is supposed to pitch for the Blue Jays against Hisashi Iwakuma and the Seattle Mariners. I'm ready to pretend I'm a Jays fan and yell things like, "More like HERashi!"

This guy absolutely rules.One of the problems with falling behind on the Roundup is coming back to ALL THESE LINKS. I have a few for you today. Hopefully, they'll last you through the next several days. Because a lovely weekend should be spent obsessively clicking old links from around the internet. Your tips are as appreciated as ... Read More

Yes, I've been MIA for the past couple of weeks. I had some stuff with work, some stuff happened in Boston and Texas, and some stuff with flooding conspire to keep from from much of the internet. It did not, however, keep me from seeing that one of my absolute favorite targets of mockery, Jose Canseco, did an AMA on Reddit.

We have approximately three listeners to our Hangout/podcast, and we invited one of them to join us about ten seconds before we went live. So, he doesn't have a microphone. Meaning there's some ambient noise. But deal with it, because the content is actually halfway decent this week. We give him college advice and talk about high school baseball. That's the level of baseball the Cubs are currently playing. Also, this opens the door wide open for guests. So, call me, Keeley Hazell.

I think anyone--particularly anyone who grew up in Chicago--who has taken a pen to paper or a finger to keyboard with the hope that his writing will in some way entertain another soul adored Roger Ebert. For me, Siskel and Ebert and The Movies was as much a part of growing up as the T.G.I.F. lineup or Thursday nights on NBC. Whether or not you agreed with the content, Ebert's writing was brilliant, hilarious, insightful, poignant, and always entertaining. On a personal note, Ebert looked, spoke, and loved life like my late uncle, who would have celebrated his 66th birthday yesterday. The two packed more into a shortened life than most men would with twice the time. We should all be so lucky to have lived as they did. So get out there and do it.