The bread is from the No Knead Bread recipe my sister (that’s you) gave me, and the protein is seitan. The cheese is President’s Choice Lactose Free Old White Cheese. Pesto, mayo, mustard, vinegared Sun-Dried Tomatoes. Yeah, that all sounds really good.  

Important note for this, actually! Farside still very much exists in Toronto, but when you’re able and if it’s safe for you to do so, you can indeed order pre-bottled cocktails from Farside! And when you’re able to safely do so, I also recommend renting VHS tapes (yes, VHS tapes!) from Farside as well, and that includes a few Golden ones (which are indeed playable, though you’ll have to ask them which ones they are) and a HDMI-compatable VCR as well if you’d like to play your own Golden VHS tapes! Wait, you had a question too didn’t you? I don’t drink alcohol actually, so I’m going to pick from their mocktail menu whenever I get the chance to! Until then, Ginger Beer.

I’m going to swing big, and using the time travel ability of pre-covid in this question, say Alex Trebek. Stephen Colbert is a close second.

Understanding. There’s a reason Trivia Club’s sign-off has always been “It’s not what you know, it’s what you learn along the way.” I think that the act, or nature of understanding is instrumental to life and living. This isn’t even a “understand both sides” politically-minded thing either, because in some senses you have to understand that some people don’t deserve your energy (see: those who live in a world of “alternative facts”). Understanding isn’t always something that equals intelligence either. Understanding is living in comfort to the best of your ability, it's the process and not the destination, and that is a beautiful to me.


In 2020 we held 112 live events across ten different locations, as well as special and private events, including our Red Carpet Oscar Trivia. Of those 112 live events, 63 events were hosted by me, Russel Harder, in Toronto, which makes up 56% of events. It’s no surprise that this is the least number of events we’ve held in and from Toronto since 2013 when he hosted 58 events in our first full year of Trivia Club. Live from the Trivia Clubhouse we hosted 7 events on Facebook, before shifting our streaming to YouTube for another 31 events. Also on-line over Zoom he held 6 private events that included a Wedding Reception, Birthdays, an (American) Thanksgiving dinner, and corporate events!

Our in-person events during the first two and a half months of the year included 9 events at the flagship The Rec Room Roundhouse, including our third annual Red Carpet Oscar Trivia event that brought a refined night of trivia and viewing party in those final weeks of live events that also saw your host and a few participants appear live on CP24 television interviews! The Black Label location of Hitch, our Home Away, and our longest-running location, held it’s 3 final events. Our Friendly Neighborhood Farside held 3 events as well including the fourth annual Trivial Awards!

 January  saw Trivia Club begin 2020 on the 7th, with Cookiefaced scoring 108 points to win their thirteenth Golden VHS at The Rec Room Roundhouse. On the same night in London, at The Rec Room Masonville hosted by Justin Gayle, Last Decade’s Losers broke a 100 point tie and won the night against Trifecta! Matt Smith returned to the winners circle at our longest-running location of Hitch on January 13th, winning the night as Cuba Gooding Junior Bacon Cheeseburger for his second solo Golden VHS and joining an even rarer club with a solo Sesquicentennial Mark of 158 points! On January 15th, 2 Fast 2 Curious became the winningest team at Farside with their ninth Golden VHS at Friendly Neighborhood ‘side, and ninth Sesquicentennial Mark all-time with 168 points on the night. At the penultimate edition of Trivia Club at Hitch on the 26th, the new Mongoose order would win their twenty-third Golden VHS, bringing them within one more win of the all-time mark at the Black Label location. Closing out the month Cookiefaced would win the night at The Rec Room Roundhouse, bookending a strong start to the year in the round.

 February  with the 45th edition of Trivia Club at Farside, and a repeat win for 2 Fast 2 Curious inside those same warm walls. With their tenth win at that location and twenty-ninth overall 2 Fast 2 Curious took sole possession as the fifth-winningest team all-time at Trivia Club. Unfortunately we had to cancel our next event at Farside at the last minute, but we would be back in March for the Trivial Awards! Speaking of Awards, February 9th saw the return of the Red Carpet Oscar Trivia at The Rec Room Roundhouse and the return of Matt, Rob, SK, and friends to the winners circle under the name of It’s Not What Joon-Ho… Pitt’s What Pugh Dern Along Renee! A day later on February 10th it was the One Last Round at Hitch. Joining other Legacy Locations in that “former” column, 2,345 days after our first event at Hitch, One Last Round saw us given One More Round for the first time at Hitch as the night ended with a tie! Yes, for the first time Hitch would have to break a tie between Matt Smith as Going Off Without a Hitch and 2001: A Mongoose Odyssey! The Fighting Mongooses had left points on the board, giving us this need for a Sudden Victory Box-Office Bullseye to end the night with one final winner at Hitch… and the night ended with the Fighting Mongooses winning their twenty-fourth Golden VHS at Hitch on their fifty-eighth consecutive appearance at the Black Label location! Also on the night, the Fighting Mongooses became the sixth team to score 5,000 points or more at a single location. To end a massive three-day span for Trivia Club, on the 111th edition of Trivia Club at The Rec Room Roundhouse, on the 11th day of February, Cookiefaced threepeated as Champs! This had only ever happened six other teams, from five other teams, though it was the fourth threepeat that included February events amazingly. The final Golden VHS champ of the month on the 25th of February, at The Rec Room Roundhouse, were the M. Night Shaym-Aliens which brought together the O.G. Shaym-Ali-Boys the further cemented those Shaym-Aliens as Trivia Club staples no matter the location.

 March  continued the years early trend with another win for Cookiefaced at The Rec Room Roundhouse on the 3rd, a win they would follow up with yet another repeat victory on the 10th for the final in-person victory of the year! Cookiefaced would finish the first quarter of 2020 with five victories in seven events! Though we did not make our final event of the year, in-person at least, one of pomp and circumstance past the usual live event of Trivia Club… we had luckily held the fourth annual Trivial Awards just a week prior on March 4th at Farside! Long-time Hitch participants The Man with the Candy played under the name Ajulmah and won the night 190 points, what would be the years highest score, to also join the Five Timers Club a wild 6 years and 166 days after their first appearance at Trivia Club. Runners-up on the Trivial Awards night were the Super Mongoose Bros., with Cookiefaced in third place, a point ahead of the Cunning Stunts! The Questionables would win the Socratic Shield, for more VHSes in 2019, while Cookiefaced would score the most points overall in that year, and the Fighting Mongooses would be awarded that Iron Mongoose moniker for their impressive appearance streak in 2019 and the years prior. Dead on the Inside would win the Team/Player of the Year for 2019, while the High Score of 2019 belonged to Not One, Not Two, Not Three, Not Five… Four Gregs, and the M. Night Shaym-Aliens would win that Hustle & Desire Award! Our world, of course, would truly begin locking down by the 13th of March and Trivia Club would not make it to its next in-person event scheduled at Farside for a St. Patrick’s Day hangover on March 18th.

And of course...  

Like everything else, after taking a week to breath, become close friends with my sweatpants, and plan (and still feel a million miles from normal), Trivia Club went on-line on March 24th LIVE from the Trivia Clubhouse. In live streaming events from home we had to learn as we went, changing the style and shape of a traditional Trivia Club event. Agatha Quiztie, a team with Vampire Weekend at Bernie and M. Night Shaym-Alien connections, had the top score at our first event on Facebook with 22 of the 27 potential points. We were honored to have nearly thirty participating teams, that included much of our in-person community along with family and friends from outside of Toronto. After May began with technical difficulties for our seventh Facebook live stream, Trivia Clubhouse streaming shifted to YouTube on May 12th, with Down by the Bay grabbing the top score with 22 of the 26 potential points! Though the shift to YouTube changed the number of teams who were actively participating in the live chat, it brought a stability to the livestream and an easier to follow chat. We brought back the Trivia Royale, with helpful insight from Matt Smith, for the second event on YouTube and ninth overall from the Trivia Clubhouse, helping round out the size and shape of the potential night, and almost doubling the points in the process. We’ve been incredibly lucky to have approximately a dozen teams returning each Tuesday on the live chat (or playing along on taped delay, like the Fighting Mongooses who have been able to play every single edition of the Trivia Clubhouse, up until this point, any day of the week), establishing the Clubhouse community, while also mixing in new faces that we wouldn’t have otherwise had in-person at physical locations.


With the world continuing to be on-line for the foreseeable future, Trivia Club will continue on YouTube with our Tuesday events live from the Trivia Clubhouse.

As noted in the Ask Me Anything, I want to hold the fifth-annual Trivial Awards this year during late February or early March. This event would be held on Zoom, which allows for image sharing of the awards, as well as copyrighted audio clues, and further visual clues as well.

We’ll also want to bring back the Grand Championship Grand Prix in some way, hopefully in April. 2020 was the first year since our first anniversary where we weren’t able to hold any annual events, so I would love to bring the Grand Prix to the Trivia Clubhouse.

Thinking of what we could do with Zoom special events, I believe there is potential for special events outside of the Tuesday night norm, like Combo Breakdown competitions. Over the years, especially since it stopped being used as a Game Show Game, Combo Breakdown has been revealed as noted favorite to return. As a highly competitive game, I think it also has good potential for fun in a group chat.

And more too, something to make up for lost annual events in the fall or winter, and of course the forever changed Summer Movie Wager or the privately run Saturday Night Live Fantasy League (a public thank you to Rob Moden for keeping that going, by the way).  

Every year a keyword is chosen for Trivia Club, a single word as a mission statement. It works as a broad concept to keep as a mantra in the back of my mind to push the year forward and remind me of what I’d like to accomplish in the year ahead. Not as much a resolution as it is a good habit.

For Trivia Club’s first year that keyword was “CREATION”, the reason for which goes without saying, while in our second year it was “EXPANSION”, as Trivia Club found its way to four different locations including our longest-running location, Hitch. Still, in our third year we needed to think about “STABILITY”.

As Trivia Club did indeed stabilise after expansion, in our fourth year we wanted to concentrate on the “LOYALTY” that made it happen, building triviaclub.ca into what you see today, while also beginning the Trivial Awards. In my fifth year working on Trivia Club, I made the keyword public for the first time with my intention for “MOBILITY”, which meant new locations and an entry into podcasts! For year six my mind was on “COLLABORATION”. Though I originally intended that collaboration to be more person to person, I was pleasantly surprised with the steps Trivia Club took as a business, working alongside international corporations, or licensing Trivia Club across Ontario with The Rec Room.

Year seven had “CONNECTION” as a keyword, with a weekly cross-Canada Top Five helping bring together our nation-wide competition on this website. Year eight had the best intentions with “CONTINUITY” in mind, looking at our growing footprint across Canada and wanting to keep in mind a sense of history and consistency. Of course that blew up a bit, however I was glad to keep Trivia Club going at the Trivia Clubhouse, while also inevitably building stats and achievements from Clubhouse events into the .CA!

What does the State of Trivia Club for 2021 inspire in terms of keywords?

“PLAY”.

With so much stress in the world, in the day-to-day, I want to try my best to simply keep the game in the game show. I want to make sure to keep the stakes as low as possible, to remember to have fun, and remember to play around. With the expansion of Trivia Club having halted, and the game itself needing to change since going on-line, I need to keep remembering that Trivia Club shouldn’t be too precious or taken too seriously by me. Yes, I know I’m saying this at the end of a 4,000 essay buuuuut stay with me, I still love Trivia Club so I want to just keep it fun, I want to remember to play around. I look forward to doing more of that in 2021.

It’s not what you know, it’s what you learn along the way.