Funny, I only just finished refactoring our codebase (dozens of views, models, routers) using a 'custom' implementation of the listenTo mechanic, as well as a custom 'close' method for views that would deregister the events again:

    this.registeredModelEvents.push({
        model: model,
        eventName: eventName,
        callback: callback,
        context: context
    });

    model.on(eventName, callback, context);

Here's to hoping we can update to 0.9.9 soon. Shouldn't be a problem.