Jody Weiss is moving  to the Chicago Crime Commission. Tammy Duckworth is running for congress. U2 played Soldier Field.

Chicago news: Pretty much always the same. Luckily you have me to recycle jokes.

B story: Mayor Emanuel wants to add more transparency to city government by banning gifts to city employees that exceed $50. That just means there are going to be a ton of $49 Starbucks gift cards floating around City Hall. Side note: If I had a $49 gift card to Starbucks, I might go ahead and buy a tumbler. Why not? (Editors note: Earlier, I mistakenly said no $100 gifts. It’s $100 per calendar year. I regret the error.)

C story: Steve Dahl is officially leaving CBS on Friday. Well, he will be officially unpaid on Friday. Dahl has the been the benificiary of those awesome radio contracts. See, in radio, management loves to fire. They must get off on it. But the contracts (especially early 21st century) are multi year, multi million dollar variety. So if you fire Dahl because of ratings, he still gets paid. So he’s been living off that cash since December 2008, when he was last on air. Wow. 

What does that mean? He’s hinting at a big announcement on Twitter. Which is kind of hard to find between the tweets about the calorie counting. I haven’t seen Steve in a couple years, but according to Twitter, he probably weighs 100 pounds. 

D story: Wait. Wait. Wait. Did the Adler Planetarium just announce pay hikes? I guess they have to raise prices for the build out for the new shuttle. Wait, that’s right. They didn’t get the shuttle. So why are they charging two dollars more per admission? I defer to own rant from May.

Weather: Bill Withers would have loved this lovely day.

Sports: Memo to the Chicago White Sox: Stop losing to the Royals. Memo to the Chicago Cubs: Stop losing.

The Bears are scheduled to play this year’s Hall of Fame game, a pre-season played in Canton, Ohio. If the labor talks don’t end soon, this game will be the first casualty of the NFL 2011/12. It’s a month away. And it’s against the Rams. I’d skip it. Only bad things happen in the preseason anyway.

Kicker: The Voice auditions are coming to Chicago. Actually, Navy Pier. Maybe we could get Ira Glass and Gretchen Helfrich to do a duet audition? They rocked the 2005 WBEZ terrace party with a killer rendition of “Beast of Burden.” Guess you had to be there, six years ago.