Four Canadians take their first trip to D.C. in hopes of meeting President Obama.
Good luck.
The tourists don’t plan to just meet Obama, they want to shoot hoops with him.
That’s not all. The four twentysomethings from Victoria, British Columbia — Ben Nemtin, Dave Lingwood, Jonnie Penn and Duncan Penn — brought along a production crew to film their quest to the White House as the stars of MTV’s “The Buried Life.”
Not so standard. And during their five-day trip to D.C. this summer, they managed not only to hear back from the West Wing, but rubbed shoulders with the likes of CBS’ Bob Schieffer, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, special assistant to Obama Reggie Love, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill.
“It’s pretty amazing how the whole city is kind of run by the mentality ‘I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine,’ ” Lingwood told Yeas & Nays.
The guys started their trip with a visit to radio station WIHT, where they broadcasted their plans with personality Toby Knapp. The segment got the attention of Schieffer’s office at CBS, where the crew was invited to sit down with the veteran anchorman for advice on how to get to the president.
Schieffer’s advice: “Talk to the town.”
From chats on the street, the crew learned the key into the presidential basketball court was through body man Love.
So they trekked to the YMCA downtown where Love works out, but instead spotted Geithner swimming laps. He pointed them in the direction of Love. The cast members played hockey with Quigley, whom they called “the most grounded out of the ones we met.”
They chatted up McCaskill and Hill, who also played basketball and dreamed of taking on Obama. Hill sent an e-mail to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and after a meeting with LaHood, he phoned the White House. Not bad.
“It was sort of like running for office — we were gaining support as we went and sort of got endorsed by more and more of the politicians in terms of what we were doing,” Nemtin said.
The cast members were scheduled to play ball with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar but couldn’t fit it into their schedule.
To the guys, it was bigger than the game — playing ball with the president was about proving that anything is possible.
The episode airs February 22.
