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Limericks

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Coming up, it's Lightning Fill in the Blank. But first it's the game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you'd like to play on air, call or leave a message at 1-888-Wait-Wait. That's 1-888, 924-8924.

Or, click the contact us link on our website waitwait.npr.org. You can find out there about attending our weekly live shows at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago and our upcoming show in Cleveland, Ohio on June 28th. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!.

TAMMY KOPEKY: Hi, this is Tammy Kopeky from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

SAGAL: Hey Tammy, how are you?

KOPEKY: Not too bad, and yourself?

SAGAL: I'm just fine. What do you do there in beautiful Cedar Rapids?

KOPEKY: I am a channel marketer for a small company here in town that does hoses and belts.

SAGAL: Oh, so you're hosing and belting?

KOPEKY: Yes. Then we just watch the corn grow.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Tammy. Carl Kasell is going to perform for you three news-related limericks, with the last word or phrase missing from each. If you can fill in that last word or phrase correctly on two of the limericks, you will be a big winner. You ready to go?

KOPEKY: I'm ready.

SAGAL: Here's your first limerick.

CARL KASELL: Taking snapshots is old, so what's next? Modern camera tech isn't vexed. It gives one thousand words for an image that's blurred. My new camera prints out a?

KOPEKY: Text.

SAGAL: A text, yes, very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: This inventor, it's very interesting. An inventor at NYU has developed a new kind of camera that instead of taking photos, it prints out a text description of what you're looking at. So instead of a picture of a sunset you get a little text that says beautiful sunset with trees in foreground. That's what it does.

After a while, of course, the camera gets tired of your choice of subjects, and is like: Dude, your daughter is getting bigger every day, but she's not getting any cuter, OK?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here is your next limerick:

KASELL: I once worried that wrinkles grow craggy or that eyelids get puffy and baggy. Now my handheld device shows my jowls aren't nice. Looking down makes my chin and cheeks?

KOPEKY: Saggy.

SAGAL: Yes, saggy, very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Yes. It is called Smartphone Face and all of you have it. Apparently the problem is if you stare at your phone too much, looking down at it, and then you pick your head up again, but your chins don't come with you.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And so it's caused these, you know, what they're calling Smartphone Face and it's apparently led to an uptick in the amount of plastic surgery for this sort of thing. The problem, we're never going to agree, even with this news, to stop staring down at our phones. So instead, we're all going to make a choice to find this attractive.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Oh, I love his broad shoulders, his dark eyes, his jowls dragging on the carpet.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BRIAN BABYLON: You know what, man I'm glad you said that, because I was really having like self-conscious problems like taking cell phone pictures of myself.

SAGAL: Right.

BABYLON: I was like, god, this guy's ugly.

ROXANNE ROBERTS: Do you really take pictures of yourself on your cell phone?

BABYLON: It's my mom. She's like well what are you doing? I'm like all right, I'm over here. And then I look at my face like yuck, who's that?

SAGAL: Wait a minute, your mother says what you doing?

BABYLON: She got a new iPhone and she...

SAGAL: So...

BABYLON: Yeah.

SAGAL: So instead of saying oh nothing, like every other...

BABYLON: She starts with "let me see."

SAGAL: Really?

BABYLON: Yes. That's her new thing: let me see.

SAGAL: What do you do...

ROBERTS: But you take a picture of yourself?

BABYLON: I'm like hey, I'm over here, click. Like, I'm with Roxanne. And then it will be: oh, that's so nice.

CHARLIE PIERCE: How many...

SAGAL: Well, what if she calls and asks you for this picture while you're doing something that I'm sure is perfectly legal but that you don't want your mother to know that you're doing? What do you do then?

BABYLON: I have a whole bunch of stock photos ready to roll.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

BABYLON: Like church, coffee house.

SAGAL: Oh look, here I am kissing a nurse in Times Square on VE Day. There you are.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: Yeah. At the beach, at church.

PIERCE: That's right.

BABYLON: At the soup kitchen, helping out.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here I am tutoring orphans.

BABYLON: Yeah.

SAGAL: All right, moving on. Here we go. Here is your last limerick.

KASELL: To all sorts of odd dares I'll submit in my desperate plea to look fit. I'll be an imbiber of lizard saliva. To get thin, I take pills made from?

KOPEKY: Oh boy.

SAGAL: Oh boy.

KOPEKY: Can you say it again?

KASELL: To all sorts of odd dares I'll submit, in my desperate plea to look fit. I'll be an imbiber of lizard saliva. To get thin, I take pills made from?

SAGAL: Saliva is a clue.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KOPEKY: Spit.

SAGAL: Spit, yes, very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: You got it.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Researchers say the spit of a Gila monster, you know, those big lizards, contains a compound that can cut hunger pangs in animals. So the spit is going to be made into a weight loss pill. Although it'll only work if you get to watch the Gila monster spit the pill onto your food.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You're like, I don't think so.

Carl, how did Tammy do on our quiz?

KASELL: Well, Tammy had three correct answers, Peter. So Tammy, I'll be doing the message on your voicemail or answering machine.

SAGAL: Well done.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Congratulations, Tammy.

KOPEKY: Wonderful. Well, thank you, I can't wait.

SAGAL: Bye-bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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