Bonus Pick:

All of the Argos have been cut by Bart Andrus, leaving Pinball to play the Lions himself. Complicating matters is that the dastardly Wally Buono has somehow reconfigured the SkyDome floor to have numerous trap doors, much like a Pinball machine. How does Pinball do?

Boatmenblog Pick: Before we get to the pick, I'd like to point out something that I found bizarre while researching this. (Yes, these Pinball picks take research.  What did you think we did, just made them up?) We were going to try to make a reference to a famous pinball machine. Then realizing that one wasn't immediately coming to mind, we decided to google "best selling pinball machine".  It's an Addams Family game that came out in 1992.  You'd think that with all of the arcades, bowling alleys, basements and somewhat creepy neighbours houses that there would be one iconic pinball machine.  Apparently not.  The obvious reason, they all balked at even attempting to overshadow Pinball Clemons.

While Wally may think that all the new-fangled trap doors are enough to stop the older Pinball, Pinner is able to easily adapt and in fact uses some of the defensive lineman as bumpers to careen around the field and past Wally's obstacles. Things go from bad to worse for the Lions when Pinball goes down the tunnel at the half and what should emerge but not one, but two Pinballs.  Bonus Round! 

Final score: Pinball 472 points and 106 free games.  Lions 2

Calgary v. Edmonton

Look, could the Esks please just go out and buy the domain name eskimos.com already?  Right now it goes to a site that links to "CFL fan jewelry" and a "Hispanic dating network", which I imagine is a small pool in Edmonton.

One can only hope that "CFL fan jewelry" involves pieces featuring CFL fans.  I'll take the gold necklace of the guy wearing the watermelon.

Pick: Calgary

BC v. Toronto

Sadly, we've been hearing some reports of fighting between the Argos receivers and the defensive backs.  This all could have been avoided if the receivers were actually able to get away from defenders.

Pick: Toronto (no, seriously)

Montreal v. Winnipeg

Two somewhat related questions... when was the last time a CFL team recorded back-to-back shutouts and what are the odds that a concussion keeps Michael Bishop out this week? 

Pick: Montreal

Hamilton v. Saskatchewan

Umm... What the hell is going on?  Could someone please send Casey Printers back to Steeltown?  Time to do my part.

Pick: Hamilton

(Pinball pick hopefully coming before Friday's game)

Well... that game was a touch ugly last night.  But we here at boatmenblog encourage you to get your head out of the oven and look at all the positives from last night's game in Montreal:

• If you were flipping channels, you got to see not 1 but 2 tributes to the 1992-93 Toronto Blue Jays as the Argos posted 0 points. A feat not accomplished since September 1992.
• It finally erased the memories of that 2006 game in Montreal where John "two thumbs up" Williams started at RB and Spergon Wynn spent most of the game trying to find Shockmain Davis. Damn it, I just brought all of those memories back.  My apologies
• Didn't hear that annoying "fait du bruit" call as much
• Heard a French-Canadian PA announcer say Pickett about 5 or 6 times
• Bart Andrus' hair.... still in place
• Team status during the national anthem... disciplined.  Very disciplined.  Now they may have had to run the only receiver the team's had in the past 5 years out the door in order to get that way, but look at the resul.... No, no.  We're going to stay positive here.

Is there any more room in that oven?

We've seen some random things over our years of Argofandom, but this one is straight out of the short-lived Drabinsky era:

When three-time Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Jeremy Piven comes to Toronto to promote his upcoming film The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, he’ll be made an honorary member of the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts when he’s presented with his own jersey by Quarterback Kerry Joseph, Defensive Tackle Adriano “The Kissing Bandit” Belli and Vice Chair Michael “Pinball” Clemons. 

Admittedly, the plot of this immensely promising film - which is "about a man asked to help an ailing car dealership" - sounds somewhat along the lines of what the Argos are hoping will happen to Arland Bruce. 

And yes, it's arguably the closest brush the Argos have had with Hollywood since Mike Vanderjagt served as Tony Danza's stunt-leg in The Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon. But we're still not entirely sure what this has to do with anything.

If you went to the bathroom for about 25 minutes during the second quarter of Saturday's home opener...well, you should probably see a doctor about that. But also, you might have come away with the impression that the Argos played a pretty decent game, the final score notwithstanding.

Granted, it's a little hard to ignore what happened before halftime, which was among the worst implosions we've ever seen. But we're still feeling...encouraged might be too strong a word, but at least not totally discouraged.

It's probably a sign of diminished expectations when you find comfort in how your team lost. Be that as it may, we see some cause for optimism. The offensive line is vastly improved. Not coincidentally, the Argos now have an actual running game. The secondary still has some holes, but the run defence doesn't seem as porous as in past years. And on the evidence of two weeks, the team is certainly well-prepared to start games; it's just, you know the stuff afterward that's in need of a little work.

That, and team discipline. And special teams. And Kerry Joseph's ability to hit receivers inside 15 yards. But we won't fuss, so long as some of those things are fixed by Aug. 1. Because if we have to watch anything resembling today's second quarter on the day the Rogers Centre goes dry, we might be a little less charitable.

Bonus Pick:

All of the Argos have been injured in practice, leaving Pinball to play the Riders himself. Pinball is a man of compassion, but this might be taking it too far. In order to show solidarity with Arland Bruce III, Pinball develops sympathy hemorrhoids. How does Pinball do?

Boatmenblog Pick: Well this might be the most uncomfortable bonus pick we've ever done. Pinball quickly realizes that running isn't really an option and so he proceeds to play that game while running on his hands. While this is impressive in and of itself, Pinball further surprises the fans by scoring the decisive twentieth touchdown by using one hand in a spring like fashion pushing himself off of the ground and landing in the end zone 70 yards away.  Tackling was a bit of an issue for Pinner this week, hence the closer score.  Pinball 142  Riders 26

* Everything we need to know about football analysis, we learned from early ‘90s SNL sketches.

Edmonton at Montreal
Wow, that Eskimos-Bombers game last week was pretty much the typical CFL game:

• A somewhat inexplicable to U.S. football fans score of 2-2.

• A temper tantrum by a star player

• An exciting finish featuring a rouge

• A Jesse Lumsden injury

Poor Jesse. It’s not his fault that he seems to have the durability of that old brown banana that you have sitting in the back of the fridge. So I guess the question becomes, what does Jesse do from here?

Well you’re asking the wrong guy. My medical knowledge comes exclusively from the autopsy scenes in Law and Order. So I may be able to tell you that he suffered blunt force trauma to the shoulder, but he’s not dead and we already know who did it. See? Useless.

In the mean time, Calvin McCarty looks like a good back and maybe Arkee Whitlock works out but really whenever the Esks have a returner, receiver or running back go down, our refrain will be the same. Bring back Gizmo.

Pick: Montreal

Calgary at Winnipeg
The most remarkable part about the Derick Armstrong story to me isn’t that the Bombers tried to have him come in as a substitute and it isn’t that he hasn’t reacted well to the “demotion”. It’s that the Bombers tried to get Matt Dominguez but were rebuffed when he decided not to leave his job at a Regina based realtor. That’s at least 100x worse than Rob Waldrop not coming back to the Argos to go to a Sheriff’s Academy in California.

Pick: Calgary

Hamilton at BC
Wait, the Ticats are going to be missing both Terry Caulley and Tre Smith, Nick Setta is somewhat banged up, they’ve been moving players to different positions “to see where they can help us” and they get to play the late game in B.C. where no eastern team has won probably since the last time Pinball played. Looks like I can go to a bar on Friday night that doesn’t have a TV.

Pick: BC

Saskatchewan at Toronto
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game with 15 combined turnovers like the Lions and Riders had last week. It was a close game and all, but with offences so ugly, you would have thought that Gary Etcheverry was a head coach in that game as opposed to a defensive co-ordinator. Anyway, with three interceptions and one fumble the meaning of Darian Durant’s sloppy seconds has been redefined.

Pick: Toronto

Well, this is unfortunate. We knew Timmy Chang would have difficulty readjusting to life in Hawaii after the bright lights of Hamilton and Winnipeg. But a life of crime isn't really what we were imagining.

Still, we have our doubts about this story. Consider the specifics of what allegedly happened:

The 27-year-old Chang was arrested at his Mililani home Thursday after a woman alleged her camera was taken away from her while she was filming a brawl last month in the Pearlridge area. ...

A man, whom Honolulu police say was Chang, told the woman to stop filming the fight. A struggle ensued and the suspect allegedly took the camera and threw it on the roof of a nearby building.

Having watched Timmy Chang play for the Ticats, there are at least two problems with this version of events.

First, if the struggle continued once Timmy had the camera in his possession, we're quite positive he would have dropped it, and the woman in question would have picked it up and run away while Timmy was lying helplessly on the ground.

Second, does anyone seriously believe that he actually would have hit the roof of that building?

Let the record show that if this really was Timmy Chang, another building would have stepped in front of the one he was aiming for and intercepted the camera as it wobbled through the air.

We'd be more than happy to fly down to Hawaii and testify on Timmy's behalf, provided he doesn't mind footing the bill.

In the meanwhile, we trust he'll be devoting his time to finding the real camera-thrower. (Hint: Brian Ah Yat has recently been sighted back in Hawaii, selling bread.)

Thank God. It’s time for another CFL season, which unfortunately for you means another season of snarky comments and truly terrible predictions. Now it’s the start of the season, so we’re probably going to be a little worse on the predictions than usual. Much like the start of a sports comedy movie, we’ll flounder around here at the start and probably go 0 for 4 while knocking the head off of a metal cut out of a batter with a fastball.

Toronto v. Hamilton

The start of the year always brings on a flood of pundits claiming that this will be the year that “possibly, maybe” the Ticats will be better this season. This is always the easiest of predictions if they improve on the 3 wins from last year then you’re right, if they don’t... well they’re the Ticats. The question posed should be, how much will they improve?

It’s like if your friends have a dog and every time they bring the dog over it takes a dump on your rug. Then one day they bring the dog and it only spits up on your rug. Sure it’s better than crap, but it’s still dog vomit. And I guess that’s my prediction for the Ticats this year. Not quite crap, but still dog vomit.

Pick: Toronto

Montreal v. Calgary

Hey, a Grey Cup rematch to start the year, nice work scheduling committee.

It’s getting tougher and tougher to come up with anything new to say about the Alouettes. On the plus side for Argos fans, Anthony Calvillo and Ben Cahoon are now another year closer to mandatory retirement.

Pick: Calgary

Winnipeg v. Edmonton

Damn it, all of our favourite Bomber jokes are useless now. No Milt Stegall, No Little Hawk, No fake Greg Marshall... just an awful turn of events.

Frankly the Bombers are a complete enigma to me. They could finish in first in the East or in dead last and I wouldn’t be overly surprised by either result. Ok, maybe I’d be surprised if they finished first. We’ll see how Mike Kelly works out as the head man in the Peg, but it was nice to see the Bombers management keep to the golden rule of football: when you have the chance to sign a former consultant to NFL Films as your head coach, you have to do it. However, not hiring former NFL Films guest narrator Gary Busey as special teams coordinator/motivational speaker is a travesty.

Pick: Edmonton

BC v. Saskatchewan

Well at least with the departure of DJ Flick and the injury to Wayne Smith, Ticats fans can take solace in that trade for Rocky Butler now being somewhat even.

Pick: BC

Bonus Pick:
All of the Argos have been injured in practice, leaving Pinball to play the Ticats himself. Oddly though, the league has mandated that he plays the whole game in the same well tailored suit he showed up to the game in. How does Pinball do?

Boatmenblog Pick: Another easy win for Pinball. While the presence of a necktie helps the Ticat defenders a little, it’s not nearly enough. Pinball 567 Ticats 3 (because Nick Setta is actually pretty good).

* Everything we need to know about football analysis, we learned from early ‘90s SNL sketches.

We learned a long time ago that pre-season football is inherently terrible, and so we were going to wait for the regular season before gracing you with our presence once more. But then we stumbled onto this nugget about Anthony Calvillo stand-in Adrian McPherson in Wednesday night's game report:

McPherson made headlines in 2006 when he filed a lawsuit after being injured an in NFL exhibition game. He was run over by a golf cart driven by the Tennessee Titans's raccoon mascot and sued the NFL team for US$20 million in damages.

See, there are some things we're prepared to accept. $10 beers, for instance. Or air inside the Rogers Centre that's so damp, it's almost squishy. Or long snappers who cannot, in fact, actually snap the ball a long distance. But one thing that is absolutely unacceptable is losing to a team being led by a dude whose claim to fame is being run over by a human-sized raccoon driving a golf cart.

No mascot inside the former SkyDome has done anything particularly useful (outside of mascot football, obviously) since that time back in the '90s when the giant Talk 640 dog was knocked unconscious by a drunk, but refused to take his his dog-head off while being escorted from the field because he didn't want to "scare the children." (We're not making this up.) But if Jason were worth anything at all, then McPherson wouldn't have made it out of the first quarter without being run over by a...well, by some sort of fake Greek boat, or whatever it is that Jason would drive.

We really hate to encourage vigilante justice in our first post in seven months, and promise to be more constructive next time (which will be considerably less than seven months from now). But honestly, some things are just beyond the pale.