My moment with Trev in 2006

Yesterday the CBC contacted Gary because he’s responsible for an online petition to get a street renamed after Trevor Linden. Unfortunately Gary wasn’t available to go into the CBC ‘bunker’ this morning so I was his stand-in. I was basically asked, “why name a street after Linden?” and after I initially froze after the first question (cause I get nervous like that) I think the rest of the interview with Rick Cluff went okay. You can listen online sometime today or tomorrow on the Early Edition’s website.

When trying to find the Facebook group dedicated to the same street-naming cause, I came across over 130 other groups all in support of Linden. Here are a few examples:

… just to name a few.

It’s no surprise that this city is crazy about him. Like many have echoed, he personifies the Canucks in this hockey-crazy town that hasn’t even won a Stanley Cup since the beginning of last century. He’s represented Canada on the world stage at the Olympics, and in the World tournament, he’s been an All Star, a record-breaker, award-winner, and is also currently up for the Masterton Trophy for 2008.

We’ve got Joe Sakic Way in Burnaby and Griffiths Way downtown, both represent a tradition of hockey in this region and I think that a similar dedication to Linden is definitely in order - especially with his commitment off-ice to various charitable organizations for sick children.

Sign the petition, join the Facebook group, and let me know your thoughts below in this week’s Miss604 Poll.

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Trevor Linden will be in the Early Edition studios tomorrow morning, check back to get his thoughts on the season, and maybe even this campaign (the CBC is 690 on your am dial).

SWEEP! SWEEP! SWEEP! That was the chant when it was announced that our celebrity, Samantha Bee and teammate Rick Spence were both crowned top scorers at the end of the night. We were still awaiting the final team results but the bloggers were feeling pretty good at that point.

Throughout the evening our team chanted (Bee! Bee! Bee!), hooted and hollered, and talked a fair deal of smack. We were completely enamored with Samantha - who talked to us often, made motions our way and really interacted with “her people - the indoor kids”. Even when other teams would let a rousing “nerd” chant slip in our direction our solidarity was never shaken and we stood strong. It was also rather amusing that a teleprompter was facing our way (and our way only) before the show started. At one point someone rebooted the system and when the Windows 98 start up screen appeared we all had a nice chuckle.

So… was it a sweep? Did Samantha and Rick represent for the Bloggers while some other team won? Of course not, we took it all!

With an average of 50 correct answers out of 60, the Bloggers were victorious. It’s been a long day. A long day of cold winds and waiting around watching celebrity impersonators strut their stuff and have diva moments. There are so many witty, snarky and hilarious catch phrases that made me laugh today but I can’t bring my exhausted mind to remember them right now.

I have to say it was a pleasure to meet everyone - from the House impersonator dude, the Surreal Gourmet, Samantha Bee, Mr Geography of the cabbie team, and even “Paul Stanley” who said he practiced wearing his platform shoes for hours by jogging in them. The Flight Crew was impressive, the Borat impersonator was in character all night and freakin hilarious and the backpackers were probably our biggest competition.

Congrats to Rick Spence, and be on the lookout for photos of each person on the blogger team, taken by Rannie. Big thanks to Molly @ the CBC for getting me out here, being very encouraging, and supporting ‘Team Blogger’. Super tons of thanks to my family and friends (who all held viewing parties) and to all those Vancouver bloggers who supported us, watched the show, and played along.

We won’t get to know our individual scores til tomorrow but since the ‘test audiences’ scored an average of 40/60 and our team had 50/60 as an average, I’d say we did pretty darn well. Good times guys (hence the stupid grin on my face all night) and by the way… for the record… BLOGGERS RULE!

Update: John Biehler made some clips and put them on YouTube - video 3, video 2, and video 1 - check out “some of the face of non-mainstream media”.

Update: In case some trackbacks don’t work, here are a few more bloggers (and viewers) who have covered our victory last night - that will surely lead to world domination:

Buzz Bishop - We’re Blogging This
Canadian Entrepreneur - Sweep! Sweep!
Calgary Grit - The Answer is Bee
Jon Arnold - Bloggers 1 Rest of World 0
Lainey Gossip - I Love Winning
Right Between the Eyes - Don’t Wanna Brag, But …
Nunc Scio - The Sweet Smell of Blogger Victory
BlogTo - Backstage Celebrity-ish Interviews
Jonsian Logic - Test the Nation
Unsweetened - We Will Blog You
Pen Machine - Yay for the Indoor Kids!
James Viloria - Results - CBC - Test The Nation: Trivia
Airdrie - Bloggers Victorious
Five Blondes - Bloggers Emerge Victorious
Buzz Canuck - Bloggers are the Smartest
Ryan - Post Game Show
Amber Mac - Are Bloggers Smarter…

Update: More detailed results are in.

Just got back from the CBC and am thawing out in my hotel. Several of the Vancouver bloggers had to leave right from the set once the show was over since they fly out tonight. I’m lucky to have a morning flight, a morning flight that isn’t too early no less.

I have photos to share BUT I cannot reveal ANY information before the West coast broadcast of the show has aired. I’m currently watching myself on the local broadcast which is obviously delayed. Once the show has aired in Pacific time, I’ll share more photos on Flickr in my Test the Nation set.

Update: There’s a blog on Test the Nation talking about the Blogger Team members who are blogging. Sweet. Oh and Samantha Bee *is* our assigned celebrity.

On Saturday I fly out to Toronto for a trivia quiz along with about a hundred other contestants from various careers and walks of life to participate in Test the Nation on the CBC. Those watching at home on Sunday January 20th at 8:00pm will be able to play along with the television show, or even online. There are several teams (cab drivers, bloggers, backpackers, celebrity impersonators, chefs, and flight attendants) and we’ll all be put to the test with some 21st century trivia.

From the first Test the Nation.
They’ll want bloggers to wear outfits that they’re used to blogging in… so I guess message t-shirts and pajama pants covered in food stains from eating in the darkness of our parents’ basement, eh

We’ll be asigned a celebrity to represent us as a whole as well, and there’s a badge up on the Test the Nation site where you can vote for which team you think is going to win - so far flight attendants are ahead of us in the polls.

As a bit of a preview and to pump up my team a little, here are your west coast bloggers that are flying out to represent Vancouver and BC: Buzz Bishop, Ryan Cousineau, Kate, Lainey, Kerry Anne, and Tod Maffin - let me know if I missed anyone. I don’t have time to showcase everyone else on the team but be sure to check out the list and click to some pretty interesting reads.

Okay so it’s not really an IQ test, it’s more like trivia… and I LIVE for trivia. The CBC has had two editions of “Test the Nation” thus far and they’ve been pretty successful. I’ve played along from home and online and learned a bit about myself each time. This installment will be, “Test the Nation: Trivia”, focusing on the 21st Century World.

In early December my fellow Metroblogging author Ryan announced that he’d be going to Toronto for the next installment of Test the Nation. Very cool, I knew he’d do bloggers proud. This morning through the magic of Twitter I also found out that local blogger and radio personality, Buzz is also on the bloggers team.

Well in my inbox this morning was a lovely note from someone at the CBC asking me to apply, which I did, and now I’ve been accepted and will be flown to Toronto in a few weeks. I’m going to Toronto for a weekend to play a big huge nationally televised trivia game on a team with other bloggers Awesome.

The show will be LIVE on January 20, 2008. The teams set to compete in studio are Bloggers vs Flight Crew vs Backpackers vs Cab Drivers vs Celebrity Lookalikes vs Chefs. I know they’re secretly bringing me in as a celebrity lookalike… jk.

The only REALLY bad thing about this is that it’s the same day as the Skate for a Cure that I’ve been raising funds for and we also have a Vancouver Blogger team. I’m wondering if I can transfer my account to John so he can be the skater? I don’t regret raising money for childhood cancer research, not one bit - but missing out on skating at GM Place is pretty heartbreaking. Who knows, they will probably do the fundraiser again next year so I’ll be sure to try again.

At any rate, wish us luck and also leave me a comment if you’re another blogger who will be on the team. I’ll of course be blogging the journey across the country and as much as I can about the experience.

To prepare, I encourage my teammates to try out the “Mental Gym” which has question in the same category that we’ll be given. So far I’ll only share my “Mental Gym Test #4″ results that were 90%… as for the others… I need a little more work.

Update: There’s a Facebook Group that has some neat photos up of the set and what the actual broadcast will look like.

UPDATE: Here’s a list of all those on the Bloggers Team (more…)

The CBC is all into testing us Canadians with their interactive programming. The first of the ‘Test the Nation‘ series was a giant nation-wide IQ test where you would watch the program on TV (live), follow along on the web, or grab a paper copy to record your answers. Then your score would be compared with everyone else’s coast-to-coast [Miss604]. A little graph would display in which percentile you ranked and who was the smartest in the country. The results were broken down in to several categories including male or female, left or right handed, meat eater or vegetarian/vegan and folder or scruncher.

The second installment is called “Watch Your Language”, testing Canadians and their grammar [InsidetheCBC]. Immediately I thought of an episode of 30 Rock.

Tracey:So how you doing over there Theo Huxtable?
Twofer: I’m doing good.
Tracey: Nuh uh. Superman does good. You’re doing well. You need to study your grammar son.
Frank:Wow, that was embarrassing for you.

Test the Nation’s talking and writing things goodly edition will air September 9 at 8:00pm (local time) and you can download the scorecard to get a head start.

The camera man just called the producer and said, “I’m sitting here with a bunch of donuts and a nice lady,” the person on the other end of the phone replied “what a nice combination.” The CBC contacted me a few days ago about a post I had written, it just so happens that it’s about donuts.

As I’m sitting here, there’s a CBC camera in my face and a donut in my mouth. John’s going to kill me for typing and eating at the same time, but it’s all in the name of “donuts”; more importantly, donut blogging. My fingers are getting sticky but I’m actually learning quite a bit about donut nutrition- no matter how silly I may look. I have to hold a donut in my mouth while I’m typing this and I think I’m starting to drool. I am feeling SO attractive right now.

John is being a great PA and getting me a moist dish towel so I can wipe my hands between each take. I am continuing to type while they take shots of the keyboard. I cracked a comment about how I wish we could do this with beer next time. I think I could handle about 20 takes of beer drinking better than I can all these donuts. Mmmm maple deliciousness dripping from my hands. (I just typed that line 8 times, deleted, then typed it again). After the last take John comments “Yay, you’re going to be stock footage!” The camera man Randy assures me that’s quite the possibility.

I don’t know when this will be up and when I can share my lovely donut story on the CBC National news, but I will be sure to keep everyone posted. It’s been really fun, silly and sugar-loaded, plus I get to have my blog shown on TV. The fact that I had to cram baked goods in my mouth repeatedly for close up shots isn’t the most comforting but… it’s all for the good of the blog, eh.

*Interesting side note: The interview was conducted remotely, so I had an ear piece to listen to the questions being directed my way. When the camera man was hooking me up to all the microphones and audio thingie ma bobs he passed an ear bud over to me then casually mentioned something about its cleanliness. He noted under his breath that the last person to have this bud in their ear was our Premier, Gordon Campbell. Aside from drinking lots of water after the shoot, I made good use of a couple of Q Tips as well.

Photo credit: Paul Kukla

Update: This segment will air on the National, tomorrow - Thursday April 12, 2007. Check local listings, due to the playoffs (god bless’em) time slots could be outta whack.

Update: I was on for about… 15 seconds, I was “token blogger” and Miss604.com or my name was never mentioned. Oh well. I think they wanted me to sound a little more shocked about the unhealthy badness of donuts, maybe my “I’ll eat a freakin donut if I wanna donut” approach didn’t suit the story :-P.

When our friend tonight told me about this I thought he was joking, or making fun of me, or a little bit of both. He was being rather serious and described to me what was going to take place tomorrow on the CBC, Canada’s National IQ Test tomorrow at 8:00pm.

Test the Nation will be the biggest survey ever conducted to see just how smart Canadians are. In this live two-hour special, the whole country can participate in a real-time interactive IQ test. Viewers can take the test in the comfort of their own home, on the internet or with pen and paper, while our seven teams - Tattoo Artists, Millionaires, Fitness Instructors, Surgeons, Mayors, Talk Jocks and Celebrities - are exercising their grey matter in our Toronto studio.[CBC]

There was a “play along at home” card in the National Post today, and there is also a copy you can download from the show’s website. The thing that scares me is that it’s multiple choice - and lord knows in high school (although I was a pretty good student) I never did as well on multiple choice tests. Don’t even get me STARTED on Scantron… I swear I had a Scantron allergy. [How to Play].

So what’s to stop you from Googling the answers? I’m pretty quick to the draw with the good ol’ search engine. Then again I’m sure the questions are not Google-able, and yes, that defeats the whole purpose of the “test”. But, isn’t it a plus if you’re able to use tools to accomplish a task? Eh?

On another note, what if someone wants to just really screw with the “Nation” and the “CBC” and they purposely log on to answer falsely thus bringing Canada’s IQ down, eh? Oh but people in Toronto were probably already going to be completing the test so… yeah.

I am a true sucker for trivia but it seems like the CBC is on a big “greatest” and “smartest” stint lately. We had the “Greatest Canadian” then the “Greatest Canadian Invention” followed by the upcoming “Next Great Prime Minister“. Or course tonight, they featured the greatest team in the NHL, beating Detroit 4-1.

Update: The results are in for Teams, National, and the TOP 20 people in the country.