Consider this a pre-emptive strike.

While at the Jays game Friday night (at this point it would probably make more sense if I started renting a room at the RC hotel) the woman sitting behind me was giggling with delight after every Jays strike out. Now if she was just delirious about the Jays recent lights out starting pitching or was enjoying the mutton chopped stylings of Brian Tallet that’d be one thing. But no, like thousands of other occasional Toronto baseball fans she was giddy over the prospect of possibly getting a free crappy $2 pepperoni slice from Pizza Pizza.

“Wouldn’t it be great if they did this at every game in Toronto?”

Hell no! We’ve already seen this damn promotion ruin Jays and Raptors games and there is no way as fans that we should allow it to spread to other teams. There is little that is more embarrassing as a sports fan in this city than to have a top of the ninth situation in a close game and have the crowd chanting “Pizza! Pizza!”. I get it from Pizza Pizza’s perspective, it’s a great marketing trick, but why people are so enthralled by this (or the chance to win a shirt that says FedEx on it) is beyond me. If the Carolina Hurricanes had a promotion where everyone got some free ribs if the team scored 4 goals and the whole crowd starting chanting “B! B! Q!” in the third period, we’d all think they were brain dead hicks, so why do we stand for this in our own city? Incidentally, the Hurricanes example would actually be somewhat defensible on account of BBQ being awesome.

So, how does this relate to the Argos? Well, so far Pizza Pizza’s advertising at the games has been restricted to bringing out that guy who won the world pizza dough competition and having Damon Allen make incomprehensible jokes about Jude St. John being Italian. But we all know that it won’t stop there.

As we speak there is someone sitting in a big leather chair at Pizza Pizza headquarters plotting a way to get pizza chants going at all public places. Weddings, funerals, beer fests and yes, Argo games. It’s not a stretch to picture fair weather fans making too much noise when the Argos have the ball because one more first down will get them a soggy piece of cardboard with cheese on it. Or groaning after a third down stop because it didn’t get them the last sack needed for an angioplasty inducing slice, and the last thing this city needs is to have the rest of the country think that he have the dumbest fans in the league save for the gaggle of bandwagoners that show up for the Als game at the Big O every year.

So is there any sponsorship that Pizza Pizza can take on that would make us happier than seeing Timmy Chang coming into a game? Easy. Cheese Race! Cheese Race!

There are times in life when something so glorious happens that you just don't know what to say. 

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=756819

Shame on you. Shame on all of you. This man sung his heart out for you last night. His version of O Canada? Splendiferous. His take on My Girl? Scrumtrilescent. His cover of the Monkeys? Better than life itself.

And as the Voice of God blessed our ears, what did you do?  You booed. You groaned. You likened him to "an Atlantic City lounge singer," as though that were a bad thing.

You don't deserve him. None of us do. All he wants to do is to entertain us. To quench our thirst with his meticulously crafted ale. To teach us important life lessons such as the need to believe in order to believe.

And still, we mock. Have you no taste? No decency? No desire to stay away from expensive litigation?

Shame.

***

Update: Let this be a lesson to all you haters out there. From the heavenly voice of the chiselled god of pulchritudinous power drinks himself:

"We played at the Beer Gardens (at the Grand Prix) and we packed it. It was like 7,000 people until 11 o'clock and we had to send them home. As I walking out these four (expletive) guys started yelling, 'You suck, man' and I yelled back, 'Not as bad as your life.'"

Is it fair that a man so blessed with superhuman talent should also possess such a rapier wit?

There is something about Facebook in general that makes us vaguely uncomfortable.
Celebrate now gouda... cheddar is out for revengeThat being said, this is something we can definitely get behind. Some people who obviously know quality entertainment when they see it have started a Facebook group devoted to bringing back the cheese race. We are more than happy to see others taking up this very worthwhile cause and encourage anyone who has a Facebook account and cares about the deities of dairy to sign up.

For some Argos fans, the third quarter of yesterday's game - dominated by the Eskimos and sponsored, coincidentally or not, by Steelback - is the one they'd like to forget. But not us. Quite the contrary, actually. Because it was at the very beginning of that quarter that we realized just how powerful we really are.

Okay, we don't know that we're responsible for the return of our beloved cheese race. But we're inclined to think that, having seen all the trouble we went to in order to recreate it, the Argos were shamed into reviving it. That, or they just felt sorry for us.

Honestly, we don't much care. Seeing Cheddar, Swiss and Pepper Jack renewing hostilities was good enough for us. That the race was capped off with a guy in a cheddar costume celebrating his victory...well, that was almost too much for us to handle.  

In the unlikely event that you haven't heard, Saturday's Argos/Stamps rematch will be "all about the women." It's unfortunate that this game's on CBC, rather than TSN, because nothing says "all about the women" quite like constant updates on the temperature inside Rod Black's pants. And since the game's not against the Als, there's no chance to thrill female audiences with some sort of reality star showdown between Jesse Palmer and Blue Thunder stalker Nick Lachey. But it's still possible to make Ladies' Night an event to remember, if only the Argos follow a few simple steps:

• With the Stamps in town, give women what they want: all Scott Coe, all the time.
  

• To get the alumni involved, designate a special Andre Rison section. Everyone goes home with a new baby, free of charge! (Note: "free of charge" does not apply to Bad Moon himself.
  

• Please, please, do not bring cheerleaders from 30 years ago back to say hello. We're sure they're very nice. We have no illusions that any of us, male and female alike, are immune from aging. But we don't know anyone who doesn't feel vaguely uncomfortable around middle-aged cheerleaders.
  

• No matter how much money he offers, do not let Frank D'Angelo serenade the winner of the Miss Argo contest with some 45-minute take on "Here She Comes, Miss America." Also, don't let him convince you that this is the prime opportunity for him and Ben Johnson to dress up in drag for one of their hit commercials. Nobody needs to see that.

• Whatever it takes, find a way to get the Winnipeg cheerleaders involved. Admittedly, this may be better suited to "Gentleman's Night" than "Ladies Night." But considering what they did in Regina, these girls really need to be set loose in a city with more than 200,000 people at some point.
  

Call this the week for big, noble causes. Yesterday, it was finding a showcase for Roy Shivers and his toothpicks; today, it's this.

Truth be told, these guys are a lot more organized than us. And with good reason. Seriously, of all the things we fear in today's world, drunken football fans bearing flagpoles are pretty low down on the list. 

Now, just for the record, our little collective has never bothered with actually waving the flag we bought a couple of years ago; we just drape it around some unsuspecting guest we've invited, and proclaim him "Captain Argo." But if that's a little declassé for you, go sign the petition. 

A couple of weeks ago I took time off from my vacation and ventured into a Kingston Public Library to sing the praises of the Dairy Farmers Cheese Race.  Despite our desperate pleas, the Argos failed to reinstate the cheese race before the last home game.  So we've had to take matters into our own hands.  Place your bets!

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome your contestants... From left to right: Swiss, Cheddar, and replacing Pepper Jack (who we sincerely hope is doing well in rehab) Gouda!

Click to read more ...

A few seconds after I had placed a $2 bet on the outcome of a Tim Horton's youth football game at the Argo Dome, it came to me: I'll pretty well put $2 on any of the in-game entertainment.  It also quickly dawned on me that if the red team would simply position its outside linebacker five feet closer to the sidelines, I'd still have my two dollars. I swear that Cowbell Jenny somehow rigged that game.

With a home game coming up this weekend, I thought it was time for an ode to the greatest in-game entertainment the CFL has ever seen: The Dairy Farmers Cheese Race. 

For the uninitiated, the cheese race had three computerized cheeses (a wedge of cheddar, a slice of swiss and a wheel of pepper jack) run through an obstacle course. It goes without saying that it was fantastic. Why?

• It meant people sitting in the same section were jokingly cheering against each other (as opposed to all cheering for the same section or level),

• There was a chance that each of the "competitors" could win. (With the current contest, they have racers representing the luxury suites.  Is there any chance that they would win?) 
  

• Most importantly, they were computerized cheese slices running past swinging knives!  Who doesn't want to see that?

Sure it wasn't perfect - the wedge of cheddar should have had a better record given it's aerodynamic structure, and the first two-thirds of the race were always the same. But outside of the Milwaukee sausage race, it's the best in-game race that Boatmenblog has ever heard of.

So to the Argos promotion staff: Please bring back the cheese.  Don't make us beg...or stock up at the supermarket and stage our own.

The answer would be these kids, apparently, who sat in front of us at Saturday's game against the Bombers.

They grimaced. They grabbed their ears. They turned around with utter looks of disgust upon their faces.

And still I rang...rang it 'til my fingers were sore.

Consider yourself warned: When you sit in front of the cowbell, you'd better be prepared. In fact, you should demand more of it.