CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell, and here's your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl.
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SAGAL: Thanks everybody. I know. I know why you're so excited. It's because somebody told you that Wayne Clough, the director of the Smithsonian Institution is going to be joining us later. But first, a big thanks to Mr. Drew Carey, who filled in for me last week. He did a great job. It turns out; he did a better job than I did guest hosting "The Price is Right."
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SAGAL: It turns out - this was a surprise to me - as the host, you are not supposed to bid on the items yourself.
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SAGAL: So tempting, and it was a beautiful dinette set. It had...
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SAGAL: Anyway, you're invited to call in with your best guess as to what we're worth. The number to call is 1-888-Wait Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. Hi, welcome to WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
GREG MAHER: Hi, this is Greg. I'm from Bakersfield, California.
SAGAL: Hey, beautiful Bakersfield.
MAHER: Yeah.
SAGAL: I once went to Bakersfield.
MAHER: Oh yeah?
SAGAL: By mistake. I missed a turn. That's true.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: But it seemed like a really nice place.
MAHER: It is, it's great. I love it out here.
SAGAL: What do you do there?
MAHER: I'm a paramedic, actually.
SAGAL: Oh, really?
MAHER: Yes.
SAGAL: So you're out saving people's lives every day.
MAHER: Well, on a regular basis.
SAGAL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Do you lord it over people like I would? Oh, I see, you did some PowerPoint slides today. I saved a life.
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MAHER: They kind of discourage us from doing that, in school, so I try not to. We try to be humble.
SAGAL: Well, no need to do that here, nobody else is.
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SAGAL: Greg, welcome to our show. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a comedian who'll be performing at Newman Center at the University of Denver on November 9th. Go see her there; it's Paula Poundstone.
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PAULA POUNDSTONE: Hi, Greg.
SAGAL: Next, a radio hero who's the man behind the podcast, Too Beautiful to Live, Mr. Luke Burbank is back with us.
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SAGAL: And making her debut on our show, it's the author of "Funny in Farsi" and "Laughing Without an Accent." She's currently working on a novel for tweens that is not about vampires. It's Firoozeh Dumas. She's right here.
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SAGAL: So, Greg, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Carl This Time. Carl Kasell, of course, will recreate for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job: identify or explain just two of them. Do that you'll win our prize. Ready to go?
MAHER: OK, yeah, sure.
SAGAL: Your first quote comes from Pauly D from the cast of "Jersey Shore."
(LAUGHTER)
KASELL: I can't believe it ruined Snooki's Porch. Where Am I Gonna Kick It At Now?
(LAUGHTER)
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SAGAL: OK, assuming "Snooki's porch" is not some sort of euphemism...
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SAGAL: We certainly hope not. What ruined Snooki's porch?
MAHER: Well, it's probably Hurricane Sandy.
SAGAL: It was Hurricane Sandy, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
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SAGAL: So Hurricane Sandy dumped 8.5 billion gallons of water on Manhattan. Mayor Bloomberg leapt into action and took control. He passed a law limiting future storms to 16 ounces or less.
(LAUGHTER)
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SAGAL: The storm hit the poorest parts of the city worst, of course, but the wealthy also suffered. Vogue editor Anna Wintour lost power. She was forced to move into a $5,000-a-night suite at a luxury hotel, and many of her models at Vogue had no food to not eat.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now, one of the things that bothered me, as a son of New Jersey, is New York got most of the headlines, but New Jersey got hit much worse. That's how it always is, right? If New Jersey sank under the sea, the headlines would be "New Yorkers must take ferry to Philadelphia."
(LAUGHTER)
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POUNDSTONE: I was in New Jersey the weekend before. I actually did three nights in New Jersey. I don't remember what towns anymore.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I had a great time. And let me just say, it was fine when I left it.
SAGAL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Whatever happened to New Jersey, it's not Paula's fault.
POUNDSTONE: Exactly. I just don't want to be blamed that, you know, somehow, I changed the fronts, I made a low front.
LUKE BURBANK: No, because everybody knows, based on Twitter, that that was Obama.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah, exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Wasn't there a conspiracy theory that he actually caused it?
BURBANK: Yeah. Twitter and Facebook were sort of lit up this week with people who were putting forward - and some of them, I'll be honest with you, didn't seem particularly well researched theories.
(LAUGHTER)
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SAGAL: Really?
BURBANK: The President controlling the weather so as to effectively wipe out the, like, three states we know he's going to win.
SAGAL: Right.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: You know, I enjoy social networking as much as the next guy, but sometimes when you hear something like that, it's like Twitter is a dipstick. You know what I mean. It's like, you know, you put it in and you take a reading and go "we're idiots."
SAGAL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Pretty much.
POUNDSTONE: We're just idiots.
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SAGAL: That's the only marking...
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: ...on the Twitter dipstick. All right, Greg, your next quote comes from a very upset toddler in Colorado, caught on a YouTube video.
KASELL: "I'm tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney."
(SOUNDBITE OF CRYING)
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Little Abby Evans was speaking for so many of us when she said she was sick of what?
MAHER: The campaign.
SAGAL: Yes, the election.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
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SAGAL: America is starting to feel like an expectant mother, two weeks after her due date, except she's pregnant with twins and the twins really hate each other.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: There are so many political ads on TV right now. I spent some time in a swing state recently, there are so many political ads on TV, you're relieved when you see an actual commercial for something you don't want to buy.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It's like, "Oh, look, it's an ad for self-lubricating catheters. That's so beautiful."
(LAUGHTER)
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SAGAL: I'll buy a dozen. By the way, we should say that that little girl in that video that went viral - she was the toddler upset about the election - she got upset because her mother was listening to NPR political coverage.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It's like, come on, parents, do not play this for your children. Don't you know that NPR is rated NC-55?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Of course, Hurricane Sandy became fodder for the campaign. This week, President Obama suspended his campaign so he could look presidential. He monitored the progress of the storm, which is basically what everybody else was doing, except he was wearing a cool Air Force One jacket.
And Mitt Romney canceled his campaign rallies and instead held what he called Storm Relief Rallies. They're a lot like campaign rallies, same videos, same guests, but Romney gets to wear jeans, I guess.
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SAGAL: At one of these Romney rallies, volunteers collected canned goods for hurricane victims. Romney staffers explained to attendees that "can" is not just a word for firing people; it's also something poor people use to hold food.
(LAUGHTER)
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POUNDSTONE: Do you know what I thought was weird was that...
SAGAL: What?
POUNDSTONE: ...he suspended his campaign and then - you know, I think that probably was the right thing to do, honestly. But still, it was like well because Obama suspended his campaign then Romney suspended his campaign. But Obama had to go be president and what did Romney have to go do? He had to go show what it would look like if he was president and there was a hurricane.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: He had to sort of do like Sears' catalog poses. You know what I mean?
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Greg, here is your last quote, from a Star Wars fan talking to Vice Magazine this week.
KASELL: It's probably going to be a (bleeping) musical, or something. There's going to be a singing Darth Vader and it makes me (bleeping) sick.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That fan was upset that the next (bleeping) "Star Wars" movie would be made by (bleeping) whom?
MAHER: That would be (bleeping) Disney.
SAGAL: Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: "Star Wars" fans of all ages responded with shock to the news that Disney was buying George Lucas's film company and the rights to the "Star Wars" franchise for four-point-oh-five billion dollars. The oh-five is for a spare Ewok.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: They worried - will a huge soulless entertainment conglomerate be able to make a "Star Wars" movie as terrible as the last three?
BURBANK: Yeah.
FIROOZEH DUMAS: You know, I say that's what happens when you wish upon a Death Star.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Disney promises to make a new "Star Wars" movie by 2015, and to expand the Star Wars presence in their theme parks. And the big daily parade at Disney World will now have Darth Vader on a float, using the Force to strangle Winnie the Pooh.
(LAUGHTER)
DUMAS: But, you know, Disney has this habit of taking ethnic characters and making them not ethnic. So I'm thinking Chewbacca, all that body hair, I think it's going to go.
SAGAL: Really?
DUMAS: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
BURBANK: It's all about manscaping. You've really got to handle that, Chewy.
(LAUGHTER)
BURBANK: You wonder why you're single, and you're freaking covered in body hair.
SAGAL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
DUMAS: It's kind of Middle East - I mean he looks like my cousins.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl, how did Greg do on our quiz?
KASELL: Greg, you had three correct answers, so you win our prize.
SAGAL: Well done.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Congratulations, Greg.
MAHER: Well, thank you.
SAGAL: Thank you, bye-bye.
MAHER: All right, bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.