Before I start, I owe an apology to the other Seattle Seahawk fans in Regina, and especially ‘Hawks punter and University of Regina Ram alumni Jon Ryan. But to me, this local interest in the Hawks – which isn’t all that great – is much like Canadian interest in the NBA outside the GTA. When Steve Nash retires, nobody cares, and when Ryan moves on, most of those ‘diehard’ Seahawk fans will be at River City or Jersey City getting a new jersey for ‘their boy.’

You know the types – they’re holding up a table at most of the sports bars in the city on NFL Game Day, talking about ‘their’ Cowboys or Vikings or Raiders while having no understanding about the community from which the team is based, or its history. And every three years or so, they get a different $150 jersey. Kind of like the way pre-teen boys follow the WWE.

What made me interested in the ESPN article about the Seattle Sounders, the MLS team in Seattle, is just how explosive the growth has been in the team’s popularity in Seattle. With an average attendance of about 37,000 a game, the Sounders would be in the middle of the pack of Premiership attendance – and that’s with a team whose entire payroll would pay for one or two players in the EPL, and whose quality of play is closer to England’s third division. Why have people in Seattle embraced this club with a fervour matched in few other places in North America? It would make a good dissertation for a marketing honours paper, and something I’d like to sit down with Blair over wings and beer sometime. Assuming, of course, that Mitchell Blair pays any attention to MLS, or soccer in general.

Speaking of which …

1 SOMEWHERE IN GENEVA, THE PEOPLE DETERMINING FIFA’S RANKINGS ARE LAUGHING THEMSELVES SICK A team that’s gone winless in Major League Soccer play is now the Canadian champions of the sport. Triples all around, and put it on Maple Leaf Sports And Entertainment’s tab!

2 BONNIE PRINCE TAMPON AND THE ROTTWEILER FLEE REGINA Whatever.

3 GUESS THINGS GOT TOO HOT FOR THEM The Heartland Institute, the group of global warming deniers masquerading as scientists, is going out of business. They’ll probably be back in six months, under a new name, and stiffing their creditors.

4 THIS MAY NOT BE A GOOD IDEA WHEN THE ARGOS SUCK THIS SEASON A bad football team? Internet posters authorized by the club? What could possibly go wrong? Well, it could be worse. Take Hockey Night In Canada’s latest effort to attract female viewers, which is … ummm …. Yeah.

5 WHATEVER IT IS OR WHOEVER IT IS, IT’S STILL WRONG Hustler gives the Rush Limbaugh treatment to a conservative woman columnist who doesn’t like Planned Parenthood.

6 SUDDENLY EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE AT CITY HALL On the surface, two wanna-be Regina city councillors may have chosen a date when Regina’s media were somewhere else when they announced their candidacy. But I’m pretty sure that John Klein, aka SaskBoy and Shawn Fraser, executive director of Carmichael Outreach, figure their respective constituencies are a lot different from those who are more interested in royals-watching. Good luck, gentlemen!

YOUR MUSICAL MOMENT OF ZEN A couple of weeks ago at a SaskFilm rally I ran into Amy Matysio, whose web series inSAYSHAble is farking hilarious (why do I never meet women like her at the gym?). For reasons best known to my total inability to relate to people, we ended up talking about an Australian sketch comedy show called The Money Or The Gun, which, during its two season run Down Under, always featured a rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven, as interpreted by … well, there’s an opera version, a Doors tribute band version, a Beatles tribute band version, something that sounds like a Steve and Edie outtake, pirates, and of course an Elvis impersonator. But we must honour the skill, the art, the sheer majesty … of Rolf Harris.

The wobbleboard Harris used in this video is now in Australia’s national museum.