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.

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.)

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.

Big ups to Montreal – the kids still say “big ups,” right? - for setting up a Grey Cup village that provides a rather diverse drinking experience.

At the heart of this temporary community is a bar that looks like something the Euro-party set might stumble into if they took a very wrong turn in Ibiza. It’s a giant inflatable sphere, with silhouetted images of cheerleaders being projected onto the enormous tented walls. Inside, there are white couches, a DJ spinning dance tunes, and girls who may or may not be paid to be there dancing by themselves and being more friendly than you’d expect when you’ve been wearing the same jerseys for three days. Around the time we saw a dude giving a girl a lap dance, we decided to see what was next door.

Unfortunately, what was next door – in the largest of the village’s venues – was a U2 cover band named Elevation. Admittedly, our expectations for cover bands remain sky-high because of the transcendent experience that was Free Ride, the Rolling Stones imitators who rocked Grey Cup ’06 with two Keith Richards and nary a Ron Wood in sight. But Elevation just took themselves way too seriously. Honestly, when you’re in a cover band, you really don’t need to have entrance music from another band you’re not in. But for the record, we did enjoy the Bono impersonator describing the guy pretending to be The Edge as “the one, the only, The Edge.”

In the final pavilion – “The Bistro” – we finally found what we were looking for. No, not Free Ride – something called Wang Dang Doodle, a cover band that’s actually more of a jam band, complete with a saxophonist, a bassist who looked sort of like a shorter and more robust version of Geddy Lee, and an imposingly bald singer/guitarist who seemed to spend large chunks of the set serenading us with endless solos that we don’t remember being in the original version of Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl.

We know that this sounds awful. But while it’s conceivable we were just swayed by their ridiculous name, we happened to find Wang Dang Doodle many shades of awesome. By the time they closed with some AC/DC, prompting tens upon tens of Montrealers to spastically gyrate like life-sized bobbleheads, Elevation had been left thoroughly in the dust.

Sadly, it appears they’ve not experienced the level of celebrity they deserve. At show’s end, following an encore slightly delayed because the bassist had disappeared into the can, the saxophonist was seen exiting the Bistro by himself. Honestly, we’d have thought there’d be a lineup of eager young ladies waiting to Wang Dang his Doodle.

Anyone else excited for this season? Looks like the Argos are rounding nicely into form. New quarterback...new coach..

Wait, what? 4-14? Seriously? Looks like we picked the right season to sleep through.

Indeed, it's been something of a lost year all around. But here's the good news. Tomorrow morning, we head to Montreal for four days of the usual fun. If you know us personally, brace yourself for drunken text messaging. And if you don't? Well, that's where the drunken blogging comes in.

No longer dormant, we shall erupt like a volcano - or like Adriano Belli five seconds after the whistle has blown. Consider yourselves forewarned.

Bombers vs. Als

Understand, this has been an enormously difficult summer for us. Ordinarily, we can rely on the unintentional comic stylings of Jack Todd to supply roughly 80% of our Als-related content. But Jack has apparently been spending his summer toodling around Europe, depriving us of his regular baiting of Als fans, his potshots at Jim Popp's taste in cars and that weird thing where he inexplicably strings together the same vowel 18 times in a row at the start of his columns. The good news is that, in his absence, he somehow possessed the soul of fellow Gazette writer Herb Zurkowsky, who's managed to go to war with both Popp and pretty much every Als fan in the city. Now that Todd has returned from his European odyssey, these two are going to be unstoppable!

Pick: Als

Eskimos vs. Lions

Just in time for this week's rematch, CFL.ca has enlisted the services of Siddeeq Shabazz to tell us about "the game of life." Blogs by professional athletes don't normally require a ton of deep thought, but we'll be honest: The debut entry on the enjoyably named "Siddeeq Sezz" goes a little over our heads, at least when it comes to this thing. If anyone can explain what exactly Siddeeq's "extraordinary transformation centre" does, we're all ears. In the meanwhile, we're going to follow the centre's advice and begin referring to our bodies as our "body vehicles." This promises to greatly impress and intimidate the other flag football players.

Pick: Lions

One of the things we love about David Cynamon - and there are many - is that, in keeping with the random burst of Andrew WK that piped in through the loud speakers last night, he's a man who appreciates the value of partying hard. And so we especially enjoyed his summation of the Argos' debacle of a home opener:

"It's a major disappointment. I mean, it's like hosting a party at your home, you've got everything lined up, everybody is showing up, weather is great and you forgot to bring the alcohol, and everybody goes home disappointed."

We've been to a party at David Cynamon's home, so we can attest that this is a man who would never, ever forget to provide alcohol. (Nor would he forget to scantily clad women lounging on ice sculptures, but we digress). That being said, what we witnessed last night was worse than going to a party without alchohol. It was like going to a party where the only alcohol turns out to be Steelback.

In other words, we didn't just go home disappointed. We went home confused, angry and slightly nauseous, knowing that we'd feel worse before we felt better. Even the absence of a certain Steelback founder himself wasn't enough to make up for that.

Much unrest in Steeltown this season over a 40% increase in ticket prices, but it seems a little misplaced. Surely, 40% more money means 40% more entertainment - and 40% more wins!

In fact, we're going to go out on a limb and suggest that Ticat fans may actually get more than their money's worth. Suppose, for a moment, that they win 5 games this year. We know, we know - it sounds crazy. But hey - Casey Printers could find his form. And if it happens, they won't just be 40% better than last year's 3-win total - they'll be 66.7% better!

If that sounds too good to be true, consider last night's home opener.* At last year's opener, the Ticats disappointed their fans by scoring only five points against the Argos. This year, they literally doubled that total with a whopping 10 points against the Als! True, their opponents actually scored slightly more points this year (33) than last year (30). But not 40% more. Only the Ticats did that!

This is exciting news, because the past couple of Labour Days we've started to feel a little guilty watching the Argos so decimate the Ticats that Hamiltonians don't even have the energy to throw bottles at our heads or attempt to bite our ears. This way, the Argos should still be able to win by a convincing score - just not so convincing that it's over by the middle of the first quarter. 

So relax, Bob O'Billovich. Unpack those pink suitcases and stay a while. Casey Printers may not be in MVP form, but he's at least 40% better than Timmy Chang. And if he's healthier than usual, Jesse Lumsden might even appear in 40% of the games. Provided that the in-game crew pipes in MC Hammer proclaiming it "Hammer Time" at least 40% more often each game, you really can't go wrong.

*This is the advantage of procrastinating so long that your "previews" appear the day after the season starts.