Who's Carl This Time?
NPR
Saturday, December 7, 2013
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Carl Kasell reads three quotes from the week's news: It's a Bird! It's A Plane! It's Amazon!; The Holy Doorman; Father Stealthmas.
Transcript
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.
(APPLAUSE)
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Carl; thank you everybody. Thank you guys so much.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: We have a great show for you today. We have rocker Nick Lowe. He'll be live with us here on stage at the Chase Bank Auditorium. But first we wanted to take a second to celebrate a big legal case this week. You probably didn't hear about it. A federal court ruled that public TV and Radio stations do not have to accept political ads.
Now this is great since technically we don't broadcast any ads. We just have what are called funding credits. So because of this court ruling, you will never have to hear anything like this.
KASELL: Support for NPR comes from John Boehner, who is able to carry a ton of freight 230 miles on one gallon of fuel.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: There's only one name we want to hear, and its yours. Give us a call, the number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT, that's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
KRISTOPHER ENSLEY: Hi Peter, this is Kris Ensley. I'm currently stationed in New London, Connecticut, on the Coast Guard Barque Eagle.
SAGAL: Wait a minute, you're stationed in New London on the Coast Guard Barque?
ENSLEY: Yes, sir. I'm the - I'm one of the officers onboard the Barque Eagle. It's the training ship the Coast Guard uses to train all of our future officers.
SAGAL: Now a barque, if I'm not mistaken, is a sailing ship, right?
ENSLEY: Yes, it's a three-masted sailing ship. It's 300 feet long. We actually - it's a German sailing ship that the Coast Guard acquired after World War II. It's 77 years old.
SAGAL: That's amazing. Now first of all, I love those old tall ships, but I've always wanted to ask somebody this. You have these ships that are used to train sailors, right?
ENSLEY: Right, that's exactly what we do.
SAGAL: But the sailors will then go on to serve on ships that have things like engines.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So what could you possibly learn sailing a tall ship that is useful to them when they go into the actual modern ships they'll be serving on?
ENSLEY: Well, the biggest thing we teach is teamwork, leadership. The fact is you can't move this ship without a couple hundred people working together.
SAGAL: So they learn to organize themselves at the back of the ship and all stare in the same direction and blow as hard as they can on the sails.
ADAM FELBER: We need to get Congress up there.
(APPLAUSE)
KYRIE O'CONNOR: That's a good plan.
SAGAL: Well, that's awesome to hear. Thank you so much for joining us. Let me introduce you to our panel this week, Kristopher. First it is a comedian and a host of the Who's Paying Attention podcast, Mr. Alonzo Bodden is here.
ALONZO BODDEN: Hello, sir.
ENSLEY: Hello.
SAGAL: Next it's a senior editor and columnist for the Houston Chronicle, it's Ms. Kyrie O'Connor.
(APPLAUSE)
O'CONNOR: Hello, Kristopher.
SAGAL: Finally a writer for HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," it's Adam Felber.
(APPLAUSE)
FELBER: Hi there, Kristopher.
ENSLEY: Hi Adam.
SAGAL: So you're going to play Who's Carl This Time. Carl Kasell, Kristopher, is going to read you three quotations from the week's news. Your job: correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that, you'll win our prize, Carl's voice on your home answering machine. You ready to play?
ENSLEY: Definitely.
SAGAL: All right, here we go. Now your first quote comes from a kind of infomercial broadcast last Sunday night.
KASELL: Oh, my God.
SAGAL: That was "60 Minutes" host Charlie Rose reacting to Amazon's latest plan to get you what you want when you want it. Someday you'll be getting your Amazon package how?
ENSLEY: Using little, tiny helicopters, I hope.
SAGAL: Yes, drones, they're called.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: That's right, very good. Instead of the friendly hello of the mailman, now excited kids will listen for the horrifying alien whirr of a robotic drone delivering books, moustache grooming kits, and a 400-pound bomb. Oh whoops, sorry, wrong drone.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now the ramifications of this change, automated drone delivery, will be enormous. Now you'll know for sure if your wife is having an affair with the mailman because her face will be covered in propeller scratches.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I'll be like well, she insists he's my son, but I have blue eyes and he has an infrared camera.
(LAUGHTER)
FELBER: You know, for one thing, it's going to be - it's almost cruel to - once Amazon starts doing this for us to continue to use them for military purposes.
SAGAL: You mean the drones?
FELBER: Yeah, because once Amazon - you know, Amazon's worldwide and stuff, and, you know, so now some potential terror target, not only do they have the indignity of being taken out by a drone, their last thought is oh, hey, it's a present.
SAGAL: It might be - I mean, the idea is these things will fly and, like, drop these things in front of your house. This might be embarrassing if you have particular private needs. You know, you don't want your neighbor knocking on your door and saying hey, is that your tub of Vagisil that came in through my window, Frank?
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: I think if you're ordering Vagisil by the tub, the drone is...
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: The drone is the least of your problems.
SAGAL: All right, very good. Here is your next quote.
KASELL: Imagine being able to say he once beat the holy crap out of you in a club for being drunk and unruly.
SAGAL: That's a commenter on a Yahoo! news article reacting to revelations that what person used to, back in the day, be a bouncer at a club?
ENSLEY: I believe it was the pope.
SAGAL: It was, it was Pope Francis.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: In an interview this week, Pope Francis revealed - he talked about all the things he had done before he went into the priesthood, and one of them was he worked as bouncer back in Buenos Aires. It must have been odd to have a serious man of God working as a bouncer. Like, blessed art thou among women, but too drunk art thou so go home.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for you to get in this club wearing those pants.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now people they're like...
FELBER: Turn the other cheek because I'm a slap that one, too.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now this seems crazy, right?
FELBER: The velvet rope of St. Peter.
SAGAL: Exactly. But that's exactly it. It's like how could the pope have been a bouncer. But the first pope, St. Peter, right, has been working as a bouncer more or less ever since.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: He's the bouncer in heaven. He checks you out, decides if you get in or not. So make sure that when you die, die with a really hot friend, and you can be their plus-one.
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: So anyone who died in the disco era just isn't getting in.
SAGAL: No, no, no.
BODDEN: They just show up in polyester. Excuse me, it's...
FELBER: It's not gonna happen.
BODDEN: The pope was a bouncer. I had heard Catholic school was tough, but I had no idea that they took it that level.
SAGAL: It does seem a little odd considering his rather gentle nature. You know, he's a - he named himself after St. Francis, who was friendly with the birds and the bees, literally the birds and the bees. I don't think he actually was acquainted with the metaphorical kind. And yet he was a bouncer.
BODDEN: So what kind of club are you at where you're just working - because I've done security. It's the most boring thing in the world, and you just, you're talking to the other guys at the door. You know what? I'm going to give this up. I'm going to go with pope.
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: Like what happened in that club that you just decided I'm going with pope, I can't, I can't just hang out here anymore.
SAGAL: All right, here is your last quote.
KASELL: We don't know Santa's route, only Santa knows that, but I'm guessing Santa probably has clearance to go everywhere.
SAGAL: That was a spokesman from NORAD, right, saying that Santa, come Christmas Eve, will in no way honor what country's sudden announcement that it controls the skies?
ENSLEY: Are you talking about China's policy in the South China Sea?
SAGAL: Yes we are, we're talking about China, very good, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: This week China announced a zone of protected airspace stretching far out to sea, demanding that all planes that enter it ask China for clearance, and via NORAD, Santa sent China a lump of coal.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: NORAD, you know, it's the agency that monitors Santa's flight every year, and they say Santa will cross through that airspace as he always does. He has to go to China; that's where the toys are made.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Oh come on. Do you know how much elves get paid these days?
BODDEN: I don't know how Santa's going to deal with all the Amazon drones underneath him.
SAGAL: It's going to be terrifying. This is also true. To solve the brewing crisis with China, they sent Joe Biden over there, presumably to sort of charm them, to muse them out of their belligerent stanch.
O'CONNOR: Well, he's sort of the biggest elf.
SAGAL: He is. He's the Patch Adams of diplomacy.
FELBER: Hey, how you doing, Chinese people?
BODDEN: I think they agreed that they'll give up the airspace if Joe would leave and stop talking.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl, how did Kristopher do on our quiz?
KASELL: Christopher, you had three correct answers, so I'll be doing the voicemail, the message on your home answering machine.
ENSLEY: Well, thank you very much.
SAGAL: Well done.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thanks, Kristopher, for playing.
ENSLEY: Thank you, Peter.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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